Reverse engineering chinese dominance

Originally Posted by lightspin

China just has a superior training system. It comes at a cost to the players who don't make it but it will produce the best players in the world. The players start young, can play 6-8 hours a day, have great coaching and an abundance of practice partners. No other country can come close when compared to China in those areas. Where I grew up, literally no one within 1 hours driving distance played and if I were willing to travel, I could maybe play a grand total of 4 hours a week. I would have to drive 2 hours one way for mediocre coaching. Even if I wanted to become a serious player as a kid, there was absolutely no way it could have happened as playing time and opportunities would have been so limited. If you look at a lot of the better players outside of China, they have relatives who play so that helps with being able to put in the required practice time as a kid to become good. They also tend to be rich so they can hire lots of coaches to help out with the players development. Many people who turned into good players had live-in coaches.

Fun fact that Oláh Benedek (finnish national champion) when he was a kid every monday travelled 280km and every wednesday 344 km to find suitable training partners and coaches. Respect to his parents.

yup, for me Timo Boll ZLC for myself is Benedek Olah ZLC,
I don't care that I see Timo Boll sign because he propably doesnt know about ZLC existence

advertisement! if you want more powerful bh than Fan Zhendong etc buy Timo Boll ZLC aka Benedek Olah ZLC

We've got a kid in the national youth squad that (as per my understanding) travels by train 1,5h x 2 quite a few times during a normal week to train with Appelgren & CO. Nothing will stop a true enthusiast.