Just curious how many Penholders are on TTD?

OldschoolPenholder said:

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Whew if I had that speed serve as a change up my service game would be nasty.

Well done OSP

Played with my co-worker Thursday. Inverted/Long Pips. Went really well. At the end of the practice he was frustrated saying he missed to many balls but LPs will do that do you if you're not use to them.

I think the key for me is to use them sparingly. If I use them too much, the speed of play slows down. Trying to focus on aggressively punching the ball with my TPB vs passively blocking it. I can block pretty well with it but when I aggressively punch it, it's a suitable attack for no longer having inverted on the RPB.

OldschoolPenholder said:

Thank you suds! As to the rocket serve...

"The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago. The 2nd best time is now."

Just keep practicing it! But the key is to START!

It is great reading about your progress! It's ironic that it's come full circle (may change again in the future?

I have serious challenges playing vs LP. So i know your coworker's feelings.

Re: using it sparingly ... 2 thoughts ... either use it early or use it late. If you use it early and lose the point, at least it's early in the game. If you win the point, well, keep it in your backpocket and perhaps use it to gain a slight lead when the game gets closer to 11. If you use it late in the game without prior use, be sure you make the shot and not p!ss a point away so close to 11 points.

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In our club the best are also LP players. Very deadly placements. Even the youngest fastest players lose to them.

I occasionally beat the older LP player. The best strategy is to get them move and start a rally. Usually LP gets people lazy and their footwork is not great. During a rally my power loop can kill the point. They love short game as they can place the ball very short with various spin followed by a long push.

In short, LP player's rhythm is long-short-long-short etc. If you open up a rally they are forced to play long shot.



Passionate about TT

SFF_lib said:

Usually LP gets people lazy and their footwork is not great.

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+1

So true. Another trick you can get vs LP or Anti players is that with those type of rubbers, your reading spin gets lazy as you largely don't have to do it as much on serves. I mean if you misread a serve, chances are you can still safely push block it in. We have a couple of old guys at our club who play anti on the backhand and like the return all serves with it as they stand in the middle of the table.

Problem for them is that I'm left handed and my specality serve is that He Zhi Wen serve out wide to the FH that curves away from them. In short, I can force them to receive serve with their other inverted side which they don't like and because they're out of practice, I can get them to error right off serve with misreading the spin if it's side/top, side/back, pure side, dead, etc.

That's why I'm always a big proponent that if you play a combo bat, better be able to twiddle.

Anyways, I like playing anti even more so than LPs. IMO it deadens the ball more where as some LPs continue the spin very well. I find soft looping & opening up on anti with my FH relatively easy.

Side note, you will sometimes see video online of intermediate players struggling vs LPs and they loop ball after ball off the table or into the net. And when you watch these, it's because they're trying to power loop or kill ball after ball and missing. My training partner is very good at this and I've learned to do it but I'm telling ya. A nice, safe soft loop over & over against LP or anti works really well. Just do it over & over (maybe they block long from the spin) or maybe they pop one up too high of which you can go for to put away but otherwise, soft loop over & over. If the spin ever gets too much, you can push every now & then to reset.

Question for those who twiddle a lot and use RPB: do you set up both rubbers with the same gap between the rubber and the handle, or do you only leave a gap on one side like is more typical for RPB?

OhWell said:

Question for those who twiddle a lot and use RPB: do you set up both rubbers with the same gap between the rubber and the handle, or do you only leave a gap on one side like is more typical for RPB?

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So most LP rubbers have a very flat space at the bottom where you can rest your index finger and not have it touching the pips so I don't put a gap back there. It's low enough to be comfortable to rest your finger on. Plus when you feel rubber, you know it's LPs. If you feel the wood of your blade, you know you're on the FH.

This style can give people fits but has its drawbacks also.
1 - You essentially have to learn everything twice. FH with inverted. FH with LPs. etc.
2 - I personally have to use a curled fingers approach (something I talked about in my youtube video when you search penhold grip). IMO that's the only way to twiddle fast. Problem is, I really like the feel i get with the fingers more extended or your traditional penhold grip. I think it's because my finger tips are touching the back face of the paddle vs the side of my fingers in curled fingers. But yeah. Extended fingers I just can't twiddle fast.

suds79 said:

So most LP rubbers have a very flat space at the bottom where you can rest your index finger and not have it touching the pips so I don't put a gap back there. It's low enough to be comfortable to rest your finger on. Plus when you feel rubber, you know it's LPs. If you feel the wood of your blade, you know you're on the FH.

