For those who think pips have a ceiling

[vivalavida320315]

Falck also had an easier bracket than ma long

 

[NextLevel]

Doesn't Falck 2019 prove NDH's point that best inverted beats best pips? I enjoy watching all styles (see avatar), and I have a ton of respect for Joo Sae Hyuk, but let's be real. His career does not at all compare to Ma Long's. And iirc, Ryu Seung Min used to beat Joo Sae Hyuk all the time.

Not just Ryu, but just about every other member of the Korean national team that practiced with him regularly.

 

[Lowday20298]

Because ball was changed after Joo retired

Even before that, pip players have tons of weaknesses that a good inverted player will take advantage of. That's how it is, a good topspin will beat anything, hence why offensive players have dominated the sport for decades.

 

[Lowday20298]

Lol, so if pips are so shit as per what you say, how did Sun Yingsha world no.1 and reigning World Champion who has the best training environment lose recently to a player who for sure has way worse training environment than her? And how did Ni Xia Lian win a feeder tournament at an age of 60 against the barrage of extremely skilled world class double inverted players?

I know some pros who have lost to amateur pip players and won't bother to include them.

Because they will play against a player they don't know, lose, then learn how to beat them and never lose again. The exact same story with Mima Ito.

 

[Brs]

Pips have a ceiling is a funny way to put it, and not super accurate imo. Kinda dumb to get angry about it tho.

There was a time when you could fairly have said double-backside rubbers have a ceiling, when pips-out penhold ruled the earth. Then ITTF changed a bunch of rules.

If you look at the actual ceiling of pips players, in the women's Mima is top 10, you could say qtrs of a smash is her ceiling. Or olympic bronze if you prefer. YXX, Kihara, there are a bunch of top women playing pips. In the men's you could say silver at world champs is the ceiling, unless you think falck was too long ago to be counted. Top 10 is probably not the ceiling for men pips, maybe 20 or 30. I don't follow men so I don't know where the choppers start to show up. Pretty sure there are some in the top 50.

An interesting thing to consider is whether pips are actually *over-represented* in the WR top 30 or 50, compared to the percentage of elite players who use them. I don't know the stats on this. Zeio probably does.

Clearly at any amateur level up to sooooo fucking good, talk of a pips ceiling is just silly. Nobody here will be top 1000, ever.

 

[NDH]

Clearly at any amateur level up to sooooo fucking good, talk of a pips ceiling is just silly. Nobody here will be top 1000, ever.

Not sure how much you’ve read through the comments (wouldn’t blame you if the answer was “not a lot!”) 😂, but the ceiling you are talking about isn’t the same as the ceiling I believe myself, and others are referring to.

This isn’t about “pips players won’t reach X ranking because of their pips”, it’s how playing with pips limits your shot options and tactics.

From what I see, pips players overachieve at every ability level.

How many times have we all looked at someone and thought “Christ, how does that player win so many matches” - The answer is often “because they play with pips and their opponents aren’t that great at playing against it”.

BUT…. If that player were to continue playing at the same level, other players (inverted rubbers) would adapt, and proving their ability was on par with the pips player, they would eventually overcome said pips player and never look back.

So yeah, it’s not about pips giving a literal ceiling of how much an amateur can improve (99.999999% will never reach that ceiling), it’s more about the pips being limited against people who are comfortable playing against that style.

 

[ViperTableTennis]

Moving goalposts at its finest here. The whole discussion was about "pips" vs "inverted" AND "equal training"/"abilities". Losing to Ma Long, mind you the greatest of all time, in the final of WTTC is no argument at all. Destroying all his real peers on the way to the final is.

> How many other elite level players are there in the top 50 using pips? You can probably count them on one hand and still have a finger or two to spare! When you have a top 50 that is 95%ish populated by double-inverted players, that's pretty strong evidence to suggest that pips players struggle to assert themselves at the very top level...which is another way of saying that the ceiling for pips players is lower than it is for double-inverted players.

Oh, now it's about naming other pips users. Goalposts, goalposts. How many coaches teach and develop pips styles at the top level?

