Korean Amateur J-Penners go at it - feat. Park-PD

Park-PD is a well known youtuber who focuses on old-school J-Pen play. He is Regional Div 4 and under-classified, like many at the top of their division.

Enjoy what an old-school Korean TT club and J-Pen play look like.

Korean City/Regional Div 4 average range of level is TTR1200-1500 or USATT 1500-1800. Some of the top players are higher, but they avoid moving up a level and purposely avoid getting to the finals of singles, so they can be underclassified for the team event.

Park PD's opponent is Div 3, which SHOULD be TTR 1400-1600 or USATT 1700-1900... but this guy is likely 2000 USATT, that is very normal. When I lived in Korea, a certain TT club, which also IRONICALLY wore Orange jerseys, had literally 7 players who were DIv 1 city/Regional level (TTR 1700-1900) but were all classified in Div 3... So if you your club faced them in the Team event 3 vs 3, you would be fielding Div 1 players vs their Div 3 players who were equal level, but getting a 3 pt handicap each game. So you see the gamesmanship the clubs do with their players to win the glory of the team event in city and regional tourneys.

Anyone notice how HOT it is in their club? In July, temps are 35C and rising with 90%+ humidity. Simply Brutal. Electricity costs a LOT of money in Korea. If you actually use an A/C unit, you will exceed certain usage thresholds (pretty easy to do) that makes your cost of electricity 3-4 times what it should cost... so clubs use A/C sparingly, so most Korean TT clubs in summer are a sauna club with TT tables.

I saw the Seo Hyo Young vid explaining the new system to simplify the levels and reduce the number of handicap points given to each other... I might have posted a thread on that. This is being pushed by Ryu Seung Min, we will see how it works. In general, there is always massive opposition to changing anything, I call it the TRC factor - Resistance to Change.

No one was really cnfused about the nuances of National (or also called Open) Division, Regional/City Division, and Club Division... If I said I was Div 2 regional, they pretty much knew my level, and had some ringers very underclassified waiting for me. This new system will initially get a LOT of ringers in lower division to make it near impossible to do anything close to a final unless you are 5 levels underclassified yourself.

I would love to get to Korea and have not for 10 yrs.

Inside each div there will be no handicap, yes.