Daily Table Tennis Chit Chat

Takkyu_wa_inochi · Jun 15, 2019

Hit the ball with fellow TTDer Vrael today.
I have improved recently while he didn't have much time to practice. We played last week, but thanks to his nasty serves, he still managed to get me.
The same scenario happened today in our first match (after a decent warmup). Then we spent a while practicing serve/receive, and finished the session by a rematch that I won logically this time as I got used to his serves. I needed a decider though as he also got used to my serves (lol) but then i decided to change my serves and serve long only and i clinched the game and match with an 11-4.

My overall level of play was much better in the rematch and I'm quite happy the way I played and i can feel all these little improvements here and there that make me a better player.

yoass · Jun 18, 2019

yoass said:
Footage will do doubt will make me cringe, but it's not edited yet.

It is now. It starts out with my first match. Which does make me cringe, and I haven't even seen the three matches I lost there yet. It's not the sweating like a pig thing, it's so many obvious improvements to make, and so many obvious mistakes to avoid.

yoass · Jun 18, 2019

Watching the footage again, with all the stupid mistakes and the obvious drawback of having that old corpse to lug around, I'm getting a little less harsh vis a vis these matches against twiddlin', messin', pushblockin' LP wizards. That kind of play just makes attackers' errors look clumsy and foolish, even if they're not just that. It's not all bad, I guess.

Takkyu_wa_inochi · Jun 18, 2019

@yoass never easy to play this kind of guy who give you unusual balls.

From what i saw he's not that really good at rallies, so the focus should really to just keep the ball in play, and to play with sound fundamentals, the most important being to stay in movement and move quicker to the ball so you have more time to execute your shot. I think you're taking the high risk shot way too often. Whenever you have the opportunity, its good to try to take the ball a bit earlier (especially against backspin) to gain an advantage instead of taking a big swing and try to hit the ball hard.

Try generally to keep the racket high and after your push, if it comes back with LP then drive it with a forward swing, (not a vertical one), with closed bat angle and 80% power.

yoass · Jun 18, 2019

Takkyu_wa_inochi said:
@yoass never easy to play this kind of guy who give you unusual balls.

From what i saw he's not that really good at rallies, (…)

Well, that player is a national level player over here of the I-pretend-to-be-the-wall type. That's why I'm taking risk, often too much, to prevent him from getting into that groove. I'm not just rushing it, I'm also deliberately slowing down. Bear in mind, I got spotted 14 points in this match; with that kind of lead against a player six, seven levels up (who's prone to be smarter, more consistent, etc.) I chose against the cautious approach. Also: I'm notably poorly equipped for the game of caution and patience.

All your remarks are spot on, of course. Keep the racket up. Shorten strokes. Close that FH gap. Correct that followthrough, both in FH and BH. Give the BH just a bit more breathing room. Now and then, choose a drive over a flat hit as the risk increases. I see all that too...

NextLevel · Jun 18, 2019

yoass said:
Watching the footage again, with all the stupid mistakes and the obvious drawback of having that old corpse to lug around, I'm getting a little less harsh vis a vis these matches against twiddlin', messin', pushblockin' LP wizards. That kind of play just makes attackers' errors look clumsy and foolish, even if they're not just that. It's not all bad, I guess.

Didn't look bad to me. You have a very physical stroke with good quality. The main thing is that you like to smash, but I guess that dates you more than being a flaw since you land a fair amount of them even though you also miss a fair amount of them. We never got a chance to see whether topspin was sufficient given how you played, but in the end, a win is a win.

NextLevel · Jun 18, 2019

yoass said:
Well, that player is a national level player over here of the I-pretend-to-be-the-wall type. That's why I'm taking risk, often too much, to prevent him from getting into that groove. I'm not just rushing it, I'm also deliberately slowing down. Bear in mind, I got spotted 14 points in this match; with that kind of lead against a player six, seven levels up (who's prone to be smarter, more consistent, etc.) I chose against the cautious approach. Also: I'm notably poorly equipped for the game of caution and patience.

All your remarks are spot on, of course. Keep the racket up. Shorten strokes. Close that FH gap. Correct that followthrough, both in FH and BH. Give the BH just a bit more breathing room. Now and then, choose a drive over a flat hit as the risk increases. I see all that too...

