WTT Star Contender Doha 2022

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This is another weird post. If we wanted to do rankings and China let all its top players play on tour, would Mima Ito be top 10?

Hugo has been #4 as a continental player benefitting from these extra point provisions and often falls short of his ranking though he has wins here and there. Quadri benefits from them as well, though he sometimes shares that benefit with Assar and while he sometimes outperforms his ranking, he sometimes falls short of it as well. Kanak benefits as well, and has defended his ranking multiple times, while also falling short of it on occasion. Bruna and Lily, same thing, sometimes falls short, but often benefits. But Adriana is clearly better than Lily and Bruna to me, I don't think about it anymore. Adriana will continue to get better as she plays against more good players on a consistent basis.

What makes this discussion all the more weird is that Diaz lost to Kihaara at 13, 10 and 9. The way you describe it, someone would think it was 3-0 with scores at 3,4 and 5.

Kihaara has played in higher level competitions than Diaz almost all her life and was a Japanese Champs runner up a few years ago and has been on the world stage for doubles. Other than maybe Polcanova, none of the top European ladies would be similarly competitive against Kihaara. Yet this is the reason why Diaz is not top 10?

Your opinion is okay. To me, it is obvious that when it comes to players outside Asia, Diaz is at the very top of that group. That is why to me it was obvious that since she plays Asian ladies reasonably well, that she can be top 10 in ranking. Top 10 in ranking doesn't mean that one is top 10 in *strength* all the time. But for me, if Diaz played in Europe, she could be the best lady player in Europe and that is enough. She is also young (21) so there is some development left. She is a very good player and she trains in Asia a lot, though she still has to get more and more competitive exposure which will continue to come with maturity and experience. Over time, her career trajectory will look more and more like Quadri, time permitting (with women, you never know).

i forgot Hugo, how could I ? yes Hugo deserves a good ranking, he's very consistent. he is RC 14

anyway, personally i think RatingsCentral gives a more accurate picture of the real strength of a given player than ITTF. its pure maths. The main complaint RC doesn't take into account the logic of overweighting the more important competitions and a win/loss against a given a player in a simple WTT open gets same effect than a win/loss against the same player at WTTC or Olympics.

and I agree also with u, Mima Ito would struggle to be top10, with all Chinese, but RC still gives her the 8th rank.

---
seriously if you are into sportsbetting, i strongly advise you to look at RC and not ITTF rankings, and i think that says it all.

 
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i forgot Hugo, how could I ? yes Hugo deserves a good ranking, he's very consistent. he is RC 14

anyway, personally i think RatingsCentral gives a more accurate picture of the real strength of a given player than ITTF. its pure maths. The main complaint RC doesn't take into account the logic of overweighting the more important competitions and a win/loss against a given a player in a simple WTT open gets same effect than a win/loss against the same player at WTTC or Olympics.

and I agree also with u, Mima Ito would struggle to be top10, with all Chinese, but RC still gives her the 8th rank.

---
seriously if you are into sportsbetting, i strongly advise you to look at RC and not ITTF rankings, and i think that says it all.

I'm not so sure it's true that Mima Ito would struggle to be in top 10 even with all Chinese. Outside of China's top 4, it's not clear she would necessarily lose to the others. If you go on ITTF's site and check out player's matches for Mima Ito, it shows she's had success against LSW, Fan Siqi, Qian Tianyi (whom she beat twice). Okay, I'll give you CXT, but her record outside the big 4 and CXT has actually been pretty good. No doubt she's got a lot to work to do being the focus of the CNT (and now her compatriots), but can't push her outta the top 10 just yet 😁

 
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i forgot Hugo, how could I ? yes Hugo deserves a good ranking, he's very consistent. he is RC 14

anyway, personally i think RatingsCentral gives a more accurate picture of the real strength of a given player than ITTF. its pure maths. The main complaint RC doesn't take into account the logic of overweighting the more important competitions and a win/loss against a given a player in a simple WTT open gets same effect than a win/loss against the same player at WTTC or Olympics.

and I agree also with u, Mima Ito would struggle to be top10, with all Chinese, but RC still gives her the 8th rank.