This style can give people fits but has its drawbacks also.
1 - You essentially have to learn everything twice. FH with inverted. FH with LPs. etc.
2 - I personally have to use a curled fingers approach (something I talked about in my youtube video when you search penhold grip). IMO that's the only way to twiddle fast. Problem is, I really like the feel i get with the fingers more extended or your traditional penhold grip. I think it's because my finger tips are touching the back face of the paddle vs the side of my fingers in curled fingers. But yeah. Extended fingers I just can't twiddle fast.

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Thanks for the reply! I’m liking the videos!

What about with inverted on one side? Does having a gap between the inverted rubber and he handle make it harder to do RPB with that rubber?

I never really had a problem with it. Try it out and see what you think.

Actually if anything that ever bothered me was my curled finger approach on the back side. Yes, I told you LPs have a flat space there, and they do, but often my curled finger sides would still be touching some pips. Well when you're trying to rip winners with your FH attacking rubber (i've had time with inverted & SPs before), those sides of your fingers on the back side can get raw from the friction over time.

For that reason I picked up some finger sleeves off ebay i think for a few bucks. Got 10 of them. I would put one on my middle finger and one on my ring finger. I came to really like them. If you see my video on twiddling match play, you'll probably see them on my left hand.

These are basically what i bought.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/10xKuangmi...06&rk=1&rkt=1&&_trksid=p2045573.c100506.m3226


So one thing I've found about this style is it's fun to play for a tricky game but boy does having LPs on one side slow down the pace of play. I don't particularly care for that anymore enjoying the faster speed of dual inverted but ask me in a week and I might change my mind. lol. I've got a problem.

For a tricky offensive game SP + inverted might be fun though!

Old school penhold with SP is just so efficient for those who like the offensive hit + block play style. Using the inverted for occasional spinny RPB flicks and for twiddle variation isn’t proper TT deception because they can see you’re going for the inverted. But it would probably be very annoying.

I'm continually amazed in how you can be playing this game for years & years and still discover something every now & then that works and could be potentially game changing.

My club training partner, who beats me 95% of the time (looking to change that), came over last night and being the really good guy he is, helped me work on honestly the biggest hole in my game probably knowing in the back of his mind that if he helps work that out for me, his win % will go down because our matches are typically close. He just seems to always have 1 or 2 things over me... But, I suppose if I push him, that'll make him better also.

Anyways, as a lefty normally facing righties, the down the line serve to my backhand just hasn't been a strength. I love it when I play a righty who serves from the middle of the table or better yet another lefty serving from his back corner. In both these cases, I'm free to cheat way over and play all serves off the table with a FH loop.

However vs righties serving from their back corner, I have to stand slightly more middle of the table because if I cheat over too much to play the FH, a wide fast serve to my FH side, the open court, would probably would be an ace. So opening myself up for serves to my BH is something I have to concede.

My partner has been getting me some time on a down the last fast backspin & down the line fast sidespin. Credit to him, the motion for these two look really similar and honestly I struggle to tell which is which sometimes. Not all the time but every now & then. If I push the backspin, fine. But if I push the sidespin, it often goes off the table. I know that if the serve is off the table, I should open up with a RPB. So that's what we worked on.

Some things I found helpful:
- I hate it when I step in for an over the table RPB flip and the serve is actually long and I get jammed up being too close to the end line. Solution 1? Stop stepping in so far and placing my paddle in the middle of the table anticipating a short serve. Rather, If I take a small step in and put my paddle in that flip position at the baseline of the table, if the serve is a long one, I can execute the same stroke. If the serve is short, I can continue to move & to flip it. Always easier to move forward vs backward.

But I don't want to be predictable. I don't want someone to always think "Okay give him a long serve to the BH and expect a topspin flip/attack coming back and rip that 3rd ball". So I want to be able to change up the spin sometimes. Furthermore, flipping or attacking all the time at the intermediate level I think is an easy way to give away a lot of points without making the opponent earn it as you miss some shots.

