Daily Table Tennis Chit Chat

[JeffM]

My prize from NextLevel's competition has arrived! Thank you




Does anyone have any suggestion as to how to remove the old glue?

 

[42andbackpains]

My prize from NextLevel's competition has arrived! Thank you

View attachment 15421
View attachment 15422

Does anyone have any suggestion as to how to remove the old glue?

1.My coach uses a old sheet of rubber and use the back side sponge to rub off the old glue. This works pretty well.
2.Just rub it with your fingers, but it will take a long time. And may cause bodily harm...lol
3.Lastly, use fine grit sandpaper to sand it off if you are in a rush.

 

[suds79]

yeah just have to wear down those fingers.

This is why i love rubber cement. Nothing left over on the blade or sponge when you're done.

Sure it's not ITTF legal but i don't play in any ITTF events anyways. (the events around here that I play in are non-sanctioned) I also kinda like it because I think of it as a very mild, mild booster ever so slightly expanding & softening the sponge. And lastly, if I did want to play in an ITTF event, if I glued say a few days before the event or more, by then it'd pass any test.

The only thing rubber cement can't do is glue OX sheets of something unless the base sheet is really, really thick. For those I have to go to regular TT glue.

 

[NextLevel]

yeah just have to wear down those fingers.

This is why i love rubber cement. Nothing left over on the blade or sponge when you're done.

Sure it's not ITTF legal but i don't play in any ITTF events anyways. (the events around here that I play in are non-sanctioned) I also kinda like it because I think of it as a very mild, mild booster ever so slightly expanding & softening the sponge. And lastly, if I did want to play in an ITTF event, if I glued say a few days before the event or more, by then it'd pass any test.

The only thing rubber cement can't do is glue OX sheets of something unless the base sheet is really, really thick. For those I have to go to regular TT glue.

I would blame the blade more than the glue but that's me. I used my hands like 42abp recommended for a long time. On another blade of the same type, the outer ply chipped off.

I have seen rubber cement do the same thing to a Gergely. But that was because the rubber wasn't changes for a long time.

 

[Suga D]

GGGrrrr.....i just gave myself a blister rubbing glue off these new ESN rubbers....

Sorry to hear that. Next time try pouring a drop of oil first. Wait a minute to let it react and then see how it comes off with ease.

 

[Der_Echte]

Okay guys here it is. My match with my training partner Ben who beats me 95% of the time and I'd like to change that. So please tell me your general overall impressions or analysis or tell me specific stuff. like "on this point, don't do this. He wins those style of points. etc" Can be broad or specific.

Thank you to any of you who have the time to contribute.

Little background info. Ben is 9 years younger than me. I'm 39 and have a tricky right knee that is healthy (don't let the support fool you) but is prone to tendentious. That's why i wear it and it can flare up if I push it too hard... Key point everybody. Stretch & work out.

Steve,

Instead of analyzing what YOU do well and bad... I give you a few easy to see things from the vid about Ben... then give a few suggestions on how to exploit them to your advantage... that will give you a better point to point matchup and a better chance to win points. You are already capable of winning points and games vs him, but you know that already. You can think and make some more conclusions yourself on approach as well.

Here are some of the things Ben is doing that does not help him. I list a few of his real consistent things too, so you can avoid them.

- He is very inconsistent to attack a ball to his FH where he has to take a 2-3 foot step. He was less than 50% there.

- He is very BH ready. Look at his feet positioning on the vid, hardly ever open stance and he commit to a BH stance even in the FH corner.

- He does very well vs a slightly high ball middle depth of table on BH or middle... avoid giving him those.

- Ben does not block a slow, spinny topspin. He was less than 10% success on those.

- Ben is almost ALWAYS unprepared to continue the point if you block his fast topspin shots, whether you used inverted Traditional BH block or used your pips or used you FH block. When you blocked his fast topspin, you won 90% of those points.

- Ben serves long almost EVERY serve, so there is no variation on depth, just on spin and direction and pace. He is not using every possible variation method.

- Ben plays very upright, sometimes this makes it hard for him to take a step quickly when needed

*** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** ***

I think that is enough for you to work with right now.

To keep it simple, here are THREE things you can do that will swing the odds in your favor right now without doing anything you are not already capable of right now. if you can do these three things well, you should win vs him 11-8 on average.

- Serve short or halflong heavy underspin, get a long underspin, and open real heavy spin slow loop, either deep or just past net placement.

- Push his serve or his push from your shot or serve... push it OFF THE BOUNCE to his FH where he needs to take a step, but not to his extreme wide FH. Maybe push it off the bounce to his middle. Allow him to attack, he will be less than 50% landing rate. RELAX and WAIT for his shot. Block it off the bounce with a soft hand ANYWHERE, but if you can, block it to wherever he has to take a step... he will not be ready to continue the point. IF his pushes your push, this is a PRIME chance to open with heavy spin. He will almost always block it out long. You get it both ways with this approach.

