Daily Table Tennis Chit Chat

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A few months ago, after getting used to Tensor rubbers, I hit with my old Avalox P700 blade which had a DHS H3 on. Back then, all my shots were off. I gave up on it after 2 minutes. Last night I decided to try again after getting pretty comfortable with my strokes with the tensor rubbers.

Wow! For whatever reason, I was able to hit with it decently. Not like a few months ago. pretty bizarre. Strangely also was when hitting FH to FH, my partner mishits and ball goes to my BH, and i go with a RPB motion... the strange part is, my TPB punch is still hardwired into my muscle memory AND I have no rubber on the backside!! LOL

Last night's test drive with the Avalox may be the voodoo good luck charm I inscribed/imbued onto the blade with is finally working!

avalox.jpg

** Chinese saying that translate to "Never miss!" but literally translates to 100 attempts, 100 successes.

LOL at me!

EDIT: I'm not a EJ, per se, it's more like I'm trying different blades and rubbers to find which i'm comfortable with . Last night I tried out XIOM and Big Dipper rubber and seem to hit ok with them. Will be trying these out shortly on my Avalox.
 
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went to a mini (chess-like) tournament (between the 'students' of a TT school). everybody had 4 matches/rounds in total.

played first to a younger guy i never played before against. it was easier than I expected, a 3-0 sweep. Although his balls were spinny, he wasn't agressive enough, and i destroyed him with little problem.

quickly switched to the 2nd guy, i played once before (3-1) with some little problems, but today, i was totally dominating, he was making a lot of mistake and I made little errors in attack and receive, it was an easy 3-0 win.

Those 2 matches, i played calmly with less rush than usual, so less mistakes and that was enough to win easily.

Then i was the referee for another match before playing the 3rd guy, the strongest guy in the tournament, but I never saw him play before. Well my body cooled off, and I lost my focus and determination while sitting and refereeing, when back at the table, i didn't understand what was happening to me, before i knew it, i lost the 1st set -2, started to lose my calm and get extra nervous, in the end it was pretty comical -3, and -2 to finish it. I think thats the only the second time in many years ive been beaten so bad, and the guy sure was better than me, but its impossible to lose like this normally. It was really a disaster.

what was even more strange, is that i played immediately my 4th match against a veteran, not so strong, but I managed to lose to him 1-3 last time, he's got good control and short pips. This time, tbh, he felt a bit tired, and i won easily 3-0. Only in the 3rd set, he managed to get a lead 10-7 ? 10-8 ? out of my boredom, but I managed to close the game in the 3rd set. the quality in that match was so different than a few minutes ago !!!

Because we finished early, i had a rematch (best of 3) with the 2nd guy, it was 2-0 easily again. and then a rematch with the guy who beated me. That time, i played normally and agressive from the start, and the score was more normal -7 +11 -3 (1-2 loss). I played much better and deserved my set, he didn't offer it to me. What bothered me most against him is that 1) he had one unusual receive on his short BH side (sidespin push) that fooled me a few times, 2) i was unable to deal with serve short to my FH, all my flicks went in the net and my short receive was weak 3) my serves were weak, it gave him easy receives and it made me difficult to attack the 3rd ball consistently.

When i was thinking in priority to get ready for the next ball instead of trying hard too much to hit, the rallies were even. Serve/receive was then the key but he was the better player for sure. I feel i need to play matches against (unknown) opponents of this level more often. Deal with their spin, variation, serve/receive, be ready for longer rallies...

Anyway its a better outing than recent ones so i'm happy with it despite the ridiculous 3rd match. finished 2nd out of 9.
 
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went to a mini (chess-like) tournament (between the 'students' of a TT school). everybody had 4 matches/rounds in total.

played first to a younger guy i never played before against. it was easier than I expected, a 3-0 sweep. Although his balls were spinny, he wasn't agressive enough, and i destroyed him with little problem.

quickly switched to the 2nd guy, i played once before (3-1) with some little problems, but today, i was totally dominating, he was making a lot of mistake and I made little errors in attack and receive, it was an easy 3-0 win.

Those 2 matches, i played calmly with less rush than usual, so less mistakes and that was enough to win easily.

