Tactics

says 2023 Certified Organ Donor
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A lot of forum members have seen my play... I play my strengths heavily early and impose them if I can... and sometimes, that kicks me in tha azz.

Limiting opponent is important too, but as NL already said, your shots need to have enough quality to trouble opponent.

At or around the 2000 level, I like to push a lot. Why? I can do a lot of things to my push that will increase opponent's errors or lessen his her consistency. That is an indicator that my push right now has better quality than my attacks in general.

Now, it would be great if I go for heavy flip on receive like you see in videos. I would lose a lot of points right now playing macho man. Still it would be important for me to develop that into a strength... and work on that in practice a lot before I use that more often in matches.

That is a good example of a strategic goal.

Coaches disagree all the time about what strategic goals should be prioritized.

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says 2023 Certified Organ Donor
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Out of all the coaches I see, there is something Next Level gets right consistently that many coaches refuse to consider.

I believe that the player's ability, possibility to develop something, their willingness to develop something, how something would apply to their level and many such matters should receive strong consideration.

So many times I coaches go crazy to demand their players go ape on banana receive at 1300 level or coaches who cannot even spell t-o-p-s-p-I-n try to get a player to play that offensive style vs players with flexible topspin games.

You always see Next Level talk about whether something is level appropriate for a player... whether something would be a net benefit to them worthy to try.

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says The sticky bit is stuck.
says The sticky bit is stuck.
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So if I am weak at returning short topspin serves, you wouldn't serve short topspin serves because there is a better way to win?

In short, yes. After a while I just file your inability with dealing with short top away as uninteresting/unchallenging and stop doiing it. That is of course a weakness of mine, yet it makes me enjoy my matches more. At the expense of not winning some of them, of course, so that “there is a better way to win” may not even be the case. I just don’t obsess over winning that much. Win, lose, no matter, qouth Miyagi (“you play good gsme, earn respect”, I believe that continues, and for me that rings true, vis a vis self-respect.

I also help disabled players train, people with all kinds of limitations. With most of them any short serve is an automatic point — so I don’t serve short, and still have matches that challenge me somehow, and offer something for my sparring partner. It’s not that different, to my mind.
 
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In short, yes. After a while I just file your inability with dealing with short top away as uninteresting/unchallenging and stop doiing it. That is of course a weakness of mine, yet it makes me enjoy my matches more. At the expense of not winning some of them, of course, so that “there is a better way to win” may not even be the case. I just don’t obsess over winning that much. Win, lose, no matter, qouth Miyagi (“you play good gsme, earn respect”, I believe that continues, and for me that rings true, vis a vis self-respect.

I also help disabled players train, people with all kinds of limitations. With most of them any short serve is an automatic point — so I don’t serve short, and still have matches that challenge me somewhere, and offer something for my sparring partner. It’s not that different, to my mind.

I don't believe the rules allow you to serve short to a disabled player.
 
says The sticky bit is stuck.
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I don't believe the rules allow you to serve short to a disabled player.

Well, depends on the disability. Even against wheelchair players you may serve short, as long as the ball leaves the table over the back line. So no Ma Lin ghost serve, and no angular serves dropping of the side.
 
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Well, depends on the disability. Even against wheelchair players you may serve short, as long as the ball leaves the table over the back line. So no Ma Lin ghost serve, and no angular serves dropping of the side.


Makes sense. I have a lot to learn about the rules for disabled play.
 
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Makes sense. I have a lot to learn about the rules for disabled play.

I sometimes train with a girl who has lost one arm. The rules says that she can serve "on a best effort basis" which means that she throws up the ball with the hand that she also holds her racket with. Takes some getting used to as the throw quite often is 1-2 cm. She gets a lot of grief during tournaments as most people are not aware of the rules.
 
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I sometimes train with a girl who has lost one arm. The rules says that she can serve "on a best effort basis" which means that she throws up the ball with the hand that she also holds her racket with. Takes some getting used to as the throw quite often is 1-2 cm. She gets a lot of grief during tournaments as most people are not aware of the rules.
I actually took the USATT club umpire exam. I passed but some of the questions I got wrong were related to Paralympic play. It is hard to be intuitive about what one doesn't regularly experience.
 
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I sometimes train with a girl who has lost one arm. The rules says that she can serve "on a best effort basis" which means that she throws up the ball with the hand that she also holds her racket with. Takes some getting used to as the throw quite often is 1-2 cm. She gets a lot of grief during tournaments as most people are not aware of the rules.

Exactly. Some players I practice with have suffered oxygen deficiency at birth, with brain development issues as a consequence. In play they’re doing ok, but left-right coordination is hampered. Serve toss is an issue, the best they can manage is serving out of hand.

Others have suffered polio when young (**** you, antivaxers! entirely avoidable and may you swallow your tongue and choke on it) and have very limited motoric skills. Again, the serve toss is the killer.

There are several disability categories. We try to integrate these players as much as we can, and the bitching and moaning from the non-disabled is remarkably mild. Among the disabled, the bickering about the proper leeway can be ruthless, though.

I guess this is wildly offtopic, sorry for that.
 
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Makes sense. I have a lot to learn about the rules for disabled play.

