Daily Table Tennis Chit Chat

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This seems fun so I am going to do it to. So today at 10 pm in my local table tennis club it was kids training (for younger kids starting to play because the club is just officialy opened for few weeks now). I went there to help with it. After their training we got to play. We are honored to have a croatian paraolimpic champion being a president of our club. He is in whelechair and he plays relly great.

He brought me his friends old to try because it has xiom vega asia rubber on one side and next week my vega x rubbers are coming (can not wait to get those). Vega asia is very fast, it took me some time to get the angle correct but it is a good rubber. We and the other older kids/people played for about an hour and a half.

At 7 am we played again because some of the guys couldnt come before. I have gone again of course although I was very tired because between the table tennis sesions i went to play handball with friends, but I can never get enough of table tennis so... :D I had a relly good time today and that is it, sorry for bad grammar.
 
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A team mate got in the way of my top spin. The racket flew out of my hand and left a cut in my middle finger. Very uncomfortable to play until it heals.

This happened to me once when I was at a club in Westchester. I was warming up at a tournament and someone walked into my backswing without alerting me. It is very annoying but also says something about the stiffness of the blade. Mine was a Stratus Powerwood. O don't think this kind of thing happens with carbon blades.
 
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This seems fun so I am going to do it to. So today at 10 pm in my local table tennis club it was kids training (for younger kids starting to play because the club is just officialy opened for few weeks now). I went there to help with it. After their training we got to play. We are honored to have a croatian paraolimpic champion being a president of our club. He is in whelechair and he plays relly great.

He brought me his friends old to try because it has xiom vega asia rubber on one side and next week my vega x rubbers are coming (can not wait to get those). Vega asia is very fast, it took me some time to get the angle correct but it is a good rubber. We and the other older kids/people played for about an hour and a half.

At 7 am we played again because some of the guys couldnt come before. I have gone again of course although I was very tired because between the table tennis sesions i went to play handball with friends, but I can never get enough of table tennis so... :D I had a relly good time today and that is it, sorry for bad grammar.

MARKO,

DUDE, if you EVER regret your "Bad" English grammar, I will need to pay you a Goon Squad visit. If the ones teaching you English hold you to a very high standard and discipline you severely, I would both kiss and punch them in the mouth. Kiss for loving you and holding you accountable to high standards, and punch for an unrealistic standard. Only a few achieve very high standards and it takes a lot of time. None of us (OK, very damn few - I certainly had to struggle - and I speak 4) are totally naturals at this. I am probably one of the worst, at least at the beginning of the process. I would make your teachers want to quit their profession I was such a failure, but now, they would have a little satisfaction.

It is NOT an easy task to WRITE coherently and in a natural manner in written form in another language. In particular, AMERICANS are the ones who consistently criticize anything less than perfection in English speaking, but are the absolute WORST when it comes to functioning in another language in a region outside their comfort zone.

It takes a LOT of SUSTAINED EFFORT and FREQUENT FAILURE to develop any kind of command of a second language. Learning TT has many similar milestones.

Again, you should NEVER feel shame about your English, unless you had 30 years training... and even then, it would be a very respectful thing someone stayed with it that long, despite failure.

Dude, your English is easily serviceable and has flavor. Keep at it.
 
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Hi guys
Today was the first tournament of 2020 for me.

Doubles
I first played doubles with my buddy. We had an easy first match, we were supposed to lose the 2nd one to a much stronger pair (veteran short pips penholder+ young guy). But I've trained a lot to receive against serves to my short FH recently and it paid off huge today, as i really made a lot of quality pushes fast, deep and with underspin to the wide FH, or "stop" near the net, which earned us a lot of points. Add in some good topspin play and blocks and my (lesser-rated) teammate playing steadily well, we had a very unexpected head start 11-5 11-5 !

Thats when our opponents started shifting from serving underspin to no-spin + topspin mainly. I needed a bit more than half a set to adapt, but it took more for my buddy. we got trashed in 3rd and 4th game. but we managed to play good again in the 5th taking the better start 2-0, and we were ahead until 6-6. Alas, my buddy couldn't handle the pressure in receive, and it was difficult for me to change the balance. 7-11 loss, really bad...

