T2 Asia Pacific Table Tennis League 2017!

Which team do you think will win?

  • Team Maze: (Timo Boll, Chen Chien-An, Aleksandr Shibaev)

    Votes: 13 18.6%
  • Team JJ: (Vladimir Samsonov, Chuang Chih-Yuan, Tomokazu Harimoto)

    Votes: 13 18.6%
  • Team Persson: (Jun Mizutani, Joo Saehyuk, Mattias Karsson)

    Votes: 20 28.6%
  • Team Rossi: (Dmitrij Ovtcharov, Shang Kun, Paul Drinkhall)

    Votes: 24 34.3%

  • Total voters
    70
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Harimoto got destroyed.. ?

The first 3 match wasn't something I would describe as 'destroyed'. They were pretty close matches, but Ovcharov is still better than Harimoto. After losing three set Harimoto mentally broke up - he is still a kid.
 
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I think he misses the impact of economic competition on the ability of sports to survive. If he took it more seriously, he would understand why making some modifications to entertainment and commercialization are extremely important.

I think that notion of "survival" deserves a close examination. What does it mean? Does it mean it has to be prime TV real estate? Does it have to produce monetizable clickbait for web scavengers ("advertisers")? Does a sport really need highly paid superstar professionals in order to survive?

The argument for compulsively adapting to the short-focused, attention-span deprived media playbooks and advertisement pitchers is built on a notion of survival that equates commercial success with popularity and consumer popularity with the vitality of the sport itself. I think that line of reasoning needs additional arguments to hold water.
 
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I think that notion of "survival" deserves a close examination. What does it mean? Does it mean it has to be prime TV real estate? Does it have to produce monetizable clickbait for web scavengers ("advertisers")? Does a sport really need highly paid superstar professionals in order to survive?

The argument for compulsively adapting to the short-focused, attention-span deprived media playbooks and advertisement pitchers is built on a notion of survival that equates commercial success with popularity and consumer popularity with the vitality of the sport itself. I think that line of reasoning needs additional arguments to hold water.


I don't think it does.
 
says The sticky bit is stuck.
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I don't think it does.

Maybe tou don't, but the thing is: the burden of proof lies with the one making the claim.

So if somebody claims that some change is a survival necessity, that person needs to prove that there is no possibility of survival unless the proposed changes are made.

That is a strong requirement to have to make, especially in the face of counterfactuals (tt has, in some or other form, one of the most played sports across the globe and has been for nearly a century) and competing approaches - there just might be other approaches to reach the same goal.

I actually think the kill zone and time limit don't do much harm, neither am I seeing much benefit, watching the last days worth of matches. But that's not the point.

I don't think the sport would go extinct if broadcasters kept up their longstanding disinterest. I certainly don't think any aspect of the sport I care about would suffer if it reamained relatively unsoiled and unspoiled by big money(tm). On the contrary. Less corruption is preferrable to more, I'd say.
 
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Maybe tou don't, but the thing is: the burden of proof lies with the one making the claim.

So if somebody claims that some change is a survival necessity, that person needs to prove that there is no possibility of survival unless the proposed changes are made.

That is a strong requirement to have to make, especially in the face of counterfactuals (tt has, in some or other form, one of the most played sports across the globe and has been for nearly a century) and competing approaches - there just might be other approaches to reach the same goal.

I actually think the kill zone and time limit don't do much harm, neither am I seeing much benefit, watching the last days worth of matches. But that's not the point.

I don't think the sport would go extinct if broadcasters kept up their longstanding disinterest. I certainly don't think any aspect of the sport I care about would suffer if it reamained relatively unsoiled and unspoiled by big money(tm). On the contrary. Less corruption is preferrable to more, I'd say.

Proof doesn't work the way you think it does, but there is no point debating it. There is a lot of evidence that the TT demographic is aging and the sport is less popular. Experimenting with the sport is not a bad thing even if this particular experiment might not be the answer. And it is annoying that in the US, it is hard to sustain a club in any metropolitan area and very few in any clubs can sustain themselves through profitable membership unless they have large training or babysitting programs.
 
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Proof doesn't work the way you think it does, but there is no point debating it. There is a lot of evidence that the TT demographic is aging and the sport is less popular. Experimenting with the sport is not a bad thing even if this particular experiment might not be the answer. And it is annoying that in the US, it is hard to sustain a club in any metropolitan area and very few in any clubs can sustain themselves through profitable membership unless they have large training or babysitting programs.

Agreed. But I don't think profitability matters. That invisible hand the free market believers worship just isn't all that good in deciding what's important.

I run a club. I keep it alive. Yet the things the club does is driven by other motivations than profitability. (I also happen to have a former life in formal logic, including argumentation theory. I happen to suffer rather rigourous notions of soundness and completeness.)

Let's not exaggerate our argument. i don't think we're disagreeing all that much, in the end of things.
 
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Agreed. But I don't think profitability matters. That invisible hand the free market believers worship just isn't all that good in deciding what's important.

I run a club. I keep it alive. Yet the things the club does is driven by other motivations than profitability. (I also happen to havea former life in formal logic, including argumentation theory. I happen to suffer a rather rigourous notions of soundness and completeness.)

Let's not exaggerate our argument. i don't think we're disagreeing all that much, in the end of things.

It isn't about whether it is good or not - it just decides too often.
 
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So... Anyone know why they decided to use tables without a line in the middle?

I am just guessing here, but maybe they think it improves the video/TV appearance by not having a white line that interferes with your seeing the ball. I wonder if it would be weird to play without it?
 
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Sorry if this has already been asked...but anyone know what happened to the Chinese players that were going to be involved? There's a vid on the T2APAC fb that shows Wang Chuqin, Wang Manyu and Sun Yingsha arriving for round 2 but I haven't seen anything else and missed the very beginning of the stream. Are they just going to join a random team? Are they super reserves? or do a few people just lose their place in the team for them?
 
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