Table tennis uses rally-point scoring: every rally ends with a point to one player, whoever served. Points make games, and games make a match. Once you know three numbers, 11, 2 and 5, you can follow any scoreboard.
Games: first to 11, by two
A game is won by the first player to reach 11 points. If the score reaches 10-10, the game carries on until one player is two points ahead. There is no cap, so 14-12 and 17-15 both happen. English players often call 10-10 deuce, borrowing the word from tennis, though the laws don't use it.
Games used to go to 21 points, with five serves each. The ITTF switched to 11 in 2001, mainly to make matches shorter and give television more turning points.
Matches: best of five or seven
A match is the best of an odd number of games. Most professional singles matches are the best of five, so the first to three games wins. The Olympic Games, the World Championships and the later rounds of many WTT events play the best of seven. Club league matches in England are usually the best of five.
A result is written games first, then the score of each game from the winner's point of view: 3-2 (11-8, 9-11, 11-6, 8-11, 12-10). That match went the full distance and the last game was decided after 10-10. On Eleven's live scores, the number in bold is games won and the smaller numbers are the points in the current game.
Who serves
Before the match, the players toss a coin or spin a racket. The winner chooses to serve, to receive, or which end to start at, and the other player gets the remaining choice.
Each player then serves two points in a row before the serve passes across. From 10-10, the serve alternates after every point, so each player serves once in turn until the game ends. In the next game, whoever received first in the previous game serves first.
There is no advantage to the server built into the score, unlike tennis, but serving is still a big edge at the top level. Our guide to serve and receive explains why.
Changing ends
Players swap ends after every game. In the deciding game, the fifth of five or the seventh of seven, they also swap when the first player reaches five points, so that neither has the better end for the whole decider.
Breaks and time-outs
Players can take up to a minute between games, and may towel off after every six points. Each player or pair may also call one time-out of up to a minute per match. Coaches can call it too. Most players save it for a tight deciding game or a run of points against them.
Team matches
Team events add one more layer. A team match is made up of several individual matches, each played under the scoring above, and the first team to win a set number of them wins the tie. The World Team Championships use a best-of-five format: the first team to three individual wins goes through. The Olympic team event and the Mixed Team World Cup use different formats again, which are set out in how team matches work.
Reading the rankings
Scoring in matches has nothing to do with world ranking points, which are awarded for how far a player gets in a tournament. How the world rankings work covers that, and Eleven's rankings page shows the current top 100.