Fang Bo takes on USA

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I thought this was fun to see. This is Fang Bo who, over the summer played Timo Boll in the China Supper League and in one of his matches he beat Timo 3-0. Here he is playing Dora Kurimay at a tournament in Baltimore that happened last weekend. So while Ma Long was winning the Pro Tour Grand Finals in the UK, Fang Bo was in the USA playing.

fang_bo_16_12_09_Large.jpg

Photo by: Remy Gros


Fang Bo does not look like he is playing hard against Dora but I think Dora does pretty well, especially since Fang Bo really is a world class player who, I am sure, will some time soon, be in the top 10 in the world.

Fang Bo also took on Brian Pace who you may also recognise on youtube :)

 
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Who is the other Chinese player ... playing next to Fang Bo 's table ..... do you know Carl ?

Zhang Chao also was at the tournament.

But yeah there are also another video of Fang Bo playing Peter Li, who is one of the top American players, and you can just tell that Fang Bo is really just playing around, taking things easy. Doing slightly lower quality shots so that his opponents can have a chance.
 
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Peter Li is not a top American Player. He is a top Junior and U21 player, but there are several older players that beat him quite often. Brian Pace switched to Short pips on the backhand which in my opinion was a mistake. He felt that he was a stronger player when he played pips back in the 90's but I think he fails to realize the sport has changed since he was playing with pips.

Also to say he takes on USA would also be incorrect, because this is a 4 star event inviting international players. He does however play some US Teams, but they are not representing the US as this is a club based team event.

All I have to say is that Xu Xin came to the Baltimore Teams event and won it. This was right before he started to rise as a star in the Pro Tour so I'm wondering if this is Fang Bo's chance to take it to the big leagues?
 
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Thanks Scylla .... was Zhao Xin playing too ?

Zhang Chao also was at the tournament.

But yeah there are also another video of Fang Bo playing Peter Li, who is one of the top American players, and you can just tell that Fang Bo is really just playing around, taking things easy. Doing slightly lower quality shots so that his opponents can have a chance.
 
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So there is this thread, The Impossible Shot,

http://www.tabletennisdaily.co.uk/f...The-impossible-shot&highlight=impossible+shot

and of course the shot is not impossible, or how could there be a video of it. But it is a great name for the thread and it is a really amazing shot. So: "Fang Bo takes on USA": do you get it? Silly that someone would try and turn something like that into an argument. I love the name and I love seeing Fang Bo playing against players from the USA.

Dan, I could not agree with you more. How cool would it be to show up to a tournament and find out you are up against Fang Bo or Zhang Chao? When I got to play (Kevin) Can Wang it was awesome. He beat me 3, 3, 2 and it made no difference to me. I got to play against a 2500 level player and I played really well. I know he was not playing hard but it was a fun fun ride getting to trade loops with him. I even got to do my Waldner angle block off one of his loops that he ripped at me and I caught him off guard. :) I wish I could see that on video. His expression after was great too. And he was a total gentlemen playing me. So how cool would it be to play someone from the Chinese national team?

I don't know what the Prize money was for the event but I think a company called Alex Table Tennis brought Fang Bo and Zhang Chao over to play at the tournament.

This is more footage from Baltimore:


Hope you guys enjoy seeing Fang Bo Takes On the USA.
 
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I enjoyed it immensely. Star player turning up at your some what local tournament, and messing about (by his standard, he is just messing about). Yeah, it would be an incredible experience. If he has a little time on his hands, probably he could just give me a few tips here and there.
 
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I enjoyed it immensely. Star player turning up at your some what local tournament, and messing about (by his standard, he is just messing about). Yeah, it would be an incredible experience. If he has a little time on his hands, probably he could just give me a few tips here and there.

Yep. And Dora told me he was really nice with her and was not hitting the ball too hard to her. :)
 
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Whoa someone switched to T25. Interesting :). As for arguing, I just meant that a lot of teams were there and it's not really an American Tournament it's meant to be an international tournament was what I was pointing out.

Alex Table Tennis is the company that sponsors Mytabletennis.net and I believe that they were selling the jerseys that people were using. I know that they have brought Chinese National players in the past, but having separate teams sponsored by them I'm not too sure about. A lot of players have played wearing the AlexTT jersey, Brian Pace, Xavier Therian, and Peter Li were all wearing Alex Jerseys at one point and time in the tournament, but I'm not too sure about their being sponsored by them. In the past I believe they've brought over Xu Xin as well at a Teams event. This would have been right before he became a rising star in the Pro Tour.

