Videos on new balls

The forum member named Debater at OOAK forum plays at Preston Table Tennis Association in the UK. Outside of the ITTF itself, he has probably done more testing of the new balls than anyone, and he has found very clever ways to do it without spending a ton of money to do it. He is also really good at making videos, and he has developed a whole series of them about the properties of the the new balls. Along the line he has had several conversations with Dr. Kueneth of ITTF, and Haggis (in Australia) and I (in the US) have also been consulting with him some, and have made suggestions as to the things we need to know and test for. However, this is 99.999% his work. I really hope you will watch these. He has no axe to grind, and this is the most fair minded and fact-based assessment you are likely to find anywhere.

So far, the videos show his comparisons of the Joola celluloid ball with the Joola 40+ Plastic. The latter is a good example of the type of Chinese seamed ball that are being used by ITTF (which is unfortunate in my opinion, since I believe seamless balls are better, as are Nittaku Premium Japan 40+). Everything he is reporting here is also consistent with my own experience, and the fact is, all of the Chinese seamed balls have the characteristics he is describing here.

Here are the first four.

A couple of comments about the third video above which, I think has a lot of interesting information. I can compare the seamless Chinese ball into this discussion since I have played with it a lot (as well as with Joola 40+).

(1) Seamless balls (ITTF-approved XSF) are even rougher on their surface then Joola 40+. This is quite likely to affect their speed and spin through the air and their bounce off the table, and it may explain some of the extra wear I am seeing on my rubber these days.

(2) Seamless balls are also more malleable (more like celluloid). Not only does this potentially affect durability, I also think the phenomenon also explains the lower bounce of the Chinese seamed balls like Joola 40+. XSF balls actually bounce higher than celluloid (a little) and they do not have durability problems.

The one minor weakness in Debater's video is his use of maximum range to estimate of consistency (it was mainly an issue with his data on celluloid balls). It would have been better to use variance or interquartile range so as to avoid the possibility that the result was skewed by a single outlier ball. But that is a minor point. The fact is that the plastic seamless balls are very consistent, that was quite clear from his results (and my experience). Consistently low!!! And that is a problem IMHO. Hopefully they will improve that. Debater's next videos will deal with some of the consequences of that and he will have interesting and very thoughtful things to say about it.

No, not all plastic balls. All seamed Chinese balls. The XSF balls actually bounce a little higher than celluloid (they are made from what is an obviously different material than seamed polyballs). And the Nittaku Japan 40+ (not the same as the Nittaku SHA 40+) is almost exactly like celluloid, and is also made from what is obviously different material than Joola or DHS and the others. It is obvious from just visual inspection. I find the Nittaku Japan and XSF balls much easier and nicer to play with for this reason.