Hello there. I was lurking before, and had to register and thank you for the long and informative post about bats, blades and rubbers. Even if Tareq can seem trolly at times, this post helped me. So thank you.
I, as many before me, played locally as a kid, never got crazy about it, and then left it behind until a few months ago - I started a new job, and they actually have a TT table at my workplace. I now play every other day or so, for about an hour on average, sometimes longer. Until now, I'd been using a Stiga Fury, premade bat, and have discovered that I'm a blocker with angry topspin drives mixed in. So far, so generic. As I need to work on my game, I've read lots of advice, and it's all slightly different. Do this, do that, avoid this and so on.
I've just pulled the trigger on a Timo Boll ALL+, with 1.7 Srivers. Perfectly middle of the road, with a slight lean towards offensive. I'm looking forward to learning technique and improving my strokes and developing the feeling for TT now - Your post very eloquently and accessibly summarised the framework and the REASONING behind not getting the fastest speedmonster blade and rubbers and then failing to improve because of the difficulty floor on the setup being above your own skill ceiling, meaning there's little to no way of climbing up there and getting going.
So while you may feel that your advice was old hat, repetition of something spouted repeatedly to unwashed masses of armchair enthusiasts with no return... I wanted to tell you - It was valuable and useful advice to me. Thank you!