- Stay close to the table, RELAX, and do not try to blast shots, unless the ball is high and an easy pick hit. Be patient, push to his weak zones like mentioned above and do not try to be macho-man attacker unless it is clearly there, even then, pick and choose your chances, but you really should prefer to spin first and ask questions later.

*** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** ***

I will list a few STRATEGIC things you should consider to work on to make your life easier down the road.

- SERVING... your serves do not have a lot of variation, they are all long, so you are already missing 1/4 of the possible variation already. Your service motion is SO LONG... that is nice when you want to disguise your impact with that fast long swing, but it is totally not needed to achieve that result... plus that long swing makes it one kitty-bitch tough chance to get the impact timing right. This will make it real tough to develop the needed timing and touch to serve short (and heavy) when you tactically choose to do it. This will also hamper your development of the serve... so much that you will get discouraged easily. I have written so much on the forums about how to develop a short serve... all the things to do progressively to get there... bat angle, short swing, loose, grip, bat angle, you name it.

- Shot Selection... getting a better feel for when to hit hard, spin it, bump it back, or give it back to a difficult zone is a real challenge for most players to develop good judgment. There is no real absolute right or wrong, everything has its chances to give an advantage or disadvantage, but it doesn't always go as planned, but the odds do not lie over time.


- Impact Control... when you learn and develop a different impact grip pressure and loose muscles before/during the swing... you can have a lot of good variation that the opponent may not see coming.

*** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** ***

These are some of the things that a good coach should be ready to point out to you right away, along with a plan to "get there", wherever there is.

Ben will feel a lot more pressure in a match vs you if you do the three things I suggested consistently... but he is a good enough player that he will recognize you adjusted and will make adjustments himself... that is the tactical intelligence aspect and the warfare of TT.

You are a good man and forum member to do this in public, I have had to do this my first few years I was a recreational player without access to a club or coach. I used the internet forums to grow knowledge.

 

[Der_Echte]

I used a similar SIMPLE game plan adjustment vs the lady in the "Alien took over the Host" vid ttmonster posted in Nov 2017 when I played the deciding match in a team matchup vs a player who is rated 200 points better than me USATT, at that level, that is 2-2.5 levels better. I won 3-1, shoulda won 3-0.

My pre-match adjustments focused on only 3 things as well, give back heavy underspin off bounce, then vary it... block the topspin fast by her... SPIN the ball HEAVY. This lady gave our 2200+ rated player (who is higher rated by the same margin or more) a real tough time - she almost won, in fact, she led 7-5 in the 5th set and barely lost. This was a critical team match for her, it decided whether Facebook directly qualified for the playoffs. It was critical for us too, a win ensured we directly qualified for playoffs if the moon and stars didn't conspire together.

I say that to say that a plan can be effective if it is sound and simple... maybe it is better for it to be real simple, because one must be able to subconsciously execute it in a match. Too much to consider leads to too much thinking when one should be seeing, moving, doing without thought and decision process to muddle stuff up.

 

[42andbackpains]

Sorry to hear that. Next time try pouring a drop of oil first. Wait a minute to let it react and then see how it comes off with ease.

Million dollar question....What type of oil?

 

[ttmonster]

... snake oil

Million dollar question....What type of oil?

 

[42andbackpains]

... snake oil

I think i will contact the Goon Squad to handle some issues with ttmonster, he is peddling snake oil...is this the wild west?

 

[ttmonster]

... I not peddling .. just recommending ... but in all seriousness , I think Lamp oil should do the trick .. I will try and let you know ..

I think i will contact the Goon Squad to handle some issues with ttmonster, he is peddling snake oil...is this the wild west?

 

[Der_Echte]

Keep one of those small bottles with eyedroppers handy, filled with Ur favorite snake oil... I like extra virgin olive oil, but what the heck, tuner oil does the job too.

 

[Der_Echte]

I used a similar SIMPLE game plan adjustment vs the lady in the "Alien took over the Host" vid ttmonster posted in Nov 2017 when I played the deciding match in a team matchup...

Oh yeah, I think Hurricane Sandy took the video footage of that and ttmonster alternated between cheering for me and selling off 5000 stocks and options from his portfolio that day... damn is he glad he sold out before this recent market crash hit... He could make some serious Jack selling his advice on the market.

 

[yoass]

Sorry to hear that. Next time try pouring a drop of oil first. Wait a minute to let it react and then see how it comes off with ease.

What oil?

As to splintering, chipping: some veneers are prone to that. Coarser fibers, softer wood, rougher surface; sealing helps.