I just checked the ITTF handbook for match officials, and it's a bit more subtle than I wrote. A service can exit the sidelines after, but not after the first bounce:


  • If the receiver is in a wheelchair due to a physical disability, the rally is a let if the ball comes to rest on the receiver’s court, or after touching the receiver’s court returns in the direction of the net, or, in singles, leaves the receiver’s court after touching it by either of the sidelines. This is because a player in a wheelchair, by definition, is restricted in the extent of his or her ability to stretch and a service returning towards the net or going out from the sidelines is regarded as unfair. The ball can cross the sideline after one or more bounces. However,in singles play and where the ball is travelling towards the side line, if the receiver strikes the ball before it crosses a sideline or takes a second bounce on his or her side of the playing surface, the service is considered good and no let is called.
 
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I think you have to realistically stick to your strongest shots while trying not to play into the opponents strengths. It is a balance but theres no point tying to perform a shot/tactic that isn't your strongest skill set because you know your opponent is weak against it as you will probably just cancel each other out if that makes sense.

Lately I have been trying something Lula mentioned to me a while back in a similar themed topic – of using all your serves in the first match. My serves aren't my best strength though I have been working on them. It really helps in few ways – firstly because it puts the opponent on the back foot - they focus on receives and the variation rather than attacking you. But secondly, if you do it right at the start, the rest of the team see your serves as a strong point a become more passive with them if they see a teammate struggle with them. (obviously this is more league focused). But as soon as you can build any hesitation or unpredictability into an opponents mindset your halfway there.
 
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My response is within context as sud79 stated,
"
" If you're young and pushing to improve high much higher level of aspirations to place high in leagues and/or travel around to varying tournaments and place well, then I would say "Work on the shots you should be playing and try to improve. You might take a higher % of losses now but it'll be good for you in the long run."
Unless, he is allowed to make suggestions like that and I am not? Or you did not read the responses of other posters that opens and branches to related topics about tactics? Makes me. Wonder too.

QUOTE=UpSideDownCarl;285496]This does make me wonder. Did Yogi read any of the thread? Or just the title to make this comment?[/QUOTE]
 
says Spin and more spin.
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My response is within context as sud79 stated,
"
" If you're young and pushing to improve high much higher level of aspirations to place high in leagues and/or travel around to varying tournaments and place well, then I would say "Work on the shots you should be playing and try to improve. You might take a higher % of losses now but it'll be good for you in the long run."
Unless, he is allowed to make suggestions like that and I am not? Or you did not read the responses of other posters that opens and branches to related topics about tactics? Makes me. Wonder too.

It is worth you explaining yourself. Your comment seemed to come out of nowhere and did not seem connected to any of what came before it. Quoting or explaining why you are saying what you say can help.

Seeing as your comment did not seem relevant to any of what I read, you just blurting out one sentence that had nothing to do with any of the preceding posts made it seem quite random. You explaining why you said it in the post I have quoted was worth doing.

And given the fact that there are 6 posts after the post by Suds and before yours, and some of them go into decent detail on the post by Suds and some talk of other issues of tactics, wouldn't it be wise to put your comment in context so it does not seem like some random statement apropos of nothing.
 
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I dunno why you are picking on me. Other posts from previous threads have derailments that are out of topic either intentional or non intentional by posters, you let them slide.


QUOTE=UpSideDownCarl;285681]It is worth you explaining yourself. Your comment seemed to come out of nowhere and did not seem connected to any of what came before it. Quoting or explaining why you are saying what you say can help.

Seeing as your comment did not seem relevant to any of what I read, you just blurting out one sentence that had nothing to do with any of the preceding posts made it seem quite random. You explaining why you said it in the post I have quoted was worth doing.

And given the fact that there are 6 posts after the post by Suds and before yours, and some of them go into decent detail on the post by Suds and some talk of other issues of tactics, wouldn't it be wise to put your comment in context so it does not seem like some random statement apropos of nothing.[/QUOTE]
 
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I dunno why you are picking on me. Other posts from previous threads have derailments that are out of topic either intentional or non intentional by posters, you let them slide.

Yogi, you are one of the top posters on the site. I expect more from you than some of the silly off topic stuff that some people post.

BTW: do you know how and why, when you try to quote people, so often it does not come out in a quote bubble how it should?
 
says Spin and more spin.
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I do not know why ae i have experienced the same thing and that is the reason why i do not use the quote option sometimes.

Ah. Okay. Well, lets make it so you know. Because, then, this will make it so you can quote people.

In most of the posts where you try to quote, but it does not turn into a quote bubble, what I see is something like this:

QUOTE=UpSideDownCarl;285681] and then a body of text. And then this: [/QUOTE]

If I add this bracket: [ before the word quote in QUOTE=UpSideDownCarl;285681], that would do this:

and then a body of text. And then this:

I just cut and pasted the line above and added that bracket before the quote command that says my username.

Somehow, when you quote, you delete the first bracket which disables the quote bubble because the code is not complete.

If you went back and edited either of your posts where you tried to quote me, and added this: [

and added it right before the word QUOTE where it is missing, both of those would turn into quote bubbles. :)

This is the code to end the bubble: [/quote] This is the code to open the bubble:
{note: the word quote does not have to be capitalized even though it will be when you click the link to quote someone.}

This is what happens if the code to open is first and the code to end comes second (I put a :) in between them so there would be some text):

Maybe that is why I have been having trouble understanding what you are referring to in some of your posts. Hope this is helpful and sorry to have hijacked the thread for this.
 
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