I want variety. So I tried something I never, and i mean never, have tried before. The problem for me is that when I do a TPB push down the line to my BH, i'm kinda just sticking my paddle out there for the ball to rebound off of. Backspin? Fine. Sidespin? that push goes long. Remember that? I knew I needed greater touch or what I like to call soft hands. I've seen some old timer TPB players with incredibly soft hands who can chop block almost any ball. backspin, even topspin, you name it.

I want to be able to chop or soft play almost any serve when I need it. So i started to do a more semicircular chopping motion done somewhat over the table or just off the table. This allowed me to slice the ball much thinner (hence softer) really loading up the spin on backspin serves and still being able to keep the ball on the table on sidespin. In fact on sidespin they're getting a backspin chop with still some of their sidespin so it's really weird for them. Like returning someones serve really.

I suppose what I was doing looked like this just done close to the table and on service receive only I was attempting it. (I'm using my inverted FH rubber when I do this)


Funny thing is that say if the serve is actually more towards my body or even crossover point, this motion can be continued to transition into that Xu Xin forehand flip motion that I've experimented with over the years.



It's exciting to at least for now feel like I have a little variation in my options for serves to my BH. I can RPB to attack or feel comfortable playing it safe if I want to with this close to the table like chop. Anyways, sorry this was so long winded. Hope someone out there found it interesting.

Both techniques require full commitment.
My best results are when I really get low to the table.

Three Xu Xin Compilations
{Videos Flipped! - For Right Handed player analysis. Like me!}

wait since when is xx right handed OuO.. wait. its just the video is flipped..

good find

I have been reading the comments and I find them interesting.
I play shake hands normally. I can play RPB. I do for fun. I have a YEO with TG3 Neo FH and a custom LKT Pro XP topsheet and sponge on my BH that I put together myself.

I find playing c-pen is natural. If shake hands play were outlawed I could still play c-pen with only an initial small decrease in ability.

What I find is that I have a slightly longer reach with c-pen. I can use my wrist a little more effectively playing c-pen. RPB loops are easy but they always have a side spin unless I get low. What I give up is that if I want to make a ghost serve I must get very low for my blade to be close to horizontal when I make contact. I don't mind getting low sometimes but it gets harder has one gets older. I also find that I must roll the blade in my hand when I switch from FH to a BH block.

BTW, I don't think c-pen is better or worse, it is just a matter of what you get use to. It would be interesting if there was valid data showing one method is better than the other.

However, I just got back from Shanghai. The coaches were teaching all the students to play shake hands but maybe that was a fluke that there just happened to be 3 shake hand players there but the coaches played shake hands too.

Sounds like we might have a convert.

I definitely know what you're saying on the pure backspin serve or the ghost serve. As much as I pride myself on my service game, I find I get generate pure backspin easier with shakehand because like you said, you can hold the blade more horizontally. Purely flat. With cpen, the blade is always kinda angled away from your body giving some side unless you get really low to flatten out your blade.

Let me say this. Might help. Forget the ghost serve. IMO it's pretty useless and is more show off-ey than useful. Look for any ghost serve you find online and you still see people here or there executing it but look how high their bounces are in getting it? #Meatballs.

I don't care how spiny a ball is. If it's high, it's an easy flip. Now if you really want to try to learn it, I've found what helps me is to think, or imagine, hitting the front of the ball as your contact point. That really takes the forward momentum off the ball and with the ball falling down, hitting up on the front of the ball uses the gravity for that extra friction to spin it up. Try it with a high toss. Just get use to putting it in the net on your first few attempts. While you might not actually contact the front of the ball, because you're trying to, you'll notice you really need to put a lot more of your body into the forward momentum just to get the ball over the net.

Anyways, I don't really use it. I suggest embrace your side/back pendulum serve. Just mix it up between pure side, side/top & dead and make them all look similar in motion while almost hiding the serve and you're good to go.

It's exciting when you feel like you're playing your best TT.

