Daily Table Tennis Chit Chat

[suds79]

Equipment Question.

I'm diving back into the world of dual inverted.

I currently play with a Stiga Clipper Classic penhold. It really is probably the best blade I've ever played with in terms of speed, control & feel.

I originally bought this blade to play short pips but this is a long time famous blade that people have played successfully with either pips or inverted.

I originally thought "I don't like this blade for inverted". Too stiff. But for a temporary solution until I buy my real rubbers, I have two cheap medium softness Chinese rubbers on it and I must say it feels pretty good. Previously I had a very soft (30 degrees) short pip on the FH and I loved that combo. I think what is was is that more firm sponged rubbers do not pair well with this for my game. Just not enough dwell.

So that has me thinking blade/rubber combination. I suspect with this stiff, 7 ply all wood blade that soft rubbers pair well with it to give some dwell.

That will make picking a BH rubber easy as typically one goes euro soft on the BH for control. But on the forehand one typically goes a little firmer for speed. I'm thinking possibly for the FH an Evolution ELS or ELP which are in the low to mid 40 degree range. They're both softer than MXP. Or would you say because I have a stiff blade I should just stick with consistency & keep that dwell feeling and go for say a Evolution FXP which is the softest Evolution rubber in the series. Maybe jumping into something in the 40 degree range is a mistake and I should stay in the 30s?

Just overall asking what you guys like to do in blade/rubber combinations. Do you have a flexy blade and therefore like firmer sponges? Are you like me and have a stiff blade but then play soft rubbers? etc.

Thanks.

 

[Der_Echte]

It depends on your preferred impact. If it is more solid, then the firmer rubbers are OK. Players use a softer rubber to get it into the sponge easier to facilitate spin and forgiveness.

I am a Nexy pimp, but I will say Nexy Karis In any hardness is one of the most linear and controllable rubbers ever.

Sent from my SM-N920V using Tapatalk

 

[Archosaurus]

@Der_Echte

Thank you very, very much. So the basic backhand counter topspin relies more on taking spin and speed off your opponent's ball with a very early timing, and then when you get better, you can start putting your own on it.

I am doing it backwards: waiting a bit late and then trying for a bigger swing. I can block like this so maybe I will start from there and see if I can add some action to it.

 

[NextLevel]

Guys, I shared some vids in My VHS records topic..
But for you here I wanted to share this video:

Not everyday you see someone save so many matchpoints.. This one is even better than Mizutani vs. Xu Xin ;-)

Forgive the video quality but this is the best ever:

 

[Der_Echte]

@Der_Echte

Thank you very, very much. So the basic backhand counter topspin relies more on taking spin and speed off your opponent's ball with a very early timing, and then when you get better, you can start putting your own on it.

I am doing it backwards: waiting a bit late and then trying for a bigger swing. I can block like this so maybe I will start from there and see if I can add some action to it.

There are many, many BH shots. The off the bounce counter with light hand little power is simple, consistent, and moves you in the direction of making offence out of a situation you ere dead set on blocking.

This helps with the more advanced and difficult timing of countering step or more off the table vs topspin.

The Chinese coach on the TT Uni vid who says one can play more aggressive BH by starting with the BH block and adding to the return in stages to get to the BH counterloop off the table has in my opinion a very good progressive path that makes sense and is executable by anyone with enough time and practice.

Touch is very under-rated and under-utilized in amature levels. If one has good touch off the bounce, one can move up in level pretty well.

 

[NextLevel]

My game is going into the tank. I am losing badly to pips players. I am playing Westchester today but I have zero expectations and would not go if friends were not playing and He Zhi Wen wasn't coming.

 

[NextLevel]

My game is going into the tank. I am losing badly to pips players. I am playing Westchester today but I have zero expectations and would not go if friends were not playing and He Zhi Wen wasn't coming.

Had a tough day at Westchester. Lost a match in which I had multiple leads in every game and a couple others where I just could not adjust to the slower timing of the ball. There were some good signs and I will see how it plays out over the next week. I do plan to play more in August before taking another couple of weeks off.

As promised, a couple of recorded He Zhi Wen matches.