---
seriously if you are into sportsbetting, i strongly advise you to look at RC and not ITTF rankings, and i think that says it all.

Sure, ITTF rankings are not perfect measures of strength, but we had that debate years ago about the value of encouraging participation with the current system and some of the merits of strength based ELO rankings (old system) vs points based tournament rankings (new system). Even with all the debate, I suspect few people would say that the top 3 players in the new system are not the top 3 players in the world, even if one can argue with things here and there. The continental issues in the new system are known and partly be design and they are even worse than you make out (Adriana will get points for winning her continental cup and then get points for playing in the World Cup, points that are not accessible to other players from her continent who didn't make the World Cup). But there are some positive values in encouraging continental competition even if the strength measures are distorted. I mean look at the last WTTC - if they had split the Chinese by strength into the draw like the women's team managed to do but the men's team could not, do you think Truls would have gotten to the finals?

The other thing is that sometimes, the performance based ranking beats the strength-based ranking when they do not agree. Quadri is an example of this. Many of the Chinese players would have ratings central rankings internally that are higher than Quadri. After all, he loses quite a few league and ITTF matches (see Lim Junghoon, who is also clearly strong).

For me, the ranking is the ranking. Here were my comments on mytt when the pairing came out of Kihaara and Diaz:

"Kihara is maybe the top 5 in Japan and she is pretty much guaranteed to beat #1 in North America. Hoping Diaz proves me wrong."

So no, I don't confuse strength with ranking. They are separate things. But I don't think Bruna or Lily will be top 10 in ranking. They don't do half as many things as well as Diaz does. When I said Diaz would be top 10, I was combining all the factors to say this. Many non-Asians look completely clueless when playing Asians. Diaz is not one of them and she has the capacity to improve.

 

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If NL is talking about top 10 WR and Takkyu about actual best ten players in the world then no wonder the conversation is useless except to kill time between sessions in Doha.

Unless you think another woman will take the continental champs away from Adriana then she has a good chance to stay in the top 10. That's the system.

If your point is that more than ten asian women are stronger than Diaz, well of course. What else is new?
 
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If NL is talking about top 10 WR and Takkyu about actual best ten players in the world then no wonder the conversation is useless except to kill time between sessions in Doha.

Unless you think another woman will take the continental champs away from Adriana then she has a good chance to stay in the top 10. That's the system.

If your point is that more than ten asian women are stronger than Diaz, well of course. What else is new?

Adriana Diaz is obviously a very good player as are Kasumi (#7), DHK (#8), FTW (#9), but staying in the top 10 for them is next to impossible if China continues to play players like CXT, LSW, Kuai Man, Fan Siqi, Zhang Rui, QTY. And I even think Kihara will make a run at the top 10.

 
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well i'm saying, like on the stock market, her WR9 has all of it priced in. She can't get better than #1 on her continent.
Not only she's been well seeded, she's had rather lucky draws in recent big tournaments. looking at recent tournaments that ive listed, the highest ITTF rank player she won was CHEN SY WR27,
i can't remember whats her best career win, but i can't remember her winning even a WR16 player, perhaps even WR20

among her losses, YANG Xiaoxin WR20, ZENG Jian WR63
she also lost FAN Siqi WR52 ok she's Chinese but young and not yet invincible. FAN Siqi lost 2-3 to Miyu KATO in this tournament.

Lily ZHANG, another continental champ, dropped to WR36 but at least she can pride herself of a big win against Miu HIRANO and a 4th place finish at the World Cup. It now appears likely that will stay her best career performance. Her drop in rankings might reflect a drop of motivation. I don't recall Lily entering in top10 WR but thats a more memorable achievement IMO.

My reasoning is that given her true strength, and more participation from Chinese in WTT tournaments + end of Covid, Adriana WR will converge with her RC, and closer from a Lily ZHANG, than a DOO HoiKem. wanna bet ? remind me in 1 year....
 
