Righties versus Lefties in Table Tennis

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The question is when does that advantage show up? Probably long before the lefties become world class. The interesting test would be to compare won-loss records of LH vs RH players in randomly selected matches between people in, say top 200 in the world, and compare that to outcomes between players at, say, 1600 level.

My theory is that early on lefties have an advantage, and so are over-represented among junior players that are good enough to get noticed and who then get access to intense training. So more become pros (relative to their prevalence in the population).

Imo it's just the simple fact that there are less left-handed players, which means especially in lower rankings they have a little advantage due to unfamiliarity. That can give them a tiny bit of an edge and if they have success early on, they will be more likely to keep on playing and get to a higher level. Maybe it's some sort of tiny snowball effect that pushes the statistics noticeably in one direction. One would have to explain the difference between men and women though.


It's quite logical ;)
 
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Selecting a player based on whether he or she is right-handed or left-handed is probably the worst way to choose a player to be coached. Just Imagine if when xu xin and Ma long were kids and if LGL had to select between the two, if he had avoided to coach ma long, it would have been the worst decision of his life.

Just a piece of information:

Raphael Nadal is a tennis player who is RIGHT HANDED but plays tennis LEFT HANDED.

Xu Xin is a table tennis player who IS RIGHT HANDED but plays table tennis LEFT HANDED.

One of Xu Xin's coaches when he was young saw something in Xu Xin's lefty FH that caused him to switch XX to lefty. Something similar happened to Raphael Nadal.

I don't think either coach was thinking of the advantage of playing lefty. I think they saw something they could do lefty that they did not do as well righty.


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One more detail. This is specifics about playing a lefty.

Adjusting to a right handed backhand with hook sidespin has never been a problem I noticed. But when I first started training with a friend who is lefty and has an evil lefty hook, it was really hard. More than just hard.

I can remember not being able to see the ball well. Not being able to judge where the ball was. Swinging and missing.

Part of that is brain processing. My eyes could see the ball. But I could not judge, spatially, where the ball was.

I can remember starting to "see" the ball better as we trained more. I can remember starting to be able to see where the hook would end up as he contacted the ball. Starting to be able to see whether my training partner's hook would be a big hook or a smaller hook. How much it would curve.

And then I remember a point where there was no thought about it and it felt like the trouble handling a lefty hook never existed.

Then I remember doing a little training to warm up a lefty looper who is semi-pro level and him being pretty impressed at how well I handled his lefty hook.

He told me most people at the level u was at back then really could not handle his loop. He therefore had a lot of fun warming up with me in spite of how much better than me he is.

I explained to him that I had a training partner who had a pretty mean lefty hook. And he understood that, because I had practice vs a lefty hook, his did not throw me off the way it does to so many.

So, what NextLevel said: PRACTICE. It is hard to play well against something you never face.


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Selecting a player based on whether he or she is right-handed or left-handed is probably the worst way to choose a player to be coached. Just Imagine if when xu xin and Ma long were kids and if LGL had to select between the two, if he had avoided to coach ma long, it would have been the worst decision of his life.

Maybe I'm wrong, but as far as I know Xu Xin started as a right-handed player, so this scenario could not happen. I think that if a coach has to choose, he will always choose upon skills and ability for perspective development. But maybe between even skilled he would choose the left-handed.
 
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Out of the protocol - I hate choppers more than leftys :confused:
Then,

we love You. [emoji48] [emoji23] [emoji23] [emoji23]


OK, jokes aside,

Because I am left eyed chopper, playing with a lefty is much easier to observe, cause now His body won't be in the way. [emoji28]

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it's already been said but practicing and seeing lots of lefties is key especially when it comes to serve returns. And seeing any type of diffrent different style long pips, a good short pips, anti player, or straight defender, chopper or lob player is a challenge leading to unforced errors or missed opportunities, the first few times i see it. And depending how good they are maybe long after the first few times.
Just for fun here something from baseball. know it's a different sport with different objectives but it there is something there.

"It’s fairly common knowledge that in major league baseball
left-handed batters, on average, hit better than their right-handed
counterparts. A cursory look at the career leaders in batting average will convince you that lefties have some kind of advantage. Seven of the top 10, and 19 of the top 30, are left handers. And remember, most
batters hit right-handed—so a majority of lefties atop the leaderboard is even more noteworthy.
Batting titles seem to be won disproportionately by left handers as well. Over the last 50 years, 54 of the 100 batting titles have been won by left-handed hitters, 35 by righties and 11 by switch hitters. Again, the lefties seem to have a sizable advantage."
As a result of my playing quite a bit of baseball, and knowing this my 6 year old son hits lefty. As in tt It also just come down to to what you get to see train against etc. but for me a righty having a curve ball come toward you instead of away from you is much easier to deal with you can stay much more aggressive and make adjustments mid swing. With the ball breaking away as with a righty seeing a righty you need to recognize it earlier. Also there are quite a few lefthandes hitters more than right handed hitters that will be yanked from the lineup when they are facing a bad matchup "lefty pitcher" which just back up the what you are use to seeing points made earlier, since leftys are a Minority in baseball.

