Daily Table Tennis Chit Chat

[dingyibvs]

Looks great! What brand are they? How much did you pay?

It's Li-Ning, for $200

 

[Boogar]

Another week filled with lots table tennis has passed.
There was the regional tournament where i won the doubles C. There are only players allowed with a rating below 2000. So I am pretty pleased with that. I used to hate playing doubles, but lately i have come to like it more and more. The way the nerves work differently if you play with a partner, its fun and dreadful at the same time .

In the singles part i didn't perform too well, i beat players i had to beat and lost to players I could lose to, but no upsets on my part.
As I am not trying to focus on winning and losing too much i felt i played good and kept my mental game in check... for the most part. My favorite moment was when i played one of the top sub2000 players and had a good start where i won 11:2 with a very aggressive forehand loop game. However, I lost the momentum shortly after and lost the match.
Next i had league match yesterday, we played for the second place in our leagues division. We won it, but not because of me. I only won one match against a guy with short pips on the backhand (prob around 1800) and lost to another guy with long pips and another stronger block player.

Interestingly I tried the approach to use the first game to gauge my opponents and in the matches I lost I couldn't turn up the heat after observing in the first game and lost in three straight. Have you experienced the same and if what did you do to counter that?
Adding to that, in the match against the LP guy i thought he was rated way lower than he actually was, so i was constantly surprised at his shots... in combination with his illegal serves, which led to me being annoyed the whole match.

So a bit of a frustrating day for me... in general i had good shots, but they were all way to risky. If i hit my shot it almost always was an instant point. But i had no inbetween very weak shots and haymakers....

Next stop is possibly going to be a tournament on Sunday with big groups (7 matches guaranteed)
A very cool tournament... but i am not sure if i am going. One because i could need a break and because i am working the day before... possibly until 3 am. So getting up early is going to be hard.

How has your week been?

 

[dingyibvs]

Another week filled with lots table tennis has passed.
There was the regional tournament where i won the doubles C. There are only players allowed with a rating below 2000. So I am pretty pleased with that. I used to hate playing doubles, but lately i have come to like it more and more. The way the nerves work differently if you play with a partner, its fun and dreadful at the same time .

In the singles part i didn't perform too well, i beat players i had to beat and lost to players I could lose to, but no upsets on my part.
As I am not trying to focus on winning and losing too much i felt i played good and kept my mental game in check... for the most part. My favorite moment was when i played one of the top sub2000 players and had a good start where i won 11:2 with a very aggressive forehand loop game. However, I lost the momentum shortly after and lost the match.
Next i had league match yesterday, we played for the second place in our leagues division. We won it, but not because of me. I only won one match against a guy with short pips on the backhand (prob around 1800) and lost to another guy with long pips and another stronger block player.

Interestingly I tried the approach to use the first game to gauge my opponents and in the matches I lost I couldn't turn up the heat after observing in the first game and lost in three straight. Have you experienced the same and if what did you do to counter that?
Adding to that, in the match against the LP guy i thought he was rated way lower than he actually was, so i was constantly surprised at his shots... in combination with his illegal serves, which led to me being annoyed the whole match.

So a bit of a frustrating day for me... in general i had good shots, but they were all way to risky. If i hit my shot it almost always was an instant point. But i had no inbetween very weak shots and haymakers....

Next stop is possibly going to be a tournament on Sunday with big groups (7 matches guaranteed)
A very cool tournament... but i am not sure if i am going. One because i could need a break and because i am working the day before... possibly until 3 am. So getting up early is going to be hard.

How has your week been?

I personally prefer to be aggressive the first set, especially with service receives. If you can neutralize the opponent's services it puts a lot of pressure on them, for one. For two, if you receive conservatively, that usually means more popups, which allows the opponent to get into a rhythm looping/killing your returns whereas if you receive aggressively and miss then the point is over and the opponent doesn't get a practice shot on you.

 

[Wrighty67]

I personally prefer to be aggressive the first set, especially with service receives. If you can neutralize the opponent's services it puts a lot of pressure on them, for one. For two, if you receive conservatively, that usually means more popups, which allows the opponent to get into a rhythm looping/killing your returns whereas if you receive aggressively and miss then the point is over and the opponent doesn't get a practice shot on you.

Fair, but the downside for me of an aggressive start can be a lot of errors before I know what’s happening, leading to a downward spiral. I prefer a moderate steadier 1st game looking for easier opportunities and finding which of my serves they struggle with.