Then i was the referee for another match before playing the 3rd guy, the strongest guy in the tournament, but I never saw him play before. Well my body cooled off, and I lost my focus and determination while sitting and refereeing, when back at the table, i didn't understand what was happening to me, before i knew it, i lost the 1st set -2, started to lose my calm and get extra nervous, in the end it was pretty comical -3, and -2 to finish it. I think thats the only the second time in many years ive been beaten so bad, and the guy sure was better than me, but its impossible to lose like this normally. It was really a disaster.

what was even more strange, is that i played immediately my 4th match against a veteran, not so strong, but I managed to lose to him 1-3 last time, he's got good control and short pips. This time, tbh, he felt a bit tired, and i won easily 3-0. Only in the 3rd set, he managed to get a lead 10-7 ? 10-8 ? out of my boredom, but I managed to close the game in the 3rd set. the quality in that match was so different than a few minutes ago !!!

Because we finished early, i had a rematch (best of 3) with the 2nd guy, it was 2-0 easily again. and then a rematch with the guy who beated me. That time, i played normally and agressive from the start, and the score was more normal -7 +11 -3 (1-2 loss). I played much better and deserved my set, he didn't offer it to me. What bothered me most against him is that 1) he had one unusual receive on his short BH side (sidespin push) that fooled me a few times, 2) i was unable to deal with serve short to my FH, all my flicks went in the net and my short receive was weak 3) my serves were weak, it gave him easy receives and it made me difficult to attack the 3rd ball consistently.

When i was thinking in priority to get ready for the next ball instead of trying hard too much to hit, the rallies were even. Serve/receive was then the key but he was the better player for sure. I feel i need to play matches against (unknown) opponents of this level more often. Deal with their spin, variation, serve/receive, be ready for longer rallies...

Anyway its a better outing than recent ones so i'm happy with it despite the ridiculous 3rd match. finished 2nd out of 9.

Sir,

You didn't get the overall win, but against players you should beat, you beat soundly. When anyone is cooled off, it is tough to warm up again in the middle of the tournament day sometimes. Good you played well in the rematch compared to the first time of the day.

CONGRATULATIONS!
 
Update.

This is the longest I've strayed form LP chopping. I still use my normal LP/Inverted setup for league (I need to have a minimum level of play there). I have toyed with attacking setups (Viscaria/Offensive S) and I have played with SPs and MPs (802/Hammond FA/Hexer Pips/388C-1). But of all the setups, the one that affords me the best potential is my double inverted chopping rig. I have been playing most successfully with my Defplay/Reflectoid 1.5mm combo. The forehand is unsettled, but I'll probably keep the Omega IV 2.0mm. Currently I have satoshi aida's rubber Mark V HPS, and it's a bit strange, but super effective at times. I may put both Red/Black Mark V HPS rubbers on another defplay and give that some time to see if I like it. But fast inverted on the BH requires a huge technique change and Reflectoid is super forgiving, dampening, and you can really swing for the fences on chops. Reflectoid is not as spinny though, but surprisingly good on offense.

My opponents all seem to like my game as a double inverted chopper, as my tactics are similar, effective (because their ingrained), but I have the added threat of my best offensive strokes on my backhand.

The big difference I notice on defense as a double inverted modern defender, is that the distancing is a bit different, as are the strokes possible (for me) to execute relative to my distance for the table. With LPs, if I get a fast return sent to my BH as I am backing up, when I'm in the mid-distance no man's land, I do sort of a chop block...with inverted, it's easier to fish/lob/loop on the backhand rather than chop. So, sometimes, based on my footwork and my opponent, I play more allround/retriever.

Also, it's a lot easier to throw in 3rd ball serve and attacks. With LPs, I didn't like doing that as much, because if I got a weak ball to the LPs in return, rather than attacking it, I typically would chop it...and they opponent would get a week ball in return to attack. Now that I have inverted on the back, I have the choice to attack with either wing.

So far so good. Even the owner of my club, who is typically very stoic and short on compliments, seem to prefer my game this way. he's a short pips user and usually kills me, but we played very close. I also beat a one of my teammates (a junior) who is very athletic looper. He seemed confounded by the inverted chopping on the BH. It has far more spin in the first 2 chops than LP, and with adequate wrist, those all got netted. Conversely, taking off spin was equally as effective.

My practice partner beat me, but our games were close for the most part. He was pretty tired in his defense... I'm curious as to his feedback.

Now the bad. I beat a lower level guy I always cream, but then lost to him in a second match. Granted, I was forcing myself to try some new serves, and working on my BH chopping technique (trying to lengthen it and take the ball lower), but still.