Yeah, the handicap was a clue, and I think with the handicap you played perfectly. Your win looks exactly like mine when I play handicap.

yoass · Jun 18, 2019

NextLevel said:
Didn't look bad to me. You have a very physical stroke with good quality. The main thing is that you like to smash, but I guess that dates you more than being a flaw since you land a fair amount of them even though you also miss a fair amount of them. We never got a chance to see whether topspin was sufficient given how you played, but in the end, a win is a win.

Yes, it puts me squarely in the 80s, I know. I'll be checking that footage again. One of my team mates spins everything, and expressed his regret about missing the flat kill in his arsenal; he felt he had a much harder time. Maybe so. Maybe not.

Takkyu_wa_inochi · Jun 18, 2019

ok i'm very sorry, i didn't watch the video seriously enough then.

Even if you play a stronger player, i don't think you should rush too much. Anyway as NL said, a win is a win so congrats.

I think you've got some quite good shots, I saw you drive on both sides. and you know how to finish points, good power. Receive was overall ok to me, sometimes some mistakes on some tricky long serves.

For me footwork, trying to get back in position quickly , get earlier in good position to execute the shot were the things you should work on most. You're not young and you're quite big as well, its not easy I know and many of us find drills boring and not fun...

I will say it again, but against a defender, I personally found out that the key to play well (and to win)
is to always keep moving and bouncing. You will find your own rhythm more easily. Against attacking players when you're a bit skilled at the table blocking you can cover a lot without moving and use the ball speed, against defenders you can't do just that.

NextLevel · Jun 18, 2019

Takkyu_wa_inochi said:
ok i'm very sorry, i didn't watch the video seriously enough then.

Even if you play a stronger player, i don't think you should rush too much. Anyway as NL said, a win is a win so congrats.

I think you've got some quite good shots, I saw you drive on both sides. and you know how to finish points, good power. Receive was overall ok to me, sometimes some mistakes on some tricky long serves.

For me footwork, trying to get back in position quickly , get earlier in good position to execute the shot were the things you should work on most. You're not young and you're quite big as well, its not easy I know and many of us find drills boring and not fun...

I will say it again, but against a defender, I personally found out that the key to play well (and to win)
is to always keep moving and bouncing. You will find your own rhythm more easily. Against attacking players when you're a bit skilled at the table blocking you can cover a lot without moving and use the ball speed, against defenders you can't do just that.

Play handicap with a much better player and try to be consistent and see what happens. Your training hours will never match theirs, so you need to hit winners or fool them enough times to win the match. Yoass didn't rush that much he took the risk that was required to beat the player. Looking at the scores of the second game lets you see the true disparity in levels and if yoass had given the defender time to settle with some consistency, the match would be lost. The smashing was the right strategy and in fact if I had known it was handicap, I wouldn't even have commented on the smashing.

yoass · Jun 21, 2019

Visited my old coach today with a friend, we used to train together with him in our teens. We're nearly four decades down the road from there now.

Still, there are so much things to learn. I focused on footwork, getting my recovery after pivoting in order. It requires a shift in balance to free up the left foot to move in the flow of the movement. I need to shadow stroke that a lot to engrain it; old bad habits are hard to get rid off. Then there was the touch game, and some details on flicking over the table versus a full-swinged spin. Taking position and doing the foundational footwork are key everywhere.

So far, so good! Tonight we're playing the 8th final of the regional cup tournament. The tension rises.

Der_Echte · Jun 21, 2019

Yoass, when you make FH winner shots like you did at 1:08, it would be a riot for you to roll up the sleeve a little or kiss that bicep (that was never used in the shot). You had a lot more success moving him in and out - red shirt could do that and keep it on the table, but you made better plays later in rally doing that. Maybe you knew your spin (light) that you gave him and could read the next ball better.

In the doubles, I was waiting for red shirt to strike his blue shirt partner over the head with an iron bar, dude was way to aggressive on serve receive. Red shirt handles nearly every attack then opponent kill themselves trying to be aggressive.