Again just for fun totally different sport.


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I haven't played too much with lefties and choppers.
Choppers /really good ones/ are very dangerous for me. Lefties - not so much.
But recently I think that I've found /maybe it should reffer just to me/ a way to better fight with both in a similar way.

Respond with BH to their FH and vice verca - respond with FH to their BH.
Of course its not 100% usable, depanding on position and ball vector, but in general it works with great success /is it just for me?/
 
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Just for fun here something from baseball. know it's a different sport with different objectives but it there is something there.

"It’s fairly common knowledge that in major league baseball
left-handed batters, on average, hit better than their right-handed
counterparts. A cursory look at the career leaders in batting average will convince you that lefties have some kind of advantage. Seven of the top 10, and 19 of the top 30, are left handers. And remember, most
batters hit right-handed—so a majority of lefties atop the leaderboard is even more noteworthy.
Batting titles seem to be won disproportionately by left handers as well. Over the last 50 years, 54 of the 100 batting titles have been won by left-handed hitters, 35 by righties and 11 by switch hitters. Again, the lefties seem to have a sizable advantage."
As a result of my playing quite a bit of baseball, and knowing this my 6 year old son hits lefty. As in tt It also just come down to to what you get to see train against etc. but for me a righty having a curve ball come toward you instead of away from you is much easier to deal with you can stay much more aggressive and make adjustments mid swing. With the ball breaking away as with a righty seeing a righty you need to recognize it earlier. Also there are quite a few lefthandes hitters more than right handed hitters that will be yanked from the lineup when they are facing a bad matchup "lefty pitcher" which just back up the what you are use to seeing points made earlier, since leftys are a Minority in baseball.

Again just for fun totally different sport.

Glad you mention that often good left handed hitters get pulled when they are facing a left handed pitcher. Where right handed batters don't get pulled when facing a right handed batter quite as frequently since there are more right handed pitchers than left handed.

Also, it is worth knowing that, part of the reason it is harder for a righty to hit vs a righty pitcher and same with lefty batter vs lefty pitcher, has to do with the idea that, when the ball is coming from the opposite side, it is easier to see the delivery and the ball coming. But right handed batters have to face right handed pitching so much they generally get used to it.

There is also something to be said for the fact that swinging "lefty" or "righty" in baseball really does not have much to do with being left handed or right handed. If you polled how many "lefty" batters were actually left handed, I would be interested to hear that stat.

But the fact that lefty batters often don't have to face pitchers they struggle with, could have something to do with higher batting averages. But, it does not explain everything and nothing can explain how good a batter someone like Ted Williams was. :)

And no matter how you look at it, you have mentioned some interesting stats about left handed batters and batting average leaders. So thanks. Interesting to think about. :)
 
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In general, I tend to win vs lefties where I am the better player overall. I also tend to lose more vs lefties who are better than me, unless they are brain dead and play into my strong BH or give me long underspins. If they do that, they weren't better than me at TT. If they avoided that and played their strong shots that are stronger than me, they are a smart and clearly better player than me.
 
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Can someone statistically list #1-10 ranking in the last 20 years to see how many left handed versus right handed? I don't trust reasoning but I trust stats.

May be we can start with #1 rank to make it easy.

For example: #1 position (based on ITTF ranking longest period) RH 15 to 5 LH?

Then look at RH versus LH distribution and see if there is a clear advantage of LH.

Just to add to the complexity of the OP, I think more variation in playing has more advantage than less variation. Can we prove it? This has nothing to do with LH or RH.
 
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But the fact that lefty batters often don't have to face pitchers they struggle with, could have something to do with higher batting averages. But, it does not explain everything and nothing can explain how good a batter someone like Ted Williams was. :)



Definitely a factor! And since you brought him up it affected even a godlike hitter like ted Williams. Although less than others of course. Williams crazy high 344 lifetime average highest among the (modern era) followed by Gwynn, Carew, and Boggs all lefty hitters, and was able to hit very high 333 life time against lefties. But I remember reading something like only 11% of his 521 homeruns came against lefties. Which was pretty low % with players with 400 plus home runs. 333 avg it's not exactly a weakness but even the gods are slightly affected.

Again not much to do a table tennis really. Especially at a high lel of play.

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http://www.spiegel.de/wissenschaft/...gen-sportarten-einfacher-haben-a-1179681.html

Here's a thing from a german newspaper I just randomly stumbled upon. If my rusty german serves me right, according to the article, there seems to be a correlation between the speed of a sport ("time pressure") and the amount of top athletes that are lefties


And here's a link to the paper in question in english (I haven't had the time to read it yet, just dropping it here :eek:): http://rsbl.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/13/11/20170446


Have a nice day everyone!:)
 
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I read the bottom article Nice post. Thanks.
For the baseball portion wish they could have included batters to the equations at least partially or as a side support finding. I understand batting does not fit the ‘directly impose time pressure upon their opponents’ part of the hypothesis but it’s a technically, and batters response to imposed pressure is more related than not.


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