All in all, just another day in the world of TT, ups and downs...just as I had with LP. But I am truly liking this style, and I think it will stick this time. As a result, I have many blades and pips to sell and trade, so I'll post those soon.
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Now the bad. I beat a lower level guy I always cream, but then lost to him in a second match. Granted, I was forcing myself to try some new serves, and working on my BH chopping technique (trying to lengthen it and take the ball lower), but still.

Nice.

I wouldn't worry about the loss when you were experimenting. That's what practice is for. If you have someone to practice with and feed you those type of balls over & over to practice, great. Then there are other players who just want to play matches. While this is good for testing yourself, I don't particularly like trying new things too much in matches. Because if I lose, I walk away feeling like you did.

Yeah while by & large I'm trying to either power loop or soft loop anything off the table, I am trying to improve my chop game for the rare changeup. Never know when you might run into a person who simply hates backspin. So vs those people it's free points. Anyways, chopping in inverted is fun. I wouldn't want to do it full time because as we know it's hard to keep the ball low vs quality loops but boy can you load up the spin on those things. I like mixing in the normal chop and the almost pure side chop for variation. That ball really can kick off their bounce on those. Have you tried that? Give it a go sometimes. It's fun. :)
 
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If you want to play a lower rated player for fun and table time is not an issue, challenge them to a best of 9 so you really have time to experiment. I used to play first to 30 games matches (best of 59, though realistically it was whether the opponent could win one or more games through my peaks and troughs that was of interest) with lower rated players when I had more time space and energy.
 
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Right now I am going through nostalgia lane and remembering all the rubbers I used to use in the last 3 years but which I gave up on for one reason or another to see which ones I should revisit given what I am trying to do with my game. I like MX-S but there is a discontinuity problem I experience that makes it less fulfilling for me than it should be. This is what most players complain about when they call it low throw - they wish they could flat drive with more arc and don't like the demand to loop and struggle to find the right arc when out of position.

My alternative was Omega V Asia, which I gave up on because the rubber required effort and the spin wasn't quite there. But recently, a forum member has made a big deal out of the existence of the Dynamic Friction technology of Xiom and that Omega V Asia was rebuilt to incorporate this technology and that this technology makes the rubber spinnier. I initially dismissed this but of course an EJ never truly dismisses anything... I did go back and look at when I played with OVA and when the DF tech was advertised with it and I realized I played with OVA before this tech was advertised. Okay so let's see...

I ordered a couple of OVA sheets. I had no blades I was willing to take MX-S off so I put it on a True Carbon I had.

The first thing that you need to know about OVA DF is that the dwell time is ridiculous. I mean stupidly ridiculous. Almost like tacky rubber. You feel as if you can go grab lunch while looping and come back and the ball is still on your blade. And the throw and kick is just like Tenergy 05, May be a little lower on the throw but similar on the kick. During the practice my blocker was complaining about how the ball kept jumping. Don't get it twisted, my technique is what is doing this and I don't think he fully adjusted from my old MX-S to my OVA trajectory but still it was nice to hear. Playing a March against another player he said something I haven't heard in a while. He said my loops just seem to do something that he can't explain. Since he is 1500 his statements remind me of how I used to feel when people looped with Tenergy 05 against me when I was 1500. The ball just seemed to do something at the end that other rubbers didn't do.

I am now sidespin looping a lot again. I haven't started playing faster players again but it will be interesting to see the impact. I will try to get video from practice today. I will test this on my main blades as the True Carbon is too fast. I have tried OVA on Calix 2 and liked it.

It's slower than some people would like but I don't know why it doesn't get enough mention when people speak about T05 competitors at the usual level.
 
Nice.

I wouldn't worry about the loss when you were experimenting. That's what practice is for. If you have someone to practice with and feed you those type of balls over & over to practice, great. Then there are other players who just want to play matches. While this is good for testing yourself, I don't particularly like trying new things too much in matches. Because if I lose, I walk away feeling like you did.

