Thefacebook.com creator Mark Zuckerberg is hoping that his drunken idea will be a brilliant success when he launches a national Beirut tournament today on the ever-so-popular Web site.

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Adrian Gaitan

Students line up the red cups to prepare for a game of Beirut. Thefacebook.com is launching a national Beirut tournament for its 128 subscriber schools.

Students from 128 schools that are subscribed to Thefacebook.com have been invited to participate in a national Beirut tournament. Winners from each school will get $500 to fly to New York City during President’s Day weekend to vie for a whopping $10,000 grand prize.

There is a $10 entry fee per team, which should cover the school’s prize money and costs of the national tournament. Unless there is unexpectedly high interest, Thefacebook.com team is expecting to lose $10,000 on the event.

Why would they be organizing an event to lose money, especially when they have a pending lawsuit with rival Web site www.connectU.com?

“Because it’s cool,” said Zuckerberg, who is currently on leave from Harvard University and residing in Menlo Park.

Students do not have to be 21 to enter the tournament at their individual schools (they are advised to use 2 percent milk instead of beer), but they must be 21 to compete in the national tournament. Off-duty police officers will be checking identification in New York.

Brackets will be randomly created online for the Stanford tournament, which will feature teams facing off in best-of-three, single-elimination games. In New York, the three-day national tournament will consist of a round-robin to determine seeding, followed by a two-day, single-elimination tournament.

Beirut, a game played by throwing ping-pong balls into cups of beer (or milk), is a growing pastime at Stanford. This quarter, senior Nick Damiano organized an unofficial Intramural Beirut league that will last through Dead Week. Students are competing for “Beirut Champions” T-shirts, as well as a makeshift trophy made from cardboard, cups, balls and spray paint.

“The IM Beirut league is something much bigger, and the title will carry much more prestige on campus [than Thefacebook tournament winner],” Damiano said. “I definitely approve of Zuckerberg’s efforts to use Thefacebook.com to arrange the first ever nationwide Beirut tournament.

“I just hope the game will be able to keep its purity and the day doesn’t come when Beirut players get Nike sponsorship and stores start selling Beirut trading cards to little kids. That might not be a good message to send to the youth of America,” Damiano added.

Students can easily participate in both the Stanford IM League and the national tournament sponsored by Thefacebook.com because both offer scheduling flexibility, although the latter is going to be run on a shorter two-week timetable. Both organizers like the social interaction that comes from the matches.

“I think the social scene really needed something like [the IM league] to happen in the midst of increasingly strict University regulations on students having fun,” Damiano said.

Zuckerberg said that while Thefacebook.com could be used as a tool for organizing national social events, this is not a major part of what it does. The staff is currently looking at developing a college dining and entertainment directory, in which students can “make friends” with local bars and restaurants. There are no plans to enter the textbook resale market, as Thefacebook staff “doesn’t like those sites.”

Thefacebook.com reached the 1.5 million users mark on Tuesday, including 9,730 Stanford users. The Web site, and its creators, have been featured in many national media outlets, including Time magazine.

The site is also bringing in repeat “customers,” with 55 million hits per day across all schools and 208,000 hits per day at Stanford. Sixty-five percent of users come back to the site everyday.

Students interested in entering thefacebook.com Beirut tournament can enter by Feb. 1 at http://www.thefacebook.com/beirut.php. The site is also looking to hire interns and engineers in the near future.