 

[blahness]

I usually play with a lot of spin (still playing aggressive and trying to get 1st loop in) in the first set, before increasingly hitting harder in the subsequent sets when I feel more comfortable and am making less mistakes. My winning chances are much higher when my feeling for spinning the ball is good. If I hit hard first then usually I get killed by my own unforced errors...

 

[Der_Echte]

Fair, but the downside for me of an aggressive start can be a lot of errors before I know what’s happening, leading to a downward spiral. I prefer a moderate steadier 1st game looking for easier opportunities and finding which of my serves they struggle with.

Big D (go hard early) and Wrighty (don't piss away points early on) both make the case for the decision making and the trade-offs.

 

[Der_Echte]

Wow, blahness said spin to win, that is a thing.

 

[blahness]

Wow, blahness said spin to win, that is a thing.

Not sure why that is a controversial thing at all?

 

[Der_Echte]

In American vernacular "it is a thing" means it is valid and liked or done by most.

Nothing controversial at all.

 

[blahness]

Finally cracked a bit of the code for looping continuously with very high quality without missing a beat. I used to not be able to do that.

So basically no recovery step after loop is definitely not correct because you'll be caught wrong-footed more often than not during high speed rallies.

But having a separate step is often way too costly in terms of time.

so I tweaked my split step between loops so that it's more of the bounce on knees method rather than a separate split step. The impact was immediate - after a few basket of balls I was chasing down most balls and was way more in position.

This is tiring af though. I did like 6 baskets of balls.

 

[dingyibvs]

So I played a few practice matches against the best player in the club today. I've only beaten him twice in the many months I've played there, a 3-2 and I think a 3-1. Today I beat him 3-0 in back-to-back matches! The main difference is my BH, everything just came together all of a sudden. He's the best server in the club, but I put him on the backfoot many times with quality BH receives. My opening loops with the BH were on point, for what might be the first time ever, though I'm still struggling to open up with the BH with the first push and usually only remember to loop with the BH instead of push after the second push to my BH. Also a first, I hit so many outright blazing winners with my BH! My blocking has also gotten a lot better, but passive blocks against someone like him only has limited utility. At least I kept the rally going a bit longer, enough to force a weak loop sometimes to my FH side which I can then attack.

I credit this "everything coming together" to my recent trainings. I went to the Pleasanton club on Sunday, and this kinda touches on what @blahness was saying in the other thread. There's a young man there who's got an intellectual disability, and people don't really like to play with him. He goes there every Sunday and takes coaching lessons as well. His services and receives are atrocious, so not much utility in playing games against him, but his moderate speed rally skills are solid. When it was his chance to go to a table, nobody really wanted to play with him, but I jumped at the chance. We did a lot of BH-BH practice. His placement is not great, most of the shots go to my mid, about equal to my FH and wide BH, but that's exactly what I needed. My recent BH training has been focused on movement and shot quality, and he made me move, returned even quality shots due to his solid rally skills, and gave me a lot of chances for FH/BH transitions.

On my robot I've also changed up my BH training. Instead of just shooting the fastest balls, I now have it serve me 3 different speeds to 3 different locations, wide BH, regular BH, and mid, then added in a random BH location high ball to kill. I have it serve those balls randomly at a ridiculous speed of 100 balls/min (I've seen FZD do multiball at slightly over 100/min for BH/FH so I know it's 100/min for BH only is possible for me), so that I need to instinctively adjust my timing for each shot, and keep moving my feet and body. For opening loop training I also changed it to one short ball to the FH which I have to step in to receive and then immediately one to the deep BH at 80/min pace as I noticed that a big issue is the in and out movement for me in terms of BH opening loops.

It's great to see these adjustments pay off. I'm actually dealing with a back injury to my right side right now so I'm taking it easy with my FHs. My FH shots are usually pretty powerful and requires full body commitment and a lot of footwork so my FH today is not nearly as good as usual. To improve my BH so much that I was able to beat the best guy at the club this handily despite playing poorly with the FH is really a cause of celebration for me!

 

[blahness]

While experimenting I came across a very interesting technique for the FH flick to create a lot stronger spin than ppl think can be generated from a FH flick. So the way is letting the bat drop down to 4 o clock and then really using the fingers and forearm pronation to spin the bat up to 10 or 11 o clock (of course assisted by the body rotation). But it's more like a mini spinny loop - there's almost no way to actually make it anywhere as high quality as a chiquita, if I add in the forearm snap its too powerful and no way i can keep the consistency high in matches i think. I'm not exactly sure how this can be best used in play to give me an advantage lol. Maybe as a variation to my usual dead FH flicks?