Yeah while by & large I'm trying to either power loop or soft loop anything off the table, I am trying to improve my chop game for the rare changeup. Never know when you might run into a person who simply hates backspin. So vs those people it's free points. Anyways, chopping in inverted is fun. I wouldn't want to do it full time because as we know it's hard to keep the ball low vs quality loops but boy can you load up the spin on those things. I like mixing in the normal chop and the almost pure side chop for variation. That ball really can kick off their bounce on those. Have you tried that? Give it a go sometimes. It's fun. :)
Thanks!

side spin chop is one of my bread and butter strokes. But you have to pick your opponent carefully, because sometimes it helps certain people. I have finally given up the idea that inverted is somehow harder vs quality loops, because for me it's more intuitive. Especially for my level. But vs. Bojun the coach (2300-2400) I can more easily chop his loops with inverted on the FH, better than I can with LP on the BH. There is something in the technique that I am more comfortable with, not sure what. On the BH, i obviously am not as proficient because I've been doing inverted chopping on that wing for a much shorter time. But logically, if it's possible on the FH, it's possible on the BH, just have to get used to it. And the reflectoid helps....the HPS does not (haha).

but the trade offs in attacking are so worth it, and eventually I'll get there. My goal, however, is to stay at the table more, like Aida or Larry Abass, if you've ever seen those guys play. too bad I have 1/10th (1/100th?) the FH loops that they do.
 
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If you want to play a lower rated player for fun and table time is not an issue, challenge them to a best of 9 so you really have time to experiment. I used to play first to 30 games matches (best of 59, though realistically it was whether the opponent could win one or more games through my peaks and troughs that was of interest) with lower rated players when I had more time space and energy.
that's a good idea. Kind of happened organically, during our match. I killed him so easily the first game, I decided that I could start experimenting to make it more challenging. And then it was too late....haha.

I really feel like if my service dialed in, it ruins everything (duh). So, i blame it on my terrible experimental pendulum.
 
Right now I am going through nostalgia lane and remembering all the rubbers I used to use in the last 3 years but which I gave up on for one reason or another to see which ones I should revisit given what I am trying to do with my game. I like MX-S but there is a discontinuity problem I experience that makes it less fulfilling for me than it should be. This is what most players complain about when they call it low throw - they wish they could flat drive with more arc and don't like the demand to loop and struggle to find the right arc when out of position.

My alternative was Omega V Asia, which I gave up on because the rubber required effort and the spin wasn't quite there. But recently, a forum member has made a big deal out of the existence of the Dynamic Friction technology of Xiom and that Omega V Asia was rebuilt to incorporate this technology and that this technology makes the rubber spinnier. I initially dismissed this but of course an EJ never truly dismisses anything... I did go back and look at when I played with OVA and when the DF tech was advertised with it and I realized I played with OVA before this tech was advertised. Okay so let's see...

I ordered a couple of OVA sheets. I had no blades I was willing to take MX-S off so I put it on a True Carbon I had.

The first thing that you need to know about OVA DF is that the dwell time is ridiculous. I mean stupidly ridiculous. Almost like tacky rubber. You feel as if you can go grab lunch while looping and come back and the ball is still on your blade. And the throw and kick is just like Tenergy 05, May be a little lower on the throw but similar on the kick. During the practice my blocker was complaining about how the ball kept jumping. Don't get it twisted, my technique is what is doing this and I don't think he fully adjusted from my old MX-S to my OVA trajectory but still it was nice to hear. Playing a March against another player he said something I haven't heard in a while. He said my loops just seem to do something that he can't explain. Since he is 1500 his statements remind me of how I used to feel when people looped with Tenergy 05 against me when I was 1500. The ball just seemed to do something at the end that other rubbers didn't do.

I am now sidespin looping a lot again. I haven't started playing faster players again but it will be interesting to see the impact. I will try to get video from practice today. I will test this on my main blades as the True Carbon is too fast. I have tried OVA on Calix 2 and liked it.

It's slower than some people would like but I don't know why it doesn't get enough mention when people speak about T05 competitors at the usual level.
So based on that, do you think the DF is marketing hype? or actual technology?
 
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that's a good idea. Kind of happened organically, during our match. I killed him so easily the first game, I decided that I could start experimenting to make it more challenging. And then it was too late....haha.

I really feel like if my service dialed in, it ruins everything (duh). So, i blame it on my terrible experimental pendulum.

Without serves my rating drops like 200 to 500 pts. I am trying to address this with more practice matches where I don't Do anything but basic or long serves. But it's hard to play aggressive players when you can't back them off your serves. But necessary because this is what happens when you play better players but you are so used to cheap points you can't adapt.
 
Without serves my rating drops like 200 to 500 pts. I am trying to address this with more practice matches where I don't Do anything but basic or long serves. But it's hard to play aggressive players when you can't back them off your serves. But necessary because this is what happens when you play better players but you are so used to cheap points you can't adapt.
It's comforting to me that you have the same issue at your level as I do at mine.