I'm not moving the goalposts. As far as I'm concerned the discussion is still about pips v inverted, but YOU decided to introduce a named player (Falck) into the discussion, thereby moving us away from the more abstract discussion around playing styles into a more micro-level analysis of specific players.

I never said it was about naming other pips players...what I said was count how many pips players there are in the top 50 using pips. Do you understand what statistical/quantitative analysis is? Its about the numbers and the percentages, not about names of players!

 

[brokenball]

Even before that, pip players have tons of weaknesses that a good inverted player will take advantage of. That's how it is, a good topspin will beat anything, hence why offensive players have dominated the sport for decades.

That is an assumption. I play with LP 0X when I get bored playing with double inverted or SP. I like to twiddle when the opponent returns a weak ball to my BH or even if he make a fast hit to my BH. The ball comes back to the opponent fast with lots of top spin instead of slow with back spin. It screws with their mind. I wouldn't twiddle if I had a 'weak' BH.

Of older players tend to play more with LP 0X the main weakness is that these players are older.

 

[ViperTableTennis]

It proves blahness' point actually. The greatest of all time has beaten an average Joe of tt in the final. Big deal. The average Joe of tt reaches the final with pips on FH — that's serious.

I gotta admit, I myself think pips have a limit which is lower than inverted and it has been shown in China vs Sweden in the last century. I'm not sure this couldn't be reconsidered now, though.

Except that Falck isn't some "average Joe of TT". He's an elite level player and at the time this match took place Falck was the best pips player in the world based on World Ranking position. So this match pitted the worlds best double inverted player against the worlds best pips player. The double-inverted player won the match comfortably (4-1). If the worlds best inverted player can beat the worlds best pips player that straightforwardly, its not unreasonable to assume that it is due (at least in part) to the inherent superiority of one playing style over the other?

 

[NextLevel]

To summarize the main points of looping having a ceiling - hitting with pips has much more timing demands than looping with inverted. But just about any style that can bother an opponent can beat that opponent at least once. If the opponent practices against it, usually the issues should lessen. But given the timing demand and the distance of play demands, for athletic players looping has a higher ceiling.

This does not mean hitting cannot be more efficient or that pips players cannot beat inverted players. It's just that the modern offensive looping style is just able to produce more speed and power against a wider range of balls than pips can and this ability to produce power consistently is easier to win world championships with than hitting or chopping or chop blocking etc

The easiest way to see this is that when two players of fairly equal ability practice against each other repeatedly and one uses pips and the other inverted, the inverted player tends to win most of the matches between both opponents even though the pips player may have better or equivalent results against the rest of the world.

A note on Falck and Joo etc. One can easily note that for all such players, their inverted side plays as big a role as their pips side in their success.

Ni Xialan, Ayhika Mukherjee and He Zhi Wen etc are more interesting cases because their inverted play is very limited or non-existent. Two of them are lefties and penholders, things which make shot reading challenging for unfamiliar opponents. Ayhika's win over Sun Yingsha is currently her claim to fame (her doubles work with Surtitha is also important but would not give her a place in this discussion). The fact that these players are unorthodox and defying age with excellent hitting skills in the case of Ni Xialian doesn't mean that they wouldn't struggle against an opponent who was familiar with them enough to take the pips surprises out of the way and then have them deal with a player who knows how to handle their tricks. That's the ceiling of pips, not that good players cannot struggle with things that they are not familiar with.

 

[pingpongpaddy]

inverted more spinny than sp, so has more arc.
Sp allows a punchier style than inverted
Modern Sp is well capable of decent topspin and effective spin serving.
ANTI and LP are capable of some spin reversal effects. which are useful to combo bat players.
I am afraid that the word
Ceiling
in a tt context
is a prententious expression about as useful as "gears" in talking about tt equipment

 

[Lowday20298]

That is an assumption. I play with LP 0X when I get bored playing with double inverted or SP. I like to twiddle when the opponent returns a weak ball to my BH or even if he make a fast hit to my BH. The ball comes back to the opponent fast with lots of top spin instead of slow with back spin. It screws with their mind. I wouldn't twiddle if I had a 'weak' BH.

Of older players tend to play more with LP 0X the main weakness is that these players are older.