Singles
I won easily my first match as expected 3-0. The second one was against a young attacking penholder about the same level. I played several times in training matches and actually never won once, but it was always pleasant games, and i've taken a few sets of him. Given I've managed to win a few guys the first time we played in tournaments that i had never beaten before, i was rather confident going into the match and I made the better start and got the 1st game 11-9 playing good attacking TT. I had some troubles in receive game but he was making a few mistakes as well. In the 2nd he got a good lead 9-5, but i manage to come back to 9-9. Then he finished with 2 good serves. In the 3rd i was always 2-3 points behind and lost 8 or 9 (can't remember)

In the 4th i took a bad start making some stupid mistakes (not taking enough time to think and late in coming back after serving). I think I was down 4-8. I didn't give up and took time between points to engineer a come back 10-9 for me, but he had the serve. long lot of side+underspin to my BH, i missed this one again.
then i did the same serve that earnt me 2 points just before, but i didn't think enough and I was a bit late so my 3rd ball attack went out. Then he made a good point and it was over for me...

Frustrating because i think i could win this match. I think it was a pleasant one with many good points and winners from both sides. In the end, I think the match was won by him because of a few details.

https://youtu.be/5_ReUjNcdcY

some idiot bumped into the camera halfway into the match and didn't care to put it back in the right position. I was so focused I didn't check the camera between sets...I'm quite pissed off because i would have liked to see it all there were a lot of good rallies
 
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This one was a WSC, it had a previous neck crack because someone sit in the chair where I put it while removing my jacket and didn't notice the blade was there. I fixed the crack but I guess it was written in the stars that the blade would brake. It was a carbon blade but the carbon layer is very thin.

But the thing is, the guy never offered to pay for the blade. It was kind of his fault, I was in my playing space. I make blades so it's not a big problem for me, and he did already bought two blades from me but I think he should have at least offered to pay for it. I would have declined of course.

This happened to me once when I was at a club in Westchester. I was warming up at a tournament and someone walked into my backswing without alerting me. It is very annoying but also says something about the stiffness of the blade. Mine was a Stratus Powerwood. O don't think this kind of thing happens with carbon blades.
 
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MARKO,

DUDE, if you EVER regret your "Bad" English grammar, I will need to pay you a Goon Squad visit. If the ones teaching you English hold you to a very high standard and discipline you severely, I would both kiss and punch them in the mouth. Kiss for loving you and holding you accountable to high standards, and punch for an unrealistic standard. Only a few achieve very high standards and it takes a lot of time. None of us (OK, very damn few - I certainly had to struggle - and I speak 4) are totally naturals at this. I am probably one of the worst, at least at the beginning of the process. I would make your teachers want to quit their profession I was such a failure, but now, they would have a little satisfaction.

It is NOT an easy task to WRITE coherently and in a natural manner in written form in another language. In particular, AMERICANS are the ones who consistently criticize anything less than perfection in English speaking, but are the absolute WORST when it comes to functioning in another language in a region outside their comfort zone.

It takes a LOT of SUSTAINED EFFORT and FREQUENT FAILURE to develop any kind of command of a second language. Learning TT has many similar milestones.

Again, you should NEVER feel shame about your English, unless you had 30 years training... and even then, it would be a very respectful thing someone stayed with it that long, despite failure.

Dude, your English is easily serviceable and has flavor. Keep at it.

I know my english is not bad, but I have seen people get shamed for it so I dont want that to heppen that is why I write that on most of my posts. I will stop doing that. But my teacher doesnt have very high standard at all, I relly dont like her and I dont even try to be activ in classes and I have an A, it is just that I love reading this forum and I dont want to get emberesed with my posts. Thank you for your advice.
 
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We all have the drive to be better. Sure some people are (wrongly) shaming you for your English.

Grades in School have almost ZERO relation to being able to function in the language. I have a mental deficiency in that I do not care about my grade (well, I do, but it isn't number one priority). I hold the process of doing the things that contribute to being able to function in the language the most important.

What good is that someone spends all that time, energy, and brain cells taking a language class, but cannot use it in life? That is a terrible waste in my view. Learning with a priority to function will obviously have one fail... a LOT... but that failure and the process is important.

In French class, it was possible to get a score above 100 on tests. The teacher always gave some kind of extra credit questions. Behind me in seating, there were two girls, one white skin and one Asian who were so driven to make the highest possible score well over 100. They would do extra study just to do well on the test. They both had an average of over 106. I was just barely getting by with a 92, near the minimum for an A.

Both of these girls would immediately "forget" anything from the previous month. They did great on the test, but would starve if they had to do a life chore in the language, like ask for and receive directions or order food. Whenever there was a participation credit on the line and the teacher asked the small group with those two and I in the same group a question from earlier lessons, the girls both panicked and asked me. They knew I never forgot anything. Any question I got wrong on a test was burned in my memory and I was always inclined to try using what I learned in any possible way. That takes time, but you get solid and useful.