 

[dingyibvs]

While experimenting I came across a very interesting technique for the FH flick to create a lot stronger spin than ppl think can be generated from a FH flick. So the way is letting the bat drop down to 4 o clock and then really using the fingers and forearm pronation to spin the bat up to 10 or 11 o clock (of course assisted by the body rotation). But it's more like a mini spinny loop - there's almost no way to actually make it anywhere as high quality as a chiquita, if I add in the forearm snap its too powerful and no way i can keep the consistency high in matches i think. I'm not exactly sure how this can be best used in play to give me an advantage lol. Maybe as a variation to my usual dead FH flicks?

Maybe you can make it look like a push at first, that could work.

I've been focused on BH technique myself, and after working on my form and footwork I'm focusing on creating quality. That mainly involves two things, one is adding a bit of body use, and the second is developing a "hit then brush" type of stroke similar to my FH. Since starting the re-work of my BH 2 months ago, I started off by simply hitting and not using any wrist or generating any spin. From that starting point, hit then brush becomes a lot more natural.

The stroke now is a lot more similar to how the pros do it, finishing with a rather open blade face rather than a very closed one as with my previous very wristy stroke. This is especially pronounced for the loop against backspin, where I use a lot of pronation right as the racket contacts the ball and the racket ends up very open at the end of the stroke, with the right side of my racket pointing about 45 degrees up as opposed to before when it would point 0 or even negative degrees to the right. I find it to give me a lot more consistency as it's easier to make good contact with the ball, and if I snap my wrist as well I can drive with a lot of power, though I'm not focusing on that right now.

 

[blahness]

Maybe you can make it look like a push at first, that could work.

I've been focused on BH technique myself, and after working on my form and footwork I'm focusing on creating quality. That mainly involves two things, one is adding a bit of body use, and the second is developing a "hit then brush" type of stroke similar to my FH. Since starting the re-work of my BH 2 months ago, I started off by simply hitting and not using any wrist or generating any spin. From that starting point, hit then brush becomes a lot more natural.

The stroke now is a lot more similar to how the pros do it, finishing with a rather open blade face rather than a very closed one as with my previous very wristy stroke. This is especially pronounced for the loop against backspin, where I use a lot of pronation right as the racket contacts the ball and the racket ends up very open at the end of the stroke, with the right side of my racket pointing about 45 degrees up as opposed to before when it would point 0 or even negative degrees to the right. I find it to give me a lot more consistency as it's easier to make good contact with the ball, and if I snap my wrist as well I can drive with a lot of power, though I'm not focusing on that right now.

I have way too many FH receive styles for my own good lol....I feel like the nospin FH flick, the sideswipes and wide angle sidespin push/flicks are the most devastating aggressive receives, but this short spinny FH flick may be quite something too, I'll have to test it out.

I too figured out the pronation style BH opening loop some time ago too (never really understood it in the past - i even questioned it heavily when someone else said it) when I was toying around with ideas to chiquita against short heavy backspin. It does provide a lot of lifting power against heavy backspin and can be quite valuable as a tool (i was chiquitaing heavy backspin like it was nothing whereas with my normal stroke i had to really struggle to get it over the net). However I feel like it's most useful against heavy pure backspin and heavy side backspin. Anything that's more sidespin or topspin - this stroke will be error prone because of too much lifting and insufficient brush - the supination stroke will be significantly better against those balls. But due to the ease of lifting backspin, I also incorporated it to my tools. It's funny how you can just disrespect heavy backspin like that. However the supination stroke does provide much heavier topspin even for opening loop. So you can use pronation style to do powerloops and supination style to do heavy spin shorter opening loops and just change it around.

This is quite interesting because you're no longer compromising your body positioning to handle different spins - it's all in the forearm action to adjust.

 

[dingyibvs]

I have way too many FH receive styles for my own good lol....I feel like the nospin FH flick, the sideswipes and wide angle sidespin push/flicks are the most devastating aggressive receives, but this short spinny FH flick may be quite something too, I'll have to test it out.