And playing someone who's 2500 via US rating to me is not as impressive as someone who's literally off the charts on our scale much like WLQ and MLin are (2900+). The reason I say this is that our highest rated U.S. players rate I believe at or below the 1500 level internationally. I believe Yiyong Fan is somewhere around 1500 while players like Adam Hugh and Michael Landers are around 1300. It just shows how much we really need to grow to catch up to the world class levels that Europe and Asia produce.

I just also have to add that Fang Bo was really taking it easy on some players. I noticed that he stood up really straight for players he was taking it easy on when serving and returning making his service a bit higher and his return as well.
 
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Okay, sounds good Mr RicharD. I agree about players in the US as well. But for me, playing with a 2500 level player was a treat.

The Tenergy 25 was just something I had. It feels fine, but going back to the Clipper was a bigger change. It has been a while since I used a blade that is that fast.
 
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At the present moment, Fang Bo is ranking points is 1899 on the ITTF ranking system. There's an asterix* besides his name which indicates he hasn't been competing as many as he should be in the ITTF sanctioned tournaments in the last 6 months.

However, I have to agree with what Carl and Richard said, that a 1900 ITTF ranked player is way above in the US ranking system, or any other country's ranking system for that matter.
 
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At the present moment, Fang Bo is ranking points is 1899 on the ITTF ranking system. There's an asterix* besides his name which indicates he hasn't been competing as many as he should be in the ITTF sanctioned tournaments in the last 6 months.

However, I have to agree with what Carl and Richard said, that a 1900 ITTF ranked player is way above in the US ranking system, or any other country's ranking system for that matter.

Yeah. In the ITTF system, the points indicate points accumulated from tournament play. A simple way of looking at this is this: the highest ranked player from the USA in the ITTF ranking system has accumulated 1481 points and is ranked #345 in the world. That is FAN Yiyong who RicharD mentioned. The highest rated player in the USA is not even in the top 300. Fang Bo has 1899 points accumulated and is ranked 109th in the world. Over the summer he gave Timo Boll, a player in the top 10 a 3-0 beating. He is much better than his ranking shows. The Chinese team is just not putting him out there. But the players in the USA cannot compete.

It is clear that he is not having to play hard. And him playing the best players at Baltimore does look like a 2200 player playing someone at my level.
 
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Yeah Carl the Chinese team just has so many players that are World Class top 20 in my opinion actually more like if every Chinese A and B team member were allowed to play they would push nearly everyone else down to 100 or below.

This is an older article, but it's still pretty true to this day. The "professional" practice partners were especially interesting. Cheng Yinghua plays much like Waldner in his style and it's no wonder he's still a top player in the U.S.



http://www.masatenisi.org/english/secrets.htm
 
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Yeah Carl the Chinese team just has so many players that are World Class top 20 in my opinion actually more like if every Chinese A and B team member were allowed to play they would push nearly everyone else down to 100 or below.

This is an older article, but it's still pretty true to this day. The "professional" practice partners were especially interesting. Cheng Yinghua plays much like Waldner in his style and it's no wonder he's still a top player in the U.S.



http://www.masatenisi.org/english/secrets.htm


That is a great article! Thanks for sharing :D
 
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Yeah Carl the Chinese team just has so many players that are World Class top 20 in my opinion actually more like if every Chinese A and B team member were allowed to play they would push nearly everyone else down to 100 or below.

This is an older article, but it's still pretty true to this day. The "professional" practice partners were especially interesting. Cheng Yinghua plays much like Waldner in his style and it's no wonder he's still a top player in the U.S.

http://www.masatenisi.org/english/secrets.htm

Remember that Wang Jianjun switch from Cpen to Jpen just to mimic Ryu Seung Min last time, because Wang Hao lost to Ryu in the Olympic 2004.

Yea as for the link, there are so many reasons that straight on why other countries fall behind by so far away. Actually I haven't seen any 1 on 2 training for TT in and reportage video yet, but they just probably never let the reporter to take it. However, this is been practice alots in badminton too lol... azlan did upload some of the badminton training where there is 1v2, 1v3 and 2v4.
 
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The 2 on 1 coaching has been implemented by Cheng in the U.S. Many players in Maryland find it harder to train with better players so Cheng will often set up this 2v1 training session to help the higher rated players train at a higher level. He also said in the article that the training method is often only done in closed sessions. Even today that form of training is only done in his training camps. He's absolutely right about how we select our team. We have many older players make the team who do not have the skill and technique to beat other countries other than players they play regularly in North America. One example would be William Henzell vs Canada's Pradeban Paul-Peter. He is able to beat players in North America because there are so few players to play other than those who he regularly plays. William on the other hand has had his fair share of experience with different countries as you can see in his style of play similar to some Japanese players.
 
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