Very rarely I’ve seen the outer ply come loose. When at the edgess, I always ascribe that to duress. Edge hits etc. But I have seen entire strips give way when cautiously removing covering. Bad glue jobs, probably; but I’ve seet it only when dispatching water-base glued rubbers and wonder if they were put on too wet and deteriorated the inter-ply bond. Could that happen?

 

[Suga D]

Million dollar question....What type of oil?

... I not peddling .. just recommending ... but in all seriousness , I think Lamp oil should do the trick .. I will try and let you know ..

I've already used baby oil, sunflower oil and paraffine. Each has worked well. But just a few drops should be enough. Rub "em gently into the sponge and give it a minute to work. The residue starts coming off while gently rubbing already.
Give it a try. Works well.
Found out accidentally when i was trying to reboost a rubber and got too impatient.
[Emoji2]

 

[ttmonster]

Suga, this time around its about how to get residual WBG out of a blade ...

I've already used baby oil, sunflower oil and paraffine. Each has worked well. But just a few drops should be enough. Rub "em gently into the sponge and give it a minute to work. The residue starts coming off while gently rubbing already.
Give it a try. Works well.
Found out accidentally when i was trying to reboost a rubber and got too impatient.
[Emoji2]

 

[NextLevel]

I know you play for fun, but the lack of discipline and structure in your game is too evident. The easiest ball to serve short and low is heavy backspin. I know many penholders don't like doing it, but some of the heaviest side backspin serves I have ever dealt with come from penholders.

So the first drill is to serve short with backspin or long with backspin as heavy as you can - if the opponent loops your long backspin and you struggle to return the ball, then you serve with short backspin and see they flick or push. If they can flick, do they attack hard or do they just do a flick to prevent you from attacking backspin?

Most players push backspin long (unless they have seriously drilled short pushing which is not common below USATT 1900 unless they are training juniors). Then you open with slow heavy topspin as your first move. If the ball comes to your pips side or you are not in the mood to move or the ball comes short, you just bump or roll the ball with your pips and see what he does. You can keep the long push and short push with inverted as reserve options against short pushes if you have them for later.

This is how I played for three years with the celluloid ball and it was extremely effective. With the plastic ball, it is slightly less effective but still potent, depending on how heavy your serve is and how heavy your opponent pushes. You can use short side backspin serves in order to get the backspin push and create some deception and risk depending on how well your opponent returns sidespin.

Your opponent is not giving you his best game. He is actually serving into the middle of the table with a fairly slow and high and half long serve which is quite attackable with a loop and heavy topspin, especially for a penholder.

I get the desire to play like a poor man's He Zhi Wen. It is not doing you any favors because your serve quality is too low. You need to realize that unless you put your opponent in a box, serves that are slow, long and high will give your opponent time to play loops or even hard flicks or good pushes. It's better to serve stuff that will get you a predictable return that you can cope with than to serve stuff that might win the point if the opponent doesn't know how to deal with it but loses the point if he does.

IT can be fun to play with pips, but to me, unless one is really training to use them to get loopable or smashable balls from people who do not know how to deal with them in the short game, I think your use of them is going to keep you where you are for a long time. The only thing they may do for you right now is limit the amount of sidespin that Ben is willing to put on his serves but that is assuming he has great serves anyways. And if he doe, he isn't using them because you don't do anything with his serves to put fear into him. It's almost like you have an established pecking order.

Learn to serve and attack heavy backspin. Repeatedly and consistently. When that is mastered, learning to serve and attack no spin becomes extremely helpful and easy. Then learn to serve side backspin and side topspin short depending on where you prefer to receive the ball (use the pendulum to pull the serve to your backhand, the reverse to pull the ball to your forehand).

So to cut a long story short, stop trying to do 20 things if you want to win. Develop one really good and strong stroke, and in your case, it should be your attack vs backspin or slower balls given your forehand, and then look for ways to set it up. Stop giving your opponent easy long balls to attack first. And if you can, ditch the long pips.

Okay guys here it is. My match with my training partner Ben who beats me 95% of the time and I'd like to change that. So please tell me your general overall impressions or analysis or tell me specific stuff. like "on this point, don't do this. He wins those style of points. etc" Can be broad or specific.

Thank you to any of you who have the time to contribute.

Little background info. Ben is 9 years younger than me.

I'm 39 and have a tricky right knee that is healthy (don't let the support fool you) but is prone to tendentious. That's why i wear it and it can flare up if I push it too hard... Key point everybody. Stretch & work out.

So here's the video 1st and my initial comments below. I might add to it as I see fit later.

Match Stastics:

Long Pip Game
LP Helped (either foreced an error or point won because of setup): 4
LP Hurt (either error on my part or point lost because of bad hit): 5
LP Neutral (made no significant difference): 4


There is the psychological factor. Someone has to think about what they serve me spin wise. They have to focus what I'm hitting with when I'm serving.