 

[suds79]

wow that post from NL brought a big smile to my face. Always been a big HZW fan. +1

 

[ttmonster]

Thanks for the match recordings NL !

 

[suds79]

Random question time.

I'm watching a match and i could have sworn a guy took a towel break at 3-4. But i'm also at work so i could have missed it.

Anyways. If you're allowed a towel break every 6 points, you usually see players utilize this at 6, 12, 18 , etc. But what if you didn't use the towel break after the 6th point, did you miss your moment and have to wait until 12? or can you take it any time and your 6 point counter starts there?

Not a big deal but just curious if anyone knows.

 

[Shifu]

just glued the backhand on the blade... nothing like glueing rubbers on a blade. now i got two completely identical rackets, it's also super nice if i want to test out a different hardness of the sponge for example. before i always had to be afraid that i don't have a good blade to play in the league if i test something new. now i have one for spare exactly the same weight!

 

[OldschoolPenholder]

Oh My HeZhiWen!

Xie xie NL!!

-------------

Busy with work, haven't been on in a week, didn't catch up yet. wanted to post a quick note:

Outside of 1 Tuesday night that Der Echte was in NYC, i haven't been able to play TT for a month or 5 weeks

Eldest daughter is taking driving lessons, have been driving with her after i get home from work

Last night, met up with an old friend who is moving out of NYC to pursue his PhD at an Ivy League school. He had a friend whom beat him when he was drunk in table tennis and he wanted me to teach her a lesson as she thought she was good. They both ~1000 USATT. So he killed 2 birds with 1 stone ... had me meet him before he left NYC and also for me to play her.

We were to meet up at Wang Chen's on 100th Street and Broadway. Waited for everyone to show up before asking for a table for an hour. I was a former member at Wang Chen's before going to Lost Battalion Hall. The place was jammed packed! Easrliest for table would be 9pm and it was 7pm. We decided to go elsewhere.

I saw JP, a friend of Carl's, lefty SH. He looks good. Also saw one of the coaches there and we caught up briefly before we all left.

Took train down to the Village to go check out Fat Cat. Pool hall with some table tennis tables. Table Tennis opens up at 8:45 pm. It was 7:30 or so.

We walked to Biergarten, a bar on 14th Street or so, they had 2 tables. Thursday nights in Manhattan are jammed everywhere at bars and restaurants.

~8:30 pm, table opens up and my friend's friend and I hit. I brought my own racket of course, she used a house blade... a hardbat. Lighting was bad, cobblestone ground, jammed with patrons guzzling beer... no real room. I went for a few loops, on my backswing i hit a lady's handbag.I was afraid one of us would get hurt.

Didn't play my friend's friend a game... we just hit... after 10 mins, my friend said kick it up a notch... i started serving light spin, slow light loops. She got a sense of my level, or more appropriatedly, i was a bit better than her.

While we were on one table, next table had an older dude that must be a tennis player, He hit his BH's with 2 hands! For a hardbat player he was pretty good. He seemed to be the King of that Table... my friends wanted me to play him... but we both were playing on our respective tables. Finally he relinquished his spot on that table.

After hitting a bit with my friend, he sat down and that dude and I hit a bit. I just played steady. here and there, serve a little spin, and here and there bh and fh looped. OH MONSTER! I PLAYED SH ALL NIGHT except for 15 mins with my friend who plays PH. Got a few RPB loops in.

So i'm hitting with this dude that seemed to be the King of the Biergarten and he comes up to me to say he needs to move his car. Parking in Manhattan is murder, so i understood. He said he'll be back, in the meantime hit with his friend, P, he said P was good.

I start hitting with P. My friend's friend left for the night. And it's 9:30pm already. I had work today and being downtime, would take me an hour to get home by subway. I told P i had to leave, it's late.

P says how about a game? I said ok. played a 21 game, felt good playing oldschool rules lol A young dude said, beat him cos he thinks he's good and is there every week. I played SH and got some shots in, served some rocket serves for aces... served some spin. but mostly i played steady. he got to 15 first, i caught up. tied at 15. then my serve and i won 21-17. didn't want to be a pig about it, he knew from my strokes that i was a tad better.

