Great posts NextLevel. The amount of specific detail is great and will really help bobpuls, and me too, know a few details about what is going on and techniques for improving the spin without the table there: working on the mechanics of the wrist and forearm snap and seeing how the spin effects the bounce of the ball on the floor:
Sidespin: how much can you make it curve.
Backspin: can you make it come back to you.
Topspin: how much can you make it kick.
No Spin Serve: can you make it have a low trajectory with a slight skid so it looks more like backspin. (I guess the floor doesn't help with that; I got that theory for effective no spin serve trajectory from Mark Croitoroo who is really good with that kind of technical info).
Sent from the Oracle of Delphi by the Pythia
I do a lot of serving practice, so I will say this - if there is any reason I want to meet and work with Brett in person, this is it! Brett probably has the answers to all sorts of questions that I cannot get an answer from over email because I can't pose them appropriately.
Sidespin is necessarily not about curve - there are actually two kinds of sidespin - side and corkscrew - and one must be careful in distinguishing the effects of both - what most people call side backspin or side topspin are really serves with the effects of both combined (if you are using that framework - my coach likes to say that there is nothing like side backspin or side topspin - the ball has one axis and if you know it and how fast it is spinning, that is all you need, though to be honest, the ball's momentum isn't always in the axis it is spinning and that probably has an under-appreciated effect on reading spin).
While the curve of the ball is important for measuring the amount of spin in terms of the Magnus effect, in reality, it is more important to be able to generate heavy spin and then vary it. The problem with serving heavy spin is that your opponent's return will often give it back to you and you have to figure out what will happen to the ball and how to contact the ball to return it. So usually, when generating heavy spin, you are usually trying to win the point outright. With lighter spins, you are usually trying to play for a 3rd ball opportunity which your opponent's respect for your heavy spin has set up. You can play for 3rd ball with heavy spin, but you have to know what you are doing, especially if you incorporate sidespin. I have seen 2300 players struggle to attack behind their heavy spin serves, but it is a much more common problem at the lower levels. That's why it's best to serve low no spin or light backspin and only vary things when your racket head speed, spin reading skills and loop timing improves. IF you have worked on your 3rd ball for your heavy spins, then you can use those because you will be able to read the returns better.
All serves should really skid or go through the table at a low trajectory. It is harder with pure backspin or topspin which is why sidespin is usually used to disguise the serves without making the sidespin too dominant an element - the goal is to use the motion to keep the serve low. Side backspin tends to break at a sharp 90 degree angle or sometimes come back after hitting the floor. Side topspin tends to continue forward while sidespin tends to curve somewhere in the middle of both (sidespin can become more like side top after reaction with the table because of the forward momentum).
Topspin is hard to keep short and make kick without being too obvious about it. In my serve philosophy (adopted from Brett), I don't want my topspin serves to kick so much as I want them to look like my backspin serves so that people will push them and get tentative when returning my backspin serves. I find that when people push my topspin serves, I don't even need a high return as long as they didn't chop into them.
With backspin vs. no spin, the key there is to make the serve trajectories look similar - the skidding effect is a by product. The good thing is that spin does not reveal itself as greatly in the first two bounces of a serve so you can work at it a little. I serve a lot of backspin and no spin serves (both with my forehand and my backhand). I find that ultimately, as long as the serve is low and relatively short or half long, you should not concern yourself with whether someone can read it and mostly concern yourself with remembering what you served so you can read the return and counter the next shot appropriately.
There is still a lot of stuff I need to learn, but it is one field where you get rewarded by practice and experimentation and to a larger degree than anything else, COACHING. People play money for loops, but rarely pay money for serves. IT should be the other way round, IMO.