Just so I'm clear, you're giving them simple serves as a means to force yourself into a situation where none of your serves garner cheap points, which then forces you to address the next ball, and perhaps the next ball after that. That's smart.
 
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It's comforting to me that you have the same issue at your level as I do at mine.

Just so I'm clear, you're giving them simple serves as a means to force yourself into a situation where none of your serves garner cheap points, which then forces you to address the next ball, and perhaps the next ball after that. That's smart.

Yes. There are other ways of doing this (playing behind serves you usually don't, serving the same serve over and over) but my basic match serves are sometimes even too difficult for players 200 pts below me to return with quality. So I prefer to bash up the person in the first match like you did, but then experiment and not care about the result (and yes, expect but forget the sting of losing, try to focus on the progress or lack thereof). I have also practiced enough to see that that the issues I have with rallying are mostly transition and movement, the latter more than the former, because if we play on a smaller court, either cross court or down the line, I tend to win purely on the quality of my strokes.

But a point comes when as an attacker you have to be ready to serve your serve and say "unless the return is such and such and the opponent's level is such and such, I can attack that ball and win the point". And you need to make the "such and such" include a smaller and smaller number of returns and players to get better. Over time, you find that you can attack many more balls, but the reason why top players don't attack some balls that they can attack is that they know that their opponent's defense is good enough to win the point if they attack so they pass up attacking that particular ball. I didn't understand this for a while, but after seeing some of my best attacks come back, I started to see why top players don't attack some balls.
 
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Hey guys!
Last Monday we played with one team that is at our level, so we expected a very close match - and it was!
I have some cool matches to share!
And y-day I was at other match shooting - and I got some incredible matches too!
Well - the best defender of the competition came to the second team of the competition, so this was in fact a fight for second place in the league.
So I got some cool footage!
From Monday´s match I got one super match that lasted 30 minutes, but the guy didnt want to share the video so I have it on youtube private. If anyone wants to watch this close match, where my teammate saved 6 matchpoints winning the game 21:19 like the old days, I can share if you got gmail account. Let me know.
Anyways - my best match from Monday is probably this one, with their best player:


And this match was also very cool:

 
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Thanks!

side spin chop is one of my bread and butter strokes. But you have to pick your opponent carefully, because sometimes it helps certain people. I have finally given up the idea that inverted is somehow harder vs quality loops, because for me it's more intuitive. Especially for my level. But vs. Bojun the coach (2300-2400) I can more easily chop his loops with inverted on the FH, better than I can with LP on the BH. There is something in the technique that I am more comfortable with, not sure what. On the BH, i obviously am not as proficient because I've been doing inverted chopping on that wing for a much shorter time. But logically, if it's possible on the FH, it's possible on the BH, just have to get used to it. And the reflectoid helps....the HPS does not (haha).

but the trade offs in attacking are so worth it, and eventually I'll get there. My goal, however, is to stay at the table more, like Aida or Larry Abass, if you've ever seen those guys play. too bad I have 1/10th (1/100th?) the FH loops that they do.

Is this an argument then to invest some training time into FH loops? Or do you think it contradicts your preferred style of play?
 
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Is this an argument then to invest some training time into FH loops? Or do you think it contradicts your preferred style of play?

Absolutely. The way your question is worded implies I haven’t. Trust me... countless hours have been spent. I have been working on my forehand loop with coaches since switching over from Jpen. So this is nothing new, nor is it something I’ve stopped working on.

I’ll continue, and it has improved. My loop is okay vs under, so opening is quite good for my level. It’s FH loop vs topspin both block and counter. I do this every coaching session for 1/2 the lesson.

Like I said, improved, but far worse than the rest of my game.


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Absolutely. The way your question is worded implies I haven’t. Trust me... countless hours have been spent. I have been working on my forehand loop with coaches since switching over from Jpen. So this is nothing new, nor is it something I’ve stopped working on.

I’ll continue, and it has improved. My loop is okay vs under, so opening is quite good for my level. It’s FH loop vs topspin both block and counter. I do this every coaching session for 1/2 the lesson.

Like I said, improved, but far worse than the rest of my game.

Did not mean to imply that - it's just when I read your posts here and elsewhere they seem to be more focused on defensive aspects. May be I should read them more carefully :)

Out of curiosity - how frequently do you practice with a coach?
 
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