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I'm not so sure it's true that Mima Ito would struggle to be in top 10 even with all Chinese. Outside of China's top 4, it's not clear she would necessarily lose to the others. If you go on ITTF's site and check out player's matches for Mima Ito, it shows she's had success against LSW, Fan Siqi, Qian Tianyi (whom she beat twice). Okay, I'll give you CXT, but her record outside the big 4 and CXT has actually been pretty good. No doubt she's got a lot to work to do being the focus of the CNT (and now her compatriots), but can't push her outta the top 10 just yet 😁

agreed, thats why shes RC 8 , can't complain. Just hope she can keep it or even improve again. Its tough, top Chinese seem not to be bothered anymore by her game. I can see very well that Mima keeps evolving and for example, she's been trying a lot of new serves this year, but it looks like its more confusing herself than her opponents.

 
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Another monkey in the wrench to consider is that the Initial Points is currently set at 20% the December 2020 points but will be revised lower and the temporary 16 month window (normally 12 month) is also stated to be revised before May 1. Right now, those initial points make up the bulk of a lot of players' points.
 
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well i'm saying, like on the stock market, her WR9 has all of it priced in. She can't get better than #1 on her continent.
Not only she's been well seeded, she's had rather lucky draws in recent big tournaments. looking at recent tournaments that ive listed, the highest ITTF rank player she won was CHEN SY WR27,
i can't remember whats her best career win, but i can't remember her winning even a WR16 player, perhaps even WR20

among her losses, YANG Xiaoxin WR20, ZENG Jian WR63
she also lost FAN Siqi WR52 ok she's Chinese but young and not yet invincible. FAN Siqi lost 2-3 to Miyu KATO in this tournament.

Lily ZHANG, another continental champ, dropped to WR36 but at least she can pride herself of a big win against Miu HIRANO and a 4th place finish at the World Cup. It now appears likely that will stay her best career performance. Her drop in rankings might reflect a drop of motivation. I don't recall Lily entering in top10 WR but thats a more memorable achievement IMO.

My reasoning is that given her true strength, and more participation from Chinese in WTT tournaments + end of Covid, Adriana WR will converge with her RC, and closer from a Lily ZHANG, than a DOO HoiKem. wanna bet ? remind me in 1 year....
Okay. 1 year later, we can discuss,
 
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The only one valid ranking system is the ELO one, as it has been introduced in Chess first, an individual sport too, it should be introduced in any other sports like Tennis or Table Tennis. what we see here is the limits of the WTT system modeled on the ATP one. We all know it's unfair.

When our french-japanese friend here Takkyu complaints about the Continental tournaments giving too much free points, how about talking about Alexis Lebrun who only jumped 5 places from 359 to 354 this week ? He's beaten top 50 guys, got to a semi of a Contender and this is all that he gets.

About Cheng I.C., Yuan J.N. has proven that you can still be competitive at 36 and even beat way younger players like ... Mima Ito. Despite being ranked way over the top 50 at that time.

Is the ranking system wrong ? of course it is.

Is it favoring the "litlle TT nations"? of course, cos' Mr Liu G.L. does not want to be seen has a dictator, even if all the WTT partners and sponsors are actually chinese, even if the HQ is in Singapore, the kind of chinese riviera or cote d'azur. It's like living in Saint Tropez for them. They're already renaming the western players in the chinese tradition: Alexandre Cassin is now Alexandre C., Alvaro Robles is now Alvaro R. when they play in doubles.

If it was an ELO rating system, you would see the members of the CNT all ranked in the TOP 100 at least, that would mean at least 50% of the rankings would be owned by China. You would see only chinese players entering the draws, and as the PRC takes 65% of their chinese players gains, I let you imagine what the ITTF would do, or the German federation....

...

Wait

They already tried, and we all know what happened.

Don't expect anything reliable from the WTT as it is ruled by China.
 
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Just a view on the FIDE ELO rankings: 39 players in the TOP 100 are from ex Soviet Union Republics. 21 from Russia only! and nobody complains.

If you want a faithful representation of what a sport ranking should be, there you get it:
https://ratings.fide.com/top_lists.phtml
 
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Obviously the world ranking doesn't reflect true strength especially with the women.

There probably would be 30 chinese in the women top50 but they are not sent to international tournaments to collect points.
 
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Adriana Diaz is obviously a very good player as are Kasumi (#7), DHK (#8), FTW (#9), but staying in the top 10 for them is next to impossible if China continues to play players like CXT, LSW, Kuai Man, Fan Siqi, Zhang Rui, QTY. And I even think Kihara will make a run at the top 10.