Weakness though exploited in another match of mine that night is a dead short serve to my BH side. Easy with RPB inverted flip. Hard without it.
If staying with this style, have to learn an aggressive TPB punch on short dead serves.

10:08 - picking on no RPB. Was off the table and he went to my TPB on that last hit smartly. Really needed to counter loop here.

Push Game
Pushes hit in with inverted: 21
Pushes hit out with inverted: 5
% chance my push is going in: 80.7% (probably should be in the 90s. But I don't think that was the main issue this match. That being said, man that H3 bites. I think there was a little bit of that going on in that I'm not use to that)


Xu Xin FH Style sidespin Flicks on service receive : 2 / 0 (points directly off that)

Service Errors
My Service Errors: (game1) 1 (game2) 1 (game 3) 1 (game 4) 1 (game 5) 0
Ben's Service Errors: (game1) 0 (game2) 0 (game 3) 1 (game 4) 0 (game 5) 0
I've got to clean this up. When a match is close, you can't afford to give away free points. That being said, I try tough serves. I get a fair number of points on those serves. I have to push it a little bit. But still.... 4 points to his 1 is too many.




Match Impressions:
#1 issue: Footwork & stance. It's my guess that most of my misses are not being in correct position and reaching. Need to play lower, bend the knees more (which is tricky with a tendentious knee but that's why we work out to try to get there) and maybe try to integrate small jump between hits. Just too flat footed while playing. Barely move. This is simply a hard one to correct. Never had formal coaching and there is none of that kind near me. Will really have to work hard in staying conscious between points & shots to keep my feet moving or do those little jumps to stay nimble.


Feel like Ben, while being an attacking player by nature, vs me largely pushes and chops baiting me into attacking first. I don't think his chops or pushes are particularly good. They go long a lot of times and are high. So I just need to get to the point where I can consistently punish him for playing that way. The good news is that I figure that if he keeps doing that, he will stay the same and eventually (knock on wood) I'll get to the point to where I hit those in and attack at a greater %.


My poor man's He Zhi Wen wide curving serve to the FH works on him slightly better than I thought (had been avoiding it for the longest time because he smokes it a lot of times) but he still handles it better than most people. He knows to largely loop that ball and he takes service receive from the middle of the table so he can cover that shot. He's perfectly willing to take down the line serves with his BH. That being said, while his loops are often heavier & spinier than what I face with other people, if I cannot TPB those down the line for winners more often, perhaps I need to turn the corner more to get readdy to FH counter those back. In fact over all I'd say when he FH loops to my TPB, the block goes long. I need to improve on this. He bails me out sometimes in that he misses that shot long at a decent %. Plus it changes it up from him always pushing or chopping a lot of my serves. Forces him to actually try to do something to win the point. And if he chops or pushes that serve, that works out for me.


This style is fun to play but I'm not completely sold on it. Truth be told I play FH so much, I don't think it matters as much what I put on the BH. I largely play like a single winged penholder anyways. While I prefer the TPB for blocking, my RPB is much more powerful for sure. IDK. Honestly I think I'm about the same player with duel inverted or Inverted/LPs

Thanks for your help fellas.


Match Impressions:

 

[Suga D]

Suga, this time around its about how to get residual WBG out of a blade ...

I see. My post actually was directed towards 42&bp (as you've probably already noticed from my quote)

But nevertheless:
If the blade is varnished it shouldn't be a problem. If not use less oil, rub more and let it dry afterwards.
But residue on the blade is much easier to remove than on the rubber.

 

[42andbackpains]

Heeding my doctors advice to do some planks to strengthen my core muscle. I did some planks on and off for a couple of days. I can only do about 1 minute so far before i start trembling. Well after my regular Saturday training session, by back was sore and tired. And it didnt hurt like it usually does when i woke up on Sunday. So I will continue to do the planks and hope to improve my core. Do you guys know of any good isometric core exercises that does involve flexing of the back? My issue i cant flex forward(such as touching my toes) but i can flex backwards. Like to hear from my fellow TTDers. Thanks

Why is a cracked ball always a let? There is a amendment by the rules committee to state that a cracked ball isn't always a let. Certain cases where a ball is hit off the side of a racket, this should not be called a let. This is up to the umpire on the table to make a decision. I was watching many videos and umpires still calls it as a let. Do you think umpires just don't want to get caught in the middle of a ensuing argument? If the rule is there, it should be enforced.

Still getting used to my Tibhar K1 Hybrid Pro and i still like it alot
Love my OSP ultimate II

 

[JeffM]

If the blade is varnished it shouldn't be a problem. If not use less oil, rub more and let it dry afterwards.
But residue on the blade is much easier to remove than on the rubber.

Hi Suga, thanks for the advice. Can I confirm, in order to remove the residue glue on the blade, I put a little bit of oil (baby oil?) on the blade, and let it dry, then use the backside of an old rubber to rub them off?