Doesn't look like blue shirt played with red much in doubles. They are not working together too well. Only later in the match did I see blue shirt making better decisions on the shot. Both of your doubles opponents are better singles players. If red shirt has a partner who stays close to table and plays smart light shots on first ball, allows red short to retrieve or deceive, then blue shirt finish (if the ball comes back) then I could see a red shirt doubles team to be tough. As they played, they gave away too much advantage.

perham · Jun 21, 2019

perham said:
Here’s the match from this week:

https://vimeo.com/343720422

I was a bit tired, so I missed some easy shots just because I wasn’t really thinking. But all in all, not a bad performance. I tried using my pendulum serve a bit more to try to practice getting some different spins with the same motion. Didn’t work as I expected, but well, it takes time.

I updated the training videos thread with new stuff. Check it out:

https://www.tabletennisdaily.com/forum/showthread.php?21273-Perham-s-friendly-match-video

RidTheKid · Jun 21, 2019

Your opponent hardly performed one legal serve. His tosses was way too low almost every time. You should've called him on it. First of all, you're right. Second, pointing it out could get him off his game.

yoass said:
It is now. It starts out with my first match. Which does make me cringe, and I haven't even seen the three matches I lost there yet. It's not the sweating like a pig thing, it's so many obvious improvements to make, and so many obvious mistakes to avoid.

yoass · Jun 22, 2019

Ok, made it through to the quarter finals, after a tight match.

I didn’t play; my foot cramped up during warmups. Just in time to step down and get a replacement in.

When we fell behind initially that made me grit my teeth. Even though we won I’d have wanted to size myself uo against these strong opponents. Better luck next week, hopefully.

Der_Echte · Jun 22, 2019

I didn't want to say anything about the serves, but since nearly EVERYONE in that club is serving like that to each other, so overall, even on advantage.

yoass · Jun 22, 2019

Der_Echte said:
I didn't want to say anything about the serves, but since nearly EVERYONE in that club is serving like that to each other, so overall, even on advantage.

Yes, that's what I think too. Not proud of it, but I'm a true 80s TT child. I don't serve out of my hand and do toss the ball, but clearing away the toss hand afterwards just isn't in my system. I don't think I'd be complaining about even if my own serves were entirely faultless, and don't favor the approach of (or the theory behind) using that to harm an opponent's stride.

Quite the contrary, I find that every attention I let slip towards anything else will break my own focus and flow. So I try to get over disruptions as quickly as I can, and move on playing, regardless of shady serves, aggressive opponent exhortations, edge and net balls, dubious umpire decisions. At the very least I'll own my wins and my losses that way.

RidTheKid · Jun 22, 2019

I consider mental warfare part of the game and it goes much easier. Myself I try not to disrupt at all but nothing wrong with being a stickler for rules, they're in place for a reason. If someone tries to get into my head it's because they need to, or it helps them get into their rhythm. Mostly I see the usage of psyches from players lacking some skill and trying to get me off balance. I take it as a compliment.

yoass said:
Yes, that's what I think too. Not proud of it, but I'm a true 80s TT child. I don't serve out of my hand and do toss the ball, but clearing away the toss hand afterwards just isn't in my system. I don't think I'd be complaining about even if my own serves were entirely faultless, and don't favor the approach of (or the theory behind) using that to harm an opponent's stride.

Quite the contrary, I find that every attention I let slip towards anything else will break my own focus and flow. So I try to get over disruptions as quickly as I can, and move on playing, regardless of shady serves, aggressive opponent exhortations, edge and net balls, dubious umpire decisions. At the very least I'll own my wins and my losses that way.

yoass · Jun 22, 2019

RidTheKid said:
I consider mental warfare part of the game and it goes much easier.

I agree, it's a part. My point being, if engaging in it endangers your own mental tranquility/focus, well, than that may be a too high price to pay. I too take notice of players trying to heckle me to get me out of it, and I just zone out from that rather then engage in it, for that reason. The tough part of that mental part of the game is not to let it get to you, and one of the little tricks for that is to ignore it completely (block it out) entirely at its earliest onsets.

But that gets harder as you counterstrike, and even harder if you consider a preemptive strike strategy of messing with your opponent by hammering on stuff like serve legality, timeliness of getting ready to serve or receive, and so on. At least for me, that's bound to break my concentration more than my opponent's.

Richie · Jun 22, 2019

Since I've been recording quite a lot the last 6 months or so I decided to put together a small compilation. Incidentally I also had some recordings from around the time I started playing which I put in there. Funny the way I saw table tennis back then compared to now. I really had no clue at all.

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