Difference between a 2100 and a professional?

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Good catch !! May be he is not aware of it ... just cutting him some slack ..

Come on, are you kidding me. He is doing it really well, which takes practice, that is why it so effective. It is very unlikely that he perfectly hides his serves just because he is "unaware".
 
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He knows! This guy knows exactly what he is doing.

Anyway, if you look at the rest of what he is doing, you get the idea of what I mean about just seeing stuff really early.
 
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Anyway, if you look at the rest of what he is doing, you get the idea of what I mean about just seeing stuff really early.

Of course, I appreciate his blocking game. I'm just pissed off by all those people who blatantly hide their serve with the free hand.
 
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I understand your frustration Illia , I will complain if I play a match against him. If I am playing for fun I will just take it as a challange and then joke about it later ....
Of course, I appreciate his blocking game. I'm just pissed off by all those people who blatantly hide their serve with the free hand.
 
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Actually, there is a lower level of this guy who lives in my town; lefty penholder, except uses short pips. He was US Over-50 National Champion about 10 years ago or thereabouts, was about 2280 then (definitely not as good as this guy). He is my worst table tennis nightmare. I rarely take games from him (I haven't played him in a few years, but I have no reason to think this would have changed). I once had match point on him at 10-6 in the final game. Naturally I lost.

The TTEdge app helped me appreciate that the lefty advantage is not trivial. I process lefty actions significantly slower than righty on the app. Therefore, I am always behind when playing lefties. At least, I now have a chance to shrink the gap.
 
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Yep. That kind of illustrates it. It's no one thing. It's everything.
 
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That is Dave Fernandez. That is Dave Fernandez, out of shape and after a 10 year break from playing. At his best he was over 2600. And in International play, I've been told that he one time took Schlager to a 7th game. But he did lose. But 10 years off and 80+ pounds heavier, he is probably about 2300-2400 at best here.

And it does show well the difference between 2800 and 2400. (Maybe Waldner was a bit less than 2800 at this point. But, maybe not.)

Here is Waldner vs a 2600 level player: Ernesto Ebuen.

And you can tell Waldner doesn't have to really play hard here.

 
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If you really want to boil it down to ONE single factor, its speed.

Im not talking about the speed of your shots or you taking your shots, the speed im talking about here is the time taken for you to analyse your next shot and then getting in position to take it. The second part is more important here.

Think about it, if you can ALWAYS get to the ball quicker than your opponent (admittedly, that will mean better reaction time, footwork, sense of where the ball is gonna end up after the bounce and all sorts of little things that makes up your game) even when your techniques are only on par with your opponent, you will win any rally even without attacking, just like the 2600 vs 2100 case you stated.
 
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If you really want to boil it down to ONE single factor, its speed.

Im not talking about the speed of your shots or you taking your shots, the speed im talking about here is the time taken for you to analyse your next shot and then getting in position to take it. The second part is more important here.

Think about it, if you can ALWAYS get to the ball quicker than your opponent (admittedly, that will mean better reaction time, footwork, sense of where the ball is gonna end up after the bounce and all sorts of little things that makes up your game) even when your techniques are only on par with your opponent, you will win any rally even without attacking, just like the 2600 vs 2100 case you stated.


There is more to it than Speed as a factor. Here the "thinking" man that comes out of retirement and beats the higher ranked (#45, 2300) "faster" man.

 
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There is more to it than Speed as a factor. Here the "thinking" man that comes out of retirement and beats the higher ranked (#45, 2300) "faster" man.


Except Ho Kwan Kit isnt "faster". If you look closely, there are a number of shots where he scrambles/has to make adjustments to get in position after the ball's already past the net. The most obvious one would be the one where Schlager saved the net shot at 2:16.

Like I said, he might move and have reactions faster than schalger and even have better footwork, but thats not the speed I meant.
 
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Except Ho Kwan Kit isnt "faster". If you look closely, there are a number of shots where he scrambles/has to make adjustments to get in position after the ball's already past the net. The most obvious one would be the one where Schlager saved the net shot at 2:16.

Like I said, he might move and have reactions faster than schalger and even have better footwork, but thats not the speed I meant.

I looked closely. What I saw was a quicker Kit. That doesn't mean Schlager is slow. But Schlager is clearly the chess player at the table, and
it is his strategy and experience that makes up for being slower and keeps him in the game.

A player can have more speed than another. It is not necessarily the one factor that will make him the better player.
 
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I looked closely. What I saw was a quicker Kit. That doesn't mean Schlager is slow. But Schlager is clearly the chess player at the table, and
it is his strategy and experience that makes up for being slower and keeps him in the game.

A player can have more speed than another. It is not necessarily the one factor that will make him the better player.

You still dont get it. Let me break it down real simple for you.

Schlager is obviously PHYSICALLY slower, but due to his "strategies and experience", as you stated, he wouldn't need to move/adjust his position as much as Ho to pull off a good shot/block because he knows exactly what's going to happen next and where the ball will end up. So, with less adjustments needed, schlager can make sure he hit the ball at the optimal timing, and that's the "faster" im talking about here.

Basically, being able to get positioned AND have the time to hit the ball at the optimal timing.

What I said in the previous post meant that Ho either overshot or didnt move enough in the first place and therefore needed to adjust for his position after the ball has went past the net, thus he could only hit the ball at a later than optimal timing resulting in a bad shot/straight up error.

Get it now? The speed i am talking about isn't your physical spped, but its made up of a plethora of different things, be it experience, feel to the ball, strategies, footwork, reaction timing you name it, that will result in you getting to the ball earlier to hit it at a good timing.

I said specifically in the first post that this is the best description one can come up with if hes to boil down all the difference into ONE thing.
 
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There's definitely a level of anticipation that gets high level players ahead of the game. Have you ever been told that you watch the ball with dead feet too much? I have. Which means you are waiting far too long after your opponent's hit to get into position.

Check out this video of Ma Long ... he has a sixth sense after his backhand at 0:08 that JG will forehand cross court and not down the line. Ma moves over to the high probability position but not 100%. Just enough to cover what he thinks will happen but not too far off from the down the line loop if needed.


Sure enough, the FH goes to where he predicted and JG has given ML the optimal counter attack.
 
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I left that cause Wally is a great guy and he makes me laugh a lot. But, um, yeah......I won't put a number on it, but not 2500.

Couldn't agree more, absolutely great guy. Couldn't leave that one hanging though :p
 
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If you really want to boil it down to ONE single factor, its speed.

Im not talking about the speed of your shots or you taking your shots, the speed im talking about here is the time taken for you to analyse your next shot and then getting in position to take it. The second part is more important here.

Think about it, if you can ALWAYS get to the ball quicker than your opponent (admittedly, that will mean better reaction time, footwork, sense of where the ball is gonna end up after the bounce and all sorts of little things that makes up your game) even when your techniques are only on par with your opponent, you will win any rally even without attacking, just like the 2600 vs 2100 case you stated.

I like this.
It's not speed of movement but anticipation which in a way is speed as well.
And also once you know where you need to be knowing how to move your feet effectively to get there.
You don't even need to get to pro level to get better at this.
When I realized it was just about trying to guess where the next shot is going and trying to focus all my attention to that I instantly became much much faster, and the game seemed to be going much slower.
 
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