Tactics

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A big problem is that you're even thinking his serves are illegal. He's got you not thinking about your game anymore and worry about him cheating on the serve instead of playing properly. Anything to get you away from thinking about what you need to do next.

Think about when someone Cho's on their points. It may not bother you, but you still might notice it. And that thinking about how they cho'd and how they sound rediculous, and how you're not going to let it bother you and how your just going to keep playing your game the same way. well all those thoughts normally wouldn't have been there, and they achieved their goal of distracting you from thinking real table tennis thoughts.

I wear a nike headband, and I wear it so the logo is upside down, intitially I did it by accident. A club member noticed it and told me that it was upside down, I laughed and said whoops. However I didn't fix it I just kept playing, I noticed he kept looking up at my forehead so I decided to always wear it upside down from now on. About a week ago, I was playing a player named Tien. He was wearing an addidas headband upside down. In my head I said "copier! that's my thing!" He's a friend and I asked him why he was wearing it upside down. He responded telling me that mine kept on distracting him. Anything to take their mind off the playing man.


This is a classic post. For real.

Pysch-out Tactics 101 (aka Jedi Mind Tricks) courtesy of my man Shuki!
 
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Basics IMO:

Partner stands too close = serve fast and long
Partner stands too far = serve short
Partner stands too much to his BH = serve to his FH

Here's another one I use:

Serve fast wide sidespin to partner's BH ... get him leaning that side, then serve down the line to his FH (or vice versa)
 
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Here's one that Wally Green told me:


If you are playing against a child prodigy and you happen to be good at counter attacking, then let the kid attack first (by giving them a hard ball first, of course). Then you can counter attack easily.

**********

I found that advice really useful against players who don't open strongly enough.
 
says Spin and more spin.
says Spin and more spin.
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If you serve fast be ready for the return to come back fast and the. You can put it away.

I like to serve backspin to try and force my opponent to push. If I can do that I get the opening loop and can usually control the point unless the opponent is a few levels higher than me.

But when serving backspin you have to change the spin from heavy to light to force weaker returns from the opponent.

In receiving serves I like to mix between attacking and dropping the ball short to keep the opponent as off balance as possible. But when you play a better player they usually have answers for all your tactics.

And if you don't actually play, it is harder to understand how certain tactics work: things like how you change from spin to know spin by hand pressure and how that gives you easy third balls.


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Ooo another very important one to note, if you lose around 3 points in a row, for the love of god pause! I don't care if you believe momentum is a real thing or if you think it's some jumbo jumbo. Adrenaline is real. We have a finite amount that we can draw on and it's not easy to draw on adrenaline over and over.

Pause and let their adrenaline die off a bit. During this pause don't think about how you're letting their adrenaline die. Think about the next serve you're going to do and how you're going to treat their return. Be ready for it. So many times I've seen players with gold serves not capitalize when they play good players because they either don't know what ball to expect back or the simply didn't prepare themselves for the next ball.

There's two kinds of reactionary play. The kind where you're on autopilot. And the kind where you almost feel antsy waiting for the ball to come back just so you can counter it. The antsy one is the better kind of reaction.

Like Carl's post about serving long and then killing their return. That's the reaction where he's almost antsy, ready for that ball to come back fast so he can react. If he went on autopilot or didn't anticipate where the calm would come back he would undoubtedly fail his follow up


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