I am going to try and keep this on as positive a level as possible. I have nothing against anyone personally and I just want to say this for the record:
Mr RicharD,
Since you joined, I have found a great number of your posts on this forum top notch. I think you are obviously a person who has a passion for table tennis. I appreciate much of what you have to say on many subjects. There are two areas where I think what you say does not seem to fit. The first is that most of what you seem to have to say about pips players sounds to me like it comes from someone who does not understand how pips work and who does not like pips. The second area is that it sounds like you are trying to present yourself as a high level player. Who cares what level you are? Nobody, really. It doesn't come up unless you have brought up the subject as part of why you "know" so much. Nobody knows everything. We all, even the most knowledgeable on the subject of Table Tennis, have areas of expertise and areas where we do not really know the information. Level has nothing to do with it. I know many players whose level is low who have a great ability to see certain details and give good, helpful information. I also know plenty of players who have great strokes and really solid fundamentals but do not have great game skills or tournament skills and there USATT rating might be under 1000. I don't think there is anything wrong with that. I know people who play great in matches in practice and then when they play tournaments they get nervous and tight and do not play well. There is also nothing wrong with that. But if that is the case that is the level that they are at. The USATT rating is what it is. I also know a few players who, if you ask them their rating and they don't know you, they usually say 1900. Then if they know you and know you know what time of day it is, they might say, "I am 1550 but I beat a lot of 1900 and 2000 level players." I have one friend who says things like this and then I see him play pips players and he has no idea what to do against them. That is why he cannot get his rating up and that is why he really is 1550 and not 1900. You have to be able to beat over 90% of the players under 1875 to be 1900. That is how the rating system ends up working. When you get to that level, and you earn that rating through playing lots of players with strange and unique styles and you can adjust to their style and play them and take the match in the tournament, your level goes up. But there is nothing wrong with being a player who is passionate about Table Tennis who has a lot of knowledge and many skills but has trouble taking matches in tournaments against players who are rated in the 1300 range but have an unfamiliar style.
Someone somewhere in a post I saw recently said that players in the US tend to get to a 1600-1800 level and then don't progress or don't continue. He noted that 1600-1800 is not really a very high level. I would agree with both statements. When players start getting to be really solid fundamentally on all levels is somewhere between 2000 and 2300. I will keep trying to improve and who knows, perhaps one day I will be able to get there.
I work 7 days a week, some days I have a light schedule, but, having a wife and daughter, and trying to keep up with the bills, would make a trip to Pennsylvania for Table Tennis a little irresponsible on my part. But here is an invitation. If you want to come up to NYC, we can hang out, I can show you some of the spots to play in this city and we can play some matches too. You can PM me if you want to come up, and we can sort out details of contacting, getting together and having some fun, getting to know each other and playing the best sport in the world.
Playing matches outside of a USATT tournament will never get you to be 1800. It might help improve your skills so that you can eventually earn that rating through the system that is in place, but no amount of matches will get you an 1800 rating unless they are played in a sanctioned tournament. And through good solid work, a good player can get their rating up to that level if they have the skills. When you get there you earn that rating through your play in matches in the tournaments. The rest is talk. There is a value to that system.
I don't think it is a problem to have lost to any of the players you lost to, that is the reality of tournaments. However, a player who is actually legitimately somewhere between 1800-2000 would never lose to a 1300 level player because the player was unfamiliar to him. That is part of what earning the rating means. You would not lose to a player just because you did not know his style. You certainly would not lose to him 2x in one tournament. A true 1800 level player would adjust to dead balls in in 2 or 3 points at most. But lets say it took half of the first game. If you are rated 500-700 points higher than another player, after the first half of the first game it should be like playing with a small child. And truthfully, it should not even take that, because, if you haven't seen him, he hasn't seen you. He is in the same boat. Therefore the higher level player should have the clear advantage right from the first point.
Again, I do not think it matters what someone's rating is, and I do think it is okay to be someone who has trouble adjusting to new players and new serves and different tactics. But if you have trouble adjusting to dead balls, it says a lot. And if you need to be playing players whose style you know, to have a chance at winning, you have earned the rating you have earned. That is how it is.
An 1800 level player can lose to a player who is just under 1600. It should not happen very often but it can happen once in a while. But again, if his style was new to you, your style should have been new to him as well so you are both in the same boat and, a higher level player should have a clear advantage there. The only point I would make with this is that a player who really, actually belongs in the 1800 category should be able to take care of a player who is 1590 99% of the time. Again, there is nothing wrong with being at what ever level you are at. I know you have the mindset of wanting to improve your skills so I respect that. But a player who is rated 1066 who really should be rated 1800, his rating would go up drastically in every tournament he entered until it hit an accurate rating. A player who is rated 1066 who should be rated 1290 might raise their level much more slowly. There is no shame in that and there are any number of reasons why that progress might be slow. But no shame in any of them. A player who has trouble reading spin and dead balls from pips players might also have trouble reading serves. Once he knows those serves from that player, he might play great. But that would be a reason why one player who has 2000 level looping skills and 900 level return of serve skills and 1000 level pips playing skills might stay rated at 1200 for a long long time. Until the weaknesses are sured up, the level will not go up. But that just gives us things to work on. So as long as the idea is improving skills is part of your mindset, this is a positive issue . There are always things to improve on.
I would not bash anyone. But it would be fun to meet you, hang out, get to know you, and see how you play a variety of players.
By the way, don't you need to sustain a rating of above 1600 for a certain period of time to be eligible to get the USATT credentials for coaching in the US?
What the WHAT!
And my guess is that, herein lies the problem.
Now I want to say something about pips. Because this, I think is worthwhile info. I have a friend who is a pips player who is rated 2200. He can play any way he wants, but he chooses shakehand pips. He can play smooth on both sides, he can play penhold, long pips, short pips anything, lefty too.
When he plays with smooth on both sides his level is not very different than when he uses the long pips/smooth setup. The long pips setup is just what he likes best. When he hits with me, sometimes he does this thing, so that I can learn to read the spin better. I loop and he chops and this is what he does. While my shot is coming at him he will say one of three things: Dead, Light or Heavy. When he says dead, he is going to chop and the ball will come back dead, no spin. When he says light, he will chop and the ball will come back with light underspin. When he says heavy, the ball will come back with heavy underspin, and I mean heavy. He is doing it so I can learn to see the difference in the contact and in the trajectory of the ball from the spin. The stroke is the same. The contact is different and he can control and vary the spin to an amazing degree. There is real subtlety to this and there is real skill. You can do a lot of things with pips. And for playing against pips, the most important thing is to keep paying attention and learn to tell what spin is coming at you.
As far as there being no system for pips, I would not know. That is not my area of knowledge but it seems that there are basic strokes for chopping just like there are basic strokes for loops. There are also basic techniques for blocking. And as far as there being a set system for topspin game, my experience is that this is not so accurate. There are basic strokes and then there are differences. The Chinese loop is different from the European loop. Ma Long's loop is different than Wang Hao's or Zhang Jike's loop. Timo Boll's loop is different from Vladimir Samsonov's loop. And every coach in NY that I know of teaches slightly differently.
Viva la differance.