I see the need to objectively measure performance. There has to be a way to rank people for consideration of university and what not. I get that. However, standardized written tests are not too good of a tool to measure knowledge, functionality, and critical thinking. Subjective judgment is required to discern this and it is impossible to quantify that.

Parents, particularly Asian parents are absolutely cruel hard-driving task masters over their kids and grades to an extreme that is insanity. There are very good reasons why this is so - it is a means to separate from the crowd and achieve opportunities. Unfortunately, there is no stopping the syndrome. The kids are caught up in it and it is perform the parents/school way or perish.

It is good that you do not have this kind of pressure and are self-motivated to achieve on your own terms and your own pace to your own standards without fear of this kind of thing.
 
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We all have the drive to be better. Sure some people are (wrongly) shaming you for your English.

Grades in School have almost ZERO relation to being able to function in the language. I have a mental deficiency in that I do not care about my grade (well, I do, but it isn't number one priority). I hold the process of doing the things that contribute to being able to function in the language the most important.

What good is that someone spends all that time, energy, and brain cells taking a language class, but cannot use it in life? That is a terrible waste in my view. Learning with a priority to function will obviously have one fail... a LOT... but that failure and the process is important.

In French class, it was possible to get a score above 100 on tests. The teacher always gave some kind of extra credit questions. Behind me in seating, there were two girls, one white skin and one Asian who were so driven to make the highest possible score well over 100. They would do extra study just to do well on the test. They both had an average of over 106. I was just barely getting by with a 92, near the minimum for an A.

Both of these girls would immediately "forget" anything from the previous month. They did great on the test, but would starve if they had to do a life chore in the language, like ask for and receive directions or order food. Whenever there was a participation credit on the line and the teacher asked the small group with those two and I in the same group a question from earlier lessons, the girls both panicked and asked me. They knew I never forgot anything. Any question I got wrong on a test was burned in my memory and I was always inclined to try using what I learned in any possible way. That takes time, but you get solid and useful.

I see the need to objectively measure performance. There has to be a way to rank people for consideration of university and what not. I get that. However, standardized written tests are not too good of a tool to measure knowledge, functionality, and critical thinking. Subjective judgment is required to discern this and it is impossible to quantify that.

Parents, particularly Asian parents are absolutely cruel hard-driving task masters over their kids and grades to an extreme that is insanity. There are very good reasons why this is so - it is a means to separate from the crowd and achieve opportunities. Unfortunately, there is no stopping the syndrome. The kids are caught up in it and it is perform the parents/school way or perish.

It is good that you do not have this kind of pressure and are self-motivated to achieve on your own terms and your own pace to your own standards without fear of this kind of thing.

I agree, there is a girl in my class that study so hard, she does well but our geography teacher usually asks questions that you just need to think about and connect with others, she baraly gets B in those, but in most tests and stuff she does well.

I dont relly study a lot, this weekend I havent studied at all, I have only practise maths for an hour because I have a test tommorow. The only thing I relly have to study is germany, I learned english by watching movies, but I suck at talking german and that is the only subject I forget what I learn. Due to me having straith A s my parents push me to have A from that too. I was a big nerd in 5th grade and beggining of 6th. Now I am 8th grade and my parents get mad when I get 2 B s in a row, that is just too much. I get stressed only when they say that they will forbit table tennis :D
 
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Hi guys
Today was the first tournament of 2020 for me.

Doubles
I first played doubles with my buddy. We had an easy first match, we were supposed to lose the 2nd one to a much stronger pair (veteran short pips penholder+ young guy). But I've trained a lot to receive against serves to my short FH recently and it paid off huge today, as i really made a lot of quality pushes fast, deep and with underspin to the wide FH, or "stop" near the net, which earned us a lot of points. Add in some good topspin play and blocks and my (lesser-rated) teammate playing steadily well, we had a very unexpected head start 11-5 11-5 !

Thats when our opponents started shifting from serving underspin to no-spin + topspin mainly. I needed a bit more than half a set to adapt, but it took more for my buddy. we got trashed in 3rd and 4th game. but we managed to play good again in the 5th taking the better start 2-0, and we were ahead until 6-6. Alas, my buddy couldn't handle the pressure in receive, and it was difficult for me to change the balance. 7-11 loss, really bad...

