Ma Long is the best player in the world

The current ranking system is fine. stop with the drama already

My opinion is they want to kick out ma Long from cnt after boycott 2017 china open, so they dont let him play tournaments. So sad

Having seen the world championships in belgium last year ( and I know this is not up to date) ma long did not perform like the best player in the world. However, at his best he definitely is. I believe that he may be to inconsistent to be the best in the world but others may disagree. Like others have said, the ranking that ITTF do doesn't give a full perspective of who the best in the world is right now, only us humans can debate on that rather than a system that only covers the leaderboards in general over the last x months. An interesting debate though.

For some reason chinese players are usually ranked lower but in the matches they beat the much higher ranks. I'm guessing because of where they are its hard to play many tournaments so they are usually ranked lower and probably also because top players focus on the big events like WTTC and olympics.

jawien said:

I have no problem with Ma Long being 7th in the current system, but if there was a WTTC, say in a month time. Who would you bet your 1000$ on? Wouldn't you go with good old Ma anyway ...

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I agree with this. WTTC will probably be ML vs FZD again. At some point ML will have played more than 8 World Tour events in the last 12 months. When he gets to choose top 8 results and can drop a few of the weaker performances, he will be either 1 or 2.

And notice, the WR #1 and #2 spots are CNT players. CNT has 4 of the top 10. I don't think the system favors them or the opposite. I think the system favors players who have been more active in the last 12 months. If a player had 20 events to choose from and 12 results were crappy but 8 were first place wins, that player would get a pretty high WR even if all the tournaments he won were ones were CNT did not show up.

So the system can be gamed a little if you play a lot of events. It will reward that. And a player's WR will be lower if they do not play as often. So, it seems that the system is doing what the ITTF intended.

And remember, when Waldner walked into the 1997 WTTC and won the singles event without dropping one game, (some people say "set") he was not ranked number one. He may have been ranked 5th or 7th. Nothing wrong with that.

Here is the Top 10 before the WTTC 1997 from Apr 26-May 5.

1 » 1710 KONG Linghui CHN
2 » 1709 WALDNER Jan-Ove SWE
3 » 1704 LIU Guoliang CHN
4 » 1691 SAMSONOV Vladimir BLR
5 » 1654 KIM Taek Soo KOR
6 » 1648 WANG Tao CHN
7 » 1620 DING Song CHN
8 » 1616 SAIVE Jean-Michel BEL
9 » 1588 ROSSKOPF Jorg GER
10 » 1577 PRIMORAC Zoran CRO

Waldner actually played really bad in the Team event, losing 0-2 to Jean-Philippe Saive and 0-2 to Samsonov. Nonetheless, he beat KLH 2-0 in the QF. In retrospect, people suspected he lay low for the Singles event.

KLH got taken out by Samsonov in the SF in 4 games. OTOH, LGL went through hell in the Rd of 64.

zeio said:

Here is the Top 10 before the WTTC 1997 from Apr 26-May 5.

1 » 1710 KONG Linghui CHN
2 » 1709 WALDNER Jan-Ove SWE
3 » 1704 LIU Guoliang CHN
4 » 1691 SAMSONOV Vladimir BLR
5 » 1654 KIM Taek Soo KOR
6 » 1648 WANG Tao CHN
7 » 1620 DING Song CHN
8 » 1616 SAIVE Jean-Michel BEL
9 » 1588 ROSSKOPF Jorg GER
10 » 1577 PRIMORAC Zoran CRO

Waldner actually played really bad in the Team event, losing 0-2 to Jean-Philippe Saive and 0-2 to Samsonov. Nonetheless, he beat KLH 2-0 in the QF. In retrospect, people suspected he lay low for the Singles event.

KLH got taken out by Samsonov in the SF in 4 games. OTOH, LGL went through hell in the Rd of 64.

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how does that correlate with the topic? ur telling us ma long is laying low ? :O

UpSideDownCarl said:

So the system can be gamed a little if you play a lot of events. It will reward that. And a player's WR will be lower if they do not play as often. So, it seems that the system is doing what the ITTF intended.

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If the system works in a way that we'll have more tournaments like the recent Japan and Korea Open, I'm all for this. It definitely created more randomness and maybe it was needed somehow to stir the CNT dominance a little ...

Btw, I really hope Ma and Xu Xin won't withdraw from Olumuniec this year ; )

We are all inteligent enough to know the difference between the best player and the best ranked player right?

Anyways, I also love the current system as it gives Japanese players more opportunity to play against strong Chinese players even in Challengers.

ttpshot said:

We are all inteligent enough to know the difference between the best player and the best ranked player right ?

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We can find out by starting a for fun only betting thread for each world tour event to see who wins !

TTFrenzy said:

how does that correlate with the topic? ur telling us ma long is laying low ? :O

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He was responding to my statement about Waldner not being ranked number 1 before the 1997 WTTC and winning without dropping a set. In that context, it is a pretty good and comprehensive post. Thanks Zeio. And my memory was way off thinking Waldner was #5.

And my point was that some people get too wrapped up in the numbers. Ma Long can be whatever WR# he is. If he is still the best in Spring 2019, he will likely be a 3x WTTC singles champion.

ML didn't even have to lay low. The fields were among the weakest in 2015 and 2017.

WR#7 Ma Long lost in round of 32 today at Bulgaria Open to Liam Pitchford WR#48

His WR won't go up after this loss.

Pitch should be way higher than 48 - based on his form over the past 3 months. Ranking system is a bit well, confusing is the diplomatic way to put it)

You have to be consistent over a year period of time in world tour events to get your rating up. Same as in other sports, you have to play well the whole season not just for a half or third of a season.

That result still shocks me.

In that match, Games 2-2, score 4-4, off the table rally, Ma from bh corner, 4h counterloop cross court, Liam makes a great bh shot hitting Ma's 4h corner which he doesn't touch, one of the very few points all match won by Liam off the table.