An Article that used Maths to prove that receiving first is an advantage

[Amayzde]

Has anyone ever seen a top chinese player like Ma Long or ZJK to give away the serve?

Yes Ive seen that multiple times, for example in the world cup final Zhang Jike won the toss but he gave the serve to Ma Long

 

[Pnachtwey]

If you read the article carefully, then you'd notice that there are two very important conditions:

1. The assumption that 85% of players who get to 5 first end up winning, from an article in China Sports daily. The article says: "Statistics shows that 85 percent of the players who first reach the five-point mark turn out to win the set". It does not, however, describe the sample size and characteristics (e.g. what applies to 85% of members of the CNT team, or members of all provincial teams, or players who participated in ITTF-sanctioned events, etc most likely does not apply to 100% of mere mortals), so take it with a grain of salt. There is also a saying: "there are lies, damned lies, and statistics".

One can calculate this using probabilities. If one assumes the probability of winning is even then the person who gets to 5 first will win 73 percent of the time. However, the Chinese study probably didn't do the math. Also, the better player will usually get to 5 first and have even a better chance of winning. If there is a better player the probability of winning the point isn't even.

2. All match scores with a difference of 3 or more point are excluded from the probability calculation. In other words, only close matches are considered.

This isn't valid.

Doing the calculations where there is a different probability of winning depending on whether one is serving or receiving is messy unless one assumes the probabilities are the same.