Singles
I won easily my first match as expected 3-0. The second one was against a young attacking penholder about the same level. I played several times in training matches and actually never won once, but it was always pleasant games, and i've taken a few sets of him. Given I've managed to win a few guys the first time we played in tournaments that i had never beaten before, i was rather confident going into the match and I made the better start and got the 1st game 11-9 playing good attacking TT. I had some troubles in receive game but he was making a few mistakes as well. In the 2nd he got a good lead 9-5, but i manage to come back to 9-9. Then he finished with 2 good serves. In the 3rd i was always 2-3 points behind and lost 8 or 9 (can't remember)

In the 4th i took a bad start making some stupid mistakes (not taking enough time to think and late in coming back after serving). I think I was down 4-8. I didn't give up and took time between points to engineer a come back 10-9 for me, but he had the serve. long lot of side+underspin to my BH, i missed this one again.
then i did the same serve that earnt me 2 points just before, but i didn't think enough and I was a bit late so my 3rd ball attack went out. Then he made a good point and it was over for me...

Frustrating because i think i could win this match. I think it was a pleasant one with many good points and winners from both sides. In the end, I think the match was won by him because of a few details.

https://youtu.be/5_ReUjNcdcY

some idiot bumped into the camera halfway into the match and didn't care to put it back in the right position. I was so focused I didn't check the camera between sets...I'm quite pissed off because i would have liked to see it all there were a lot of good rallies


I definitely think you could have won. IMO, your backhand and service receive need work. The receive, all I would say is use more sidespin and variation, too much straightforward pushing. Also let a couple of serves double bounce to test if the serve are really short, I think you took a few too early. On the backhand, the stroke is often too small, I think you should practice a bigger one as well as the one you currently use. Maybe bigger use of the body to get more power, the arm motion doesn't need to be much bigger. Your forehand/footwork is still your strength and it has improved a lot.
 
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I definitely think you could have won. IMO, your backhand and service receive need work. The receive, all I would say is use more sidespin and variation, too much straightforward pushing. Also let a couple of serves double bounce to test if the serve are really short, I think you took a few too early. On the backhand, the stroke is often too small, I think you should practice a bigger one as well as the one you currently use. Maybe bigger use of the body to get more power, the arm motion doesn't need to be much bigger. Your forehand/footwork is still your strength and it has improved a lot.

Thanks NL for the comment.
Actually I thought myself I could win this match, and believed so until the last point, despite having always lost to this guy. We never met in tournaments but had a few training matches together where i got a few sets. I had a big "blackhole" at the beginning of the 4th set (until 1-5) where i was tired both physically and mentally which cost me the match ultimately.

TBH i think my FH worked better than normal yesterday, but alas my receive and BH worked not as good as usual.
Normally for these serves to my BH, i usually manage to loop them, but i missed a few ones in the first set (including the first point where he aced me, and match point which i received bad) and it affected my confidence. I tried again during the match but missing to catch the ball. I had a lot of trouble with the heavy side spin (+ underspin) which curved the ball in the later stage of the trajectory. I think i got unnecessarily nervous here. When he served to my FH, i misread the spin for underspin often while it was no spin or topspin.

As you said, I was back into my antics and often didn't try to look at the impact, stupidly committing to some receive before seeing the impact. The ball was no-spin to my FH and perhaps maybe even long, and i would try to "stop" them as if it was underspin. I made also some technical mistakes trying to receive short to his FH when he served short to my BH which is very difficult to do without popping the ball up; instead of aiming the other side of the table.
 
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Thanks NL for the comment.
Actually I thought myself I could win this match, and believed so until the last point, despite having always lost to this guy. We never met in tournaments but had a few training matches together where i got a few sets. I had a big "blackhole" at the beginning of the 4th set (until 1-5) where i was tired both physically and mentally which cost me the match ultimately.

TBH i think my FH worked better than normal yesterday, but alas my receive and BH worked not as good as usual.
Normally for these serves to my BH, i usually manage to loop them, but i missed a few ones in the first set (including the first point where he aced me, and match point which i received bad) and it affected my confidence. I tried again during the match but missing to catch the ball. I had a lot of trouble with the heavy side spin (+ underspin) which curved the ball in the later stage of the trajectory. I think i got unnecessarily nervous here. When he served to my FH, i misread the spin for underspin often while it was no spin or topspin.

As you said, I was back into my antics and often didn't try to look at the impact, stupidly committing to some receive before seeing the impact. The ball was no-spin to my FH and perhaps maybe even long, and i would try to "stop" them as if it was underspin. I made also some technical mistakes trying to receive short to his FH when he served short to my BH which is very difficult to do without popping the ball up; instead of aiming the other side of the table.