It's not about you or me. I've trained against pips and barely lose points against them for example. Pros demolish them.

 

[Brs]

Not sure how much you’ve read through the comments (wouldn’t blame you if the answer was “not a lot!”) 😂, but the ceiling you are talking about isn’t the same as the ceiling I believe myself, and others are referring to.

This isn’t about “pips players won’t reach X ranking because of their pips”, it’s how playing with pips limits your shot options and tactics.

From what I see, pips players overachieve at every ability level.

How many times have we all looked at someone and thought “Christ, how does that player win so many matches” - The answer is often “because they play with pips and their opponents aren’t that great at playing against it”.

BUT…. If that player were to continue playing at the same level, other players (inverted rubbers) would adapt, and proving their ability was on par with the pips player, they would eventually overcome said pips player and never look back.

So yeah, it’s not about pips giving a literal ceiling of how much an amateur can improve (99.999999% will never reach that ceiling), it’s more about the pips being limited against people who are comfortable playing against that style.

Almost none, to answer your question. This post makes sense. If you substitute 'Pips are a constraint on your playing distance.' that's indisputable. If you play SP or LP blocking you must be close, and if you chop you generally have to be far. Double inverted doesn't have this limitation *as a material.* Although most double-inverted players also have a strong preference about playing distance.

Pips isn't really a style. SP hitters and LP blockers are almost polar opposites. Far more different from each other than two double-inverted loopers. Exposure to specific pips styles helps. Some inverted styles match up very well against pimples also. These are such generically true statements about anything in table tennis as to be meaningless. If you are really good at receiving reverse pendulum serves and your opponent lives off that serve, he has troubles.

 

[Gozo Aruna]

I try make simple because Gozo like simple.

Pips is like the hare; huge head-start in the race. Easy-peasy win, rest on laurel.

Double inverted is like the tortoise. It is slow, steep learning curve. But if he persist, he overtakes the hare and wins the race.

 

[ViperTableTennis]

It all

I try make simple because Gozo like simple.

Pips is like the hare; huge head-start in the race. Easy-peasy win, rest on laurel.

Double inverted is like the tortoise. It is slow, steep learning curve. But if he persist, he overtakes the hare and wins the race.

It comes down to physics. The double inverted style, which relies almost exclusively of variations of topspin, is the style that is maximising the advantage of the magnus effect in such a way that you can hit the ball harder and harder and still have it land on the table. Any style that deviates from this primary and almost exclusive reliance on topspin loses (or at least significantly lessens) the advantage that the magnus effect gives.

Imagine a chop that came over the net as fast as a Ma Long loop! Well you're going to have to imagine it, because you'll never see it in real life...physics wouldn't allow it to work; the magnus effect would be pulling the ball away from the table rather than down onto it, and the ball would land up in the bleachers somewhere!

 

[JJ Ng]

With hitting, bad days often become really bad days. Just saying.

I think Mima Ito would agree with you.....

 

[blahness]

Another Feeder won by a pips player haha.

 

[pongfugrasshopper]

Another Feeder won by a pips player haha.

Congratulations to Sreeja Akula on a well deserved win.

And congratulations to Sarah De Nutte for making the finals. Incidentally, Sarah beat her compatriot, Ni Xia Lian, 3-0 in the QF.

 

[NextLevel]

Congratulations to Sreeja Akula on a well deserved win.

And congratulations to Sarah De Nutte for making the finals. Incidentally, Sarah beat her compatriot, Ni Xia Lian, 3-0 in the QF.

Haha. Which partly makes the point of my post (and yours). But calcified agendas are afoot...

 

[Ghostzen]

Another Feeder won by a pips player haha.

Anybody know the rankings of these 2 players?

Fair play if this is another real upset.

If it's a case of better ranked player beats lower ranked player. Isn't it an expected win?.

Edit... Around Top 50 player looks to have beaten top 135 player.. Surely expected win in the final?

Reading results... Sarah De Nutte has a cracking event. Amazing results beating 3 much higher ranked players getting to the final. Wins against ranked 39,59 and 82. Not shabby at all.! Great event for the player. Especially as mentioned taking out world number 59 penhold pips player convincingly 3-0.