I just lost to my training partner, who I have said previously always beats me, 3-2 in the final game 9-11. While that's painful and I would have preferred to win, it really doesn't bother me because in our recent matches, I see a trend of me getting closer & closer. Simply put, playing people who normally beat you might drive you crazy but constantly being pushed harder & harder starts to pay off over time. I know it's just a matter of time before we start to consistently break even on matches.

I also changed a few things tactically. While I have been working on my BH receive, I know my best game is to receive serves with my FH. Generally if it's off the table, I loop to open up. Well he serves from his backhand corner to open up his 3rd ball FH as you'd expect. Surprisingly there are a lot of right handers who serve from the middle of the table and that's easier for me. Anyways, previously with him serving from his backhand corner, I stood more middle of the table to cover the wide fast serve to the FH. Problem is that opened up any serve down the line to my BH if he wanted. Well not yesterday. I stood in my usual position in the corner almost baiting or daring him to try to give me a fast serve out wide. I know I can get there. You can almost played mind games on the oppoent by where you stand baiting them into serving in a location and then moving in the best position to attack that serve during the toss of their serve. Another benefit of standing in my back corner was that, when he was trying the surprise fast serve down the line, his room for error is so much smaller. It's simply harder for him to get that serve to my BH. A few times he missed, faulted, just off the table. It simply turned the game in my favor as I began to do what I do best and start to dictate how the points were played.

Excited to see where things go from here.

suds79 said:

Sounds like we might have a convert.

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Nah, I am just adaptable. Actually there are two c-pen players at my company. The first didn't play RPB at first. He had a paddle with LP on the BH. I convinced him to remove the LP and and put on a regular inverted rubber and play RPB. Now his RPB pushes and serves have much more back spin than what could be achieved with LP. He also can hit well with the RPB. He is much more dangerous now. This is good for both of us. The second c-pan player still hasn't used RPB much. When I play with him I use my c-pen paddle and rub it in with RPB loops. Eventually he will be converted.

Let me say this. Might help. Forget the ghost serve. IMO it's pretty useless and is more show off-ey than useful. Look for any ghost serve you find online and you still see people here or there executing it but look how high their bounces are in getting it? #Meatballs.

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I think you are right about ghost serves with c-pen but with shake hands I practice serving back spin balls. The goal is to keep them low, they must almost fall off the end of the table but must roll back to the net. These are serves with real back spin. I get points of these kinds of serves.

That really takes the forward momentum off the ball and with the ball falling down, hitting up on the front of the ball uses the gravity for that extra friction to spin it up.

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I do that with shake hands.

Try it with a high toss.

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No, the ball will bounce up some fraction of the height of the toss. It will bounce up too high. To keep the ball going too high I must hit the ball at an even lower point like around table level. The toss has to be just the right height. The ball must be hit at just the right elevation relative to the table to keep the ball low. It is a dangerous serve and easy to screw up.

Anyways, I don't really use it. I suggest embrace your side/back pendulum serve. Just mix it up between pure side, side/top & dead and make them all look similar in motion while almost hiding the serve and you're good to go.

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[/quote]
Yes, much safer.

Ok, so I used to think the typical fingers out rpb grip was horribly uncomfortable. I don’t mean in extended game play. I mean at all. My hand just couldn’t relax with any of the fingers extended, rather than curled. It felt like a strange contorsion act.

I didn’t have my own cpen blade, so I had never tried it with properly sanded wings..

Just got a beater cpen. At first, extended fingers RPB grips felt just as bad as usual. Then I sanded those wings following tips on various threads here. Now the various rpb grips feel effortless!

I’m not at all surprised that sanding the wings on cpen is more comfortable. But I had no idea it had such far reaching implications.

Good day!

OldschoolPenholder said:

Being an oldschool penholder playing TPB... happy to report that after sometime Dec 2016 of trying to learn the RPB loop in earnest for a few months and after a few months off during the summer, last night, under match conditions I made ~10 RPB loops and missed ~3. I haven't played a match since before my summer break. My time coming back in ~ Sept was spent just hitting/practicing.

My current setup - American Hinoki WRC-9mm 1 ply with double Tenergy 80-FX.

Sadly no video.

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It's amazing to see another penholder using single ply hinoki. The thickness is uncomfortable but RPB is still possible.

Passionate about TT