It is just my opinion, but one of the common skills that got lost after the hidden service era was how to take the ball late when you are not sure what is on it. I find that the early return serve approach is taught but never the late return approach to safely get the ball on the table with a little quality and just play the point out. I think if you had waited longer and sideswiped many of those balls when the spin revealed itself, you would have had more quality returns. My opinion though.
 
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@NL i think you are totally right. I've been told so as well by my coaches or senior teammates. I need to change some bad habits.

At least you can see me pushing much more than usual on the BH side because I was aware that I wasn't good at looping this day [but alas i still insisted at critical moments]. But when the ball came to the FH side i rushed too much while not being sure / aware of the incoming spin.
 
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@NL i think you are totally right. I've been told so as well by my coaches or senior teammates. I need to change some bad habits.

At least you can see me pushing much more than usual on the BH side because I was aware that I wasn't good at looping this day [but alas i still insisted at critical moments]. But when the ball came to the FH side i rushed too much while not being sure / aware of the incoming spin.


I think you just need to go for your backhand. You were swinging too tentatively. I was going to criticize the technique but I saw at least two backhands that showed you know what to do, you just didn't finish the stroke most of the time, you kept stopping when you hit the ball. Sometimes you don't activate the elbow, you need to focus on that and I think if you go for it, it will happen more consistently. It is why your backhand often looks like a block even when you intend to do more.
 
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I changed main blade to Tibhar Akkad yesterday, plan on using this for a few months for my normal reasons of getting a bit more consistency in my game.

Today is Day 2 (I goofed off with it a couple hrs yesterday). I played league for first time in months.

I won vs #1 (I never win vs that dude) and #3 (He has won 8 of last 10 vs me) on table 1 and lost 2 matches (vs Scoobie Doo and another player capable like me in the 5th)

We can just say I was lucky. We can analyze how much sleep Der_Echte gets Sunday night and how well he performs (or not) in league and make a chart. I had 7 hrs sleep Sun night and that counted for something, even if my hips and calves are wasted right now.
 
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So I am now testing T05 H 1.9mm on FH and BH. In the honeymoon period, it is beautiful. It actually takes advantage of my power because the ball is coming off so fast with low trajectories and deceptive spin that people now have to really work to get to the ball. And the thinner sponge fits my style much better. In fact people hear the wood more often now so they can't tell whether I am spinning or not. MY loop drive and smashing game is far more confident with harder sponge. I hit a couple of balls so hard yesterday on 3rd ball (and they were not high balls either) and I haven't done that in forever because I can't trust my current softer sponge to hold the ball. Pushes are better, and blocks are different. I still hate Butterfly prices, but I have to accept that if I want to improve, I have to squeeze every 2% out of my game.

T05H is the first Butterfly rubber that felt to me like a regular rubber that I can use. I just have to see how durable it is and whether I do not explode my shoulder hitting the ball as hard as I can, which this rubber tempts me to do (it has a nice slow spin gear as well to be fair, though not the level of 05 regular). IT will be interesting to see what happens when my opponents adapt to my new speed/power level.
 
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So I am now testing T05 H 1.9mm on FH and BH. In the honeymoon period, it is beautiful. It actually takes advantage of my power because the ball is coming off so fast with low trajectories and deceptive spin that people now have to really work to get to the ball. And the thinner sponge fits my style much better. In fact people hear the wood more often now so they can't tell whether I am spinning or not. MY loop drive and smashing game is far more confident with harder sponge. I hit a couple of balls so hard yesterday on 3rd ball (and they were not high balls either) and I haven't done that in forever because I can't trust my current softer sponge to hold the ball. Pushes are better, and blocks are different. I still hate Butterfly prices, but I have to accept that if I want to improve, I have to squeeze every 2% out of my game.

T05H is the first Butterfly rubber that felt to me like a regular rubber that I can use. I just have to see how durable it is and whether I do not explode my shoulder hitting the ball as hard as I can, which this rubber tempts me to do (it has a nice slow spin gear as well to be fair, though not the level of 05 regular). IT will be interesting to see what happens when my opponents adapt to my new speed/power level.

Sounds good. I feel that so hard of a sponge would be difficult for you If you have trouble moving? Do net get much help from the sponge and less arc so really need to move well, come correct to the ball and Do a correct stroke. But If you play Alot of block and counterlooop the hard sponge Will proably shoot the ball back fast to the opponent.
 
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