I too figured out the pronation style BH opening loop some time ago too (never really understood it in the past - i even questioned it heavily when someone else said it) when I was toying around with ideas to chiquita against short heavy backspin. It does provide a lot of lifting power against heavy backspin and can be quite valuable as a tool (i was chiquitaing heavy backspin like it was nothing whereas with my normal stroke i had to really struggle to get it over the net). However I feel like it's most useful against heavy pure backspin and heavy side backspin. Anything that's more sidespin or topspin - this stroke will be error prone because of too much lifting and insufficient brush - the supination stroke will be significantly better against those balls. But due to the ease of lifting backspin, I also incorporated it to my tools. It's funny how you can just disrespect heavy backspin like that. However the supination stroke does provide much heavier topspin even for opening loop. So you can use pronation style to do powerloops and supination style to do heavy spin shorter opening loops and just change it around.

This is quite interesting because you're no longer compromising your body positioning to handle different spins - it's all in the forearm action to adjust.

Yeah, against topspin I don't use that unless the ball is below the table and I need the extra lift. I find that the biggest advantage of this stroke is just how solid the contact is. With the supination style I just don't get really good contact and even straight up miss the ball way too often with shots that require a lot of brushing.

Against topspins near the table I approach with a much more open racket now than before, and instead of trying to brush over the ball I now try to hit it first then supinate and brush. That's really helped with both consistency and quality.

 

[blahness]

Yeah, against topspin I don't use that unless the ball is below the table and I need the extra lift. I find that the biggest advantage of this stroke is just how solid the contact is. With the supination style I just don't get really good contact and even straight up miss the ball way too often with shots that require a lot of brushing.

Against topspins near the table I approach with a much more open racket now than before, and instead of trying to brush over the ball I now try to hit it first then supinate and brush. That's really helped with both consistency and quality.

Yep that is also my general approach with BH nowadays.

I wonder if a similar principle can be used for the FH flick vs heavy underspin (ie supinate rather than pronate). Gonna try that out next time I play.

 

[dingyibvs]

Yep that is also my general approach with BH nowadays.

I wonder if a similar principle can be used for the FH flick vs heavy underspin (ie supinate rather than pronate). Gonna try that out next time I play.

It works somewhat on the FH side, Ma Long does it a bit with his FH loop against block.

 

[blahness]

It works somewhat on the FH side, Ma Long does it a bit with his FH loop against block.

He is still pronating when he FH loops for sure - ive seen dozens of slowmo videos. With FH loops there is overwhelming amount of power available to cancel out any backspin anyway, I'm not too concerned about that.

It's the short balls that the shakehand FH receive is very weak at. Maybe a reverse mindset of using supination to be able to lift and flick heavy backspin could be a viable attacking shot.

I am never comfortable flicking heavy backspin to the short FH unlike on the BH (due to chiquita), this serve is the only serve that pretty much shuts down any possibility of attack.

 

[dingyibvs]

He is still pronating when he FH loops for sure - ive seen dozens of slowmo videos. With FH loops there is overwhelming amount of power available to cancel out any backspin anyway, I'm not too concerned about that.

It's the short balls that the shakehand FH receive is very weak at. Maybe a reverse mindset of using supination to be able to lift and flick heavy backspin could be a viable attacking shot.

I am never comfortable flicking heavy backspin to the short FH unlike on the BH (due to chiquita), this serve is the only serve that pretty much shuts down any possibility of attack.

IMO really short heavy backspins to either side is not worth attacking. You can only attack with a relatively slow spinny shot (that is, relative to your level of play and assuming similar level of play for your opponent) that's relatively easy to counter. I prefer Ma Long's return method of returning with a backspin, and use the uncertainty of location to force your opponent to give a relatively weak return which you can then counter.

 

[blahness]

IMO really short heavy backspins to either side is not worth attacking. You can only attack with a relatively slow spinny shot (that is, relative to your level of play and assuming similar level of play for your opponent) that's relatively easy to counter. I prefer Ma Long's return method of returning with a backspin, and use the uncertainty of location to force your opponent to give a relatively weak return which you can then counter.

I can actually do rather dangerous chiquitas and sideswipe attacks against short heavy backspin with my BH. The problem is with players who know to avoid serving short backspin to my BH but to the FH instead. Obviously if I can attack it straight away, it's more advantageous in terms of game play, and even more so if you can vary it. For eg if I can vary between FH sideswipe, long push, short push, and this sudden flick the opponent is gonna be really toast in terms of positioning because they won't know what is coming.