They don't drive and block back and forth for eternity. A mathematician would say the limit approaches 0.Also, as you point out, they are people vs robots. Someone will eventually hit a weak ball.
Limit of what approaches 0 ? There is no limit here. We could talk about limit if it was infinite sequence (or however it is called in english), but I talked about average length of the rally.
Not "someone" will hit the weak ball, but the blocks that You can make with n-1/n % are already considered weak balls from the get go (unless You are a Fergel in disguise), so next balls of the opponent will be better and better when his % will stay the same or get even higher (cause Your returns will get weaker and weaker)
However, if the first player gets back only 2/3s of his shots and the second player returns 1/2 of those. The ball is still in play on 1/3 of the time after two strokes and 1/9 of the time after 4 strokes. There are very few long rallies.
Yes, they are very few long rallies and that is why we don't need to block correctly (n-1)/n, even if we blocked with much lower % we would still be winning. (assuming the rally is short). And here we get the contradiction, because as we can see in the video noone is making n/n+1 % shots, unless we take n=1, but then naking 0/1 blocks makes no sense.
Yes, I agree it is not correct to assume the percentages stay the same. My point is that one can tell a rough idea of the percentages by how long the rallies are. In the case of the first video the rallies are very short so the players were not making shots with a high enough percentage. A person that can block 2/3 of them back would win easily.
In this video they are trying to kill block or kill drive every single ball that comes their way, but I can assure You that if You tried to just block them they would just kill the next ball...and that is why none of them is blocking. I am not saying their plan is great, but there is no way that You could win against them even Your 1st block would land 100% of the times. They would see that You are not dangerous at all and they would probably make slow spinny opening loop (With much higher % than the strokes they do in the video) and kill the next ball (making Your chances of blocking next ball close to 0).
It is hard for me to write all that, cause I am also rather "safe" player putting high % shots on table most of the time.
I agree that they are lacking some fundamentals and their tactics are far from perfect, but from what I can see in that video they are not the players that would lose to a player that gives them the initiative and is only trying to block.
BTW, two relatively evenly matched players that get back about 9/10 of the ball would have a 41% chance of still playing at the end of 8 strokes.
Let's take Ma Long and Fan Zhedong...how many 8 strokes rallies do they produce against each other ? I am almost certain it is way below 41% and the strokes they can easly make 9/10 loops, drives, flicks...whatever techinique You have in mind, so why their rallies are shorter ?
Cause there are no shits that You can make with 9/10 success rate against the shots that they are producing and that is why any model that uses limits etc makes no sense. Players are not making 8/9,9/10 or higher percentage shots. They are making 60%-75% power shots that will end the rally, cause they know that any higher % shot is just too weak.
So...I hope we can agree to end the "math" talk here
. The reason why I laughed is that there is no point in talking about close to infinite rallies in table tennis (unless it is 2 choppers playing each otehr
) and any "tactic" basic around that is just not practical. Unless we take one pro player against a beginner then the pro player can make those 9/10 shots and still own the begginer/much lowwer ranked player