Actually, with her continental points, not really for Adriana. And with her quality of play, all she has to be is roughly a top 20 player by strength, which she obviously would be if she played in Europe. While Kihara is young and will improve, I think Adriana played very well against her. My main point here is that Adriana is not so far below DHK etc. right now that she shouldn't be able to beat some of them at some point in the future. Of course, I could be entirely wrong about this, so time will tell.

 
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The only one valid ranking system is the ELO one, as it has been introduced in Chess first, an individual sport too, it should be introduced in any other sports like Tennis or Table Tennis. what we see here is the limits of the WTT system modeled on the ATP one. We all know it's unfair.

When our french-japanese friend here Takkyu complaints about the Continental tournaments giving too much free points, how about talking about Alexis Lebrun who only jumped 5 places from 359 to 354 this week ? He's beaten top 50 guys, got to a semi of a Contender and this is all that he gets.

About Cheng I.C., Yuan J.N. has proven that you can still be competitive at 36 and even beat way younger players like ... Mima Ito. Despite being ranked way over the top 50 at that time.

Is the ranking system wrong ? of course it is.

Is it favoring the "litlle TT nations"? of course, cos' Mr Liu G.L. does not want to be seen has a dictator, even if all the WTT partners and sponsors are actually chinese, even if the HQ is in Singapore, the kind of chinese riviera or cote d'azur. It's like living in Saint Tropez for them. They're already renaming the western players in the chinese tradition: Alexandre Cassin is now Alexandre C., Alvaro Robles is now Alvaro R. when they play in doubles.

If it was an ELO rating system, you would see the members of the CNT all ranked in the TOP 100 at least, that would mean at least 50% of the rankings would be owned by China. You would see only chinese players entering the draws, and as the PRC takes 65% of their chinese players gains, I let you imagine what the ITTF would do, or the German federation....

...

Wait

They already tried, and we all know what happened.

Don't expect anything reliable from the WTT as it is ruled by China.

We have discussed these issues extensively in the past - you can search for the threads if you want to learn why these are not the whole story. Chess to introduce excitement and randomness has largely resorted to shorter and shorter time limits (sound familiar to anyone?) Measuring player strength accurately is not everything.
 
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Just a view on the FIDE ELO rankings: 39 players in the TOP 100 are from ex Soviet Union Republics. 21 from Russia only! and nobody complains.

If you want a faithful representation of what a sport ranking should be, there you get it:
https://ratings.fide.com/top_lists.phtml

Nobody cares about chess. An elo rating might be more objective but it leads to the chinese hiding their players, just training all year and then killing the euros at the worlds.

The new system forces the Chinese to play more tournaments (similar to tennis world ranking) and give the others a chance to adjust.

So far the success is limited but at least the second fiddle chinese sometimes lose to non chinese.

Table tennis needs a world tour like tennis with all the stars showing up regularly.

 
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The only one valid ranking system is the ELO one, as it has been introduced in Chess first, an individual sport too, it should be introduced in any other sports like Tennis or Table Tennis. what we see here is the limits of the WTT system modeled on the ATP one. We all know it's unfair.

When our french-japanese friend here Takkyu complaints about the Continental tournaments giving too much free points, how about talking about Alexis Lebrun who only jumped 5 places from 359 to 354 this week ? He's beaten top 50 guys, got to a semi of a Contender and this is all that he gets.

About Cheng I.C., Yuan J.N. has proven that you can still be competitive at 36 and even beat way younger players like ... Mima Ito. Despite being ranked way over the top 50 at that time.

Is the ranking system wrong ? of course it is.

Is it favoring the "litlle TT nations"? of course, cos' Mr Liu G.L. does not want to be seen has a dictator, even if all the WTT partners and sponsors are actually chinese, even if the HQ is in Singapore, the kind of chinese riviera or cote d'azur. It's like living in Saint Tropez for them. They're already renaming the western players in the chinese tradition: Alexandre Cassin is now Alexandre C., Alvaro Robles is now Alvaro R. when they play in doubles.

