Playing Backhand in Forehand position.

BH in FH position is mainly used for flicks. With BH flick you can get more wrist movement involved in your flick and thus create more spin.

A good example is Zhang Jike and now Ma Long. It's more common amongst RPB, but like Wiwa mentioned, mostly are not for outright winners. They're more for flicks especially on short balls. It gives you of the option to place the ball to right or left of the table without giving away your intended placements by the sway of your body language.

Playing the BH in the FH position is mostly for return of service or an attempt at a recovery shot when too wide to the FH. This technique is primarily taught with the russian style of play. Dima plays this way because of his background with russian coaching and many players from Europe who have trained under these coaches do this as well. Perhaps the most prominent player in the pro tour to be successful at this is Zhang Jike. His backhand is so strong that he would prefer to instigate the attack when returning service. Wang Hao is also known to do this when he's playing a bit more passive.

The FH flick should always be the stronger of the two attacks, but without the use of the wrist it's far easier to detect than a BH flick which can direct the ball into either corner from just about any position on the table.

I heard some players in Hungary or Romania did this first, in the 80's or something like that. Someone mentioned it on another forum I believe, I could be totally wrong though.

My theory on why it's suddenly popular in recent years: the wristy motion of reverse penhold gives you a ton of spin on the backhand. I'm a shakehand player, but for fun sometimes we'll play penhold for a laugh. I'm absolutely horrible at it, but even *I* can get incredible amounts of spin doing reverse backhands because it's so easy to use your full wrist motion.

So my guess is the Chinese team adapted that idea with the shakehand, and that's why you see the most famous (and best) example in Zhang Jike, not to mention the rest of the shakehanders on the team. You can rotate your wrist further back on the backhand for more speed and spin, versus the forehand where you can only rotate back a fraction. And I think the technique popularized from there. But I stopped paying attention to pro TT and just started watching again over a year ago so I could be totally wrong.

The effectiveness is not only in more spin and speed, but you can use the exact same technique on short and long balls. You can misread the depth and still take the same shot. More room for error and less decisions to make in a what's already a very quick game.

I've worked on the shot since January and it's worked wonders for me. I easily win the majority of points where I'm able to use the shot. And now most people serve towards my forehand side to avoid it so I'm experimenting on using it on the forehand side as well. In the long run I think I'd rather be more balanced and work on my forehand flick but in the short term I'm having fun trying it out.

If u're talking about short balls, even Waldner liked to receive using BH from the FH side especially when playing against left-handers. Recently though, the BH over-the-table loop is much more stable than the FH flick, hence it's popularity in dealing with FH short balls.

If you're talking about long balls, it is still a pretty bad idea to use your BH loop from the FH side, unless you're Dimitrij Ovtcharov, whose BH loop is probably more powerful than the FH of some top players like Kenta and Mizutani. This is because it leaves your extreme BH corner really exposed.

Hello It is back hand or fore hand in match it is important to score a point
Here we are advised not to play back hand in fore hand because we are not perfect player when we begin because our foot work may go wrong and can be trapped and waste our time in picking up ball which we miss so I feel we should play to our coaches instructions . But in matches we should score a point Happily no matter what we play

I think Spooky was referring to the BH flick that's been used on the forehand court which is against the saying "never use your BH on your FH side." For the most part it is true, but on returning short services or even medium ones you could choose to flick with the backhand instead of the forehand because it's far more deceptive.

To those of you who believe the BH flick has more speed and spin than the forehand flick I would argue that speed is not necessarily true. I'm fairly sure that you'll get more spin, but speed should always be more so on the forehand. Look at Ma Long's FH flick. It's way faster than ZJK's BH flick.

Mr. RicharD said:

I think Spooky was referring to the BH flick that's been used on the forehand court which is against the saying "never use your BH on your FH side." For the most part it is true, but on returning short services or even medium ones you could choose to flick with the backhand instead of the forehand because it's far more deceptive.

To those of you who believe the BH flick has more speed and spin than the forehand flick I would argue that speed is not necessarily true. I'm fairly sure that you'll get more spin, but speed should always be more so on the forehand. Look at Ma Long's FH flick. It's way faster than ZJK's BH flick.

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True. On short balls/serves with less spin and enough height FH flick is still a good option.

Mr. RicharD said:

To those of you who believe the BH flick has more speed and spin than the forehand flick I would argue that speed is not necessarily true. I'm fairly sure that you'll get more spin, but speed should always be more so on the forehand. Look at Ma Long's FH flick. It's way faster than ZJK's BH flick.

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Now that I think about it, I'm inclined to agree. Against heavy to medium spin I'll get more speed on the backhand. But against weaker spin I can definitely get more pace on the forehand. So in my experience I'd say the maximum speed possible is on the forehand but I still find, average all my backhand flicks, they are faster in general. At the same time I'm no expert so that's just for my limited abilities.

thepongcast said:

Now that I think about it, I'm inclined to agree. Against heavy to medium spin I'll get more speed on the backhand. But against weaker spin I can definitely get more pace on the forehand. So in my experience I'd say the maximum speed possible is on the forehand but I still find, average all my backhand flicks, they are faster in general. At the same time I'm no expert so that's just for my limited abilities.

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I think Mattenet gets more speed on BH flick too, but that's just insane how he does that sometimes haha.