If it was an ELO rating system, you would see the members of the CNT all ranked in the TOP 100 at least, that would mean at least 50% of the rankings would be owned by China. You would see only chinese players entering the draws, and as the PRC takes 65% of their chinese players gains, I let you imagine what the ITTF would do, or the German federation....

...

Wait

They already tried, and we all know what happened.

Don't expect anything reliable from the WTT as it is ruled by China.

well rightly RatingsCentral says currently the highest rated French player is Alexis Lebrun ranked 39, Gauzy is 66 and Lebesson 72. I say its fairly accurate
Please note that RC also gives a STD error, so using the width of the STD, you can see how they see their margin of error in their estimate (a classic statistical tool). ofc the deeper you go in the rankings, the wider the error in terms of # of rank positions. Ranking should naturally be seen with a log scale.

I agree with other comments that Tour points have merits, its encouraging players to show up in tournaments, especially the more important ones. This has coincided with seeing more Chinese players but not sure this is the cause. If you like to see more Chinese players, complain to WTT which impose quotas of participations per country to all their events. Not only the Chinese but Japanese (and maybe Koreans etc...) are not happy about that. They have many players who'd like to participate more often. The Japanese has condemned it and thats why they changed their methods of selecting players for world events, taking more into consideration internal trials (PS. i don't think they got it right for their internal point system), just like Chinese and Koreans have been doing.

So Tour points are maybe necessary, they are the ones who should be used for determining who plays in WTT tour finals at the end of the year, but I don't think they should be used for seeding for ALL events. remember Wimbledon does their own seedings regardless of ATP point rankings ? And furthermore, let's not pretend tour points are the accurate description of players strengths, RatingsCentral is. I do remember there used to be a time when both a tour point system and ELO type ranking were used in Tennis.

i'm really tired when Bobrow or other commentators say for example, we have a HUUUUGE upset because LIU Dingshuo WR 120 beats Quadri ARUNA WR14 at Oman. According to RC, LDS is 18 and ARUNA 30 and thats how you should bet at the bookies.

Its also really a pity MA Long and XU Xin couldn't make it to Houston because of quotas. ITTF should at least have given MA Long an invitation, really a shame.

 
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Actually, with her continental points, not really for Adriana. And with her quality of play, all she has to be is roughly a top 20 player by strength, which she obviously would be if she played in Europe. While Kihara is young and will improve, I think Adriana played very well against her. My main point here is that Adriana is not so far below DHK etc. right now that she shouldn't be able to beat some of them at some point in the future. Of course, I could be entirely wrong about this, so time will tell.

It's hard to say. I don't think the Continental advantage is that insurmountable. Already we've seen in the Contender Doha event that WR#8-#13 got knocked out early even before the QF. I can see someone like LSW or CXT winning or at least making the Finals of one or more Star Contender events. The point differential between Star Contender Winner (600 pts) vs. say R16 (55 pts) makes up for 1 of the Continental tournament advantages. But I really don't know if that's a goal for the CNT. The Feeder and Contender in Doha was all China and Japan in WS. The current Star Contender is seeing a bit more variety (maybe mental exhaustion of China/Japan playing 3 tournaments in a row?). And then there are names I haven't even mentioned yet like Shin Yubin, Miu Hirano, and X factor Miwa Harimoto whose rise has been meteoric. The level of competition is just really, really high in WS. Whether she remains in the top 10 or not, nothing can take away what Adriana Diaz, the pride of Puerto Rico, has already accomplished.

 
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going back to the tournament, ARUNA is on fire, he's taken his revenge from LIU Dingshuo, and now has beaten ZHAO Zihao.
well you'll see ARUNA's RC rating adjust quickly after those 2 performances against higher rated players...

I have watched ARUNA yet not at this tournament (busy these days), but the previous one, and he has really improved a lot on the BH side, agressive punch/ block style mainly used. He's a beast physically still with one of the most destructive FH. And now he's getting good results, his opponents are getting scared, and he's getting more and more confident ! He's really the in-form player and the one to watch.
 
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I really like Aruna. He once said he will keep playing table tennis until he can't play anymore. What a passion!! Admirable athlete dedicated to a sport 👍 👍 👍

At 33 of age, running around in that range is a challenge. I hope he can keep on performing at that level for long.
 
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