My friend and I left, before leaving i fist bumped the young dude who wanted me to beat P. LOL

Had fun. Will see if i can start playing again regularly next week.

~osph

 

[ajtatosmano2]

Random question time.

I'm watching a match and i could have sworn a guy took a towel break at 3-4. But i'm also at work so i could have missed it.

Anyways. If you're allowed a towel break every 6 points, you usually see players utilize this at 6, 12, 18 , etc. But what if you didn't use the towel break after the 6th point, did you miss your moment and have to wait until 12? or can you take it any time and your 6 point counter starts there?

Not a big deal but just curious if anyone knows.

No, you can only take a towel break at every 6th point. Imagine a doubles match where every player takes his/her towel break at a different time. It would give a hard time to the poor referee
Anyway players often clear their hands on the table close to the net or on the side of the table.

 

[Der_Echte]

@Der_Echte

Thank you very, very much. So the basic backhand counter topspin relies more on taking spin and speed off your opponent's ball with a very early timing, and then when you get better, you can start putting your own on it.

I am doing it backwards: waiting a bit late and then trying for a bigger swing. I can block like this so maybe I will start from there and see if I can add some action to it.

Just to be clear... there just isn't THE basic BH counter tospin. Many coaches will go straight away to explaining a BH counter topspin a step from table where you wait, dip down some and explode up and forward to transfer power to the ball. That is also a good BH counter that is effective, but it is one that amatures have difficulty landing consistently, like me.

There are SO MANY moving parts and you gotta be in good position and balance ready to go. In a match under pressure, you don't get too many situations where you can check all those blocks.

The "Beginning" BH counter topspin I advocate for learners at first has less moving parts (if you step to the ball) and is more consistent if one is loose and doesn't go for much.

Landing shot after shot inspires confidence and a will to be more aggressive.

This fits in with my preferred PROGRESSIVE approach to learning for an adult.

It isn't THE way or the ONLY way, but it is an effective path.

All of this is debatable and differs among even the best coaches (how to approach getting to an end state).

Learning the details of the mechanics and philosophy is important to understand and discuss for adult learners, or at least I strongly believe that way.

Recording it and debating it on a public forum I believe is also an excellent resource we didn't have even 25 years ago. Back then, you needed your own private KGB sized intel department... You understand what kind of obvious financing issues you would run into trying to keep up maintenance of thousand of structures, utilities, hard-case spies, and pretty women.

Heck, it is certainly expensive enough trying to keep just ONE pretty woman satisfied, you really gotta come large Gs with this magnitude of numbers...

 

[Vrael]

Had opportunity to hit a little with Ryusuke Sakamoto. Was able to return ~10% of his serves and he did with mine reverse pendelum whatever he wanted every single time. His fast serves were really fast, now every time I try to make fast serve I can only think how slow it really is.

 

[Takkyu_wa_inochi]

You're lucky... Because I need to PAY him to get a knock with him...

He's technically incredible...every session with him he shows me new tricks... But he's a bit bad assed... When I make a good/lucky shot against him he can't help making a super serve or super shot on the next point....

 

[Vrael]

it was just few minutes, but yeah, pretty lucky. We trained only serve and receive, but he has definitelly the best serve I have ever encountered. Sometimes I couldn't even touch the ball and spin even on the fast serves was amazing. The ball was changing it course after the bounce on my half of the table so much that sometimes I was just missing it with my racket.

 

[Takkyu_wa_inochi]

it was just few minutes, but yeah, pretty lucky. We trained only serve and receive, but he has definitelly the best serve I have ever encountered. Sometimes I couldn't even touch the ball and spin even on the fast serves was amazing. The ball was changing it course after the bounce on my half of the table so much that sometimes I was just missing it with my racket.

He tried to teach me his serves, but i could not make anything of his advice, unfortunately... learning serves is the most difficult thing i believe

 

[NextLevel]

He tried to teach me his serves, but i could not make anything of his advice, unfortunately... learning serves is the most difficult thing i believe

Takes a good teacher and a lot of hours of practice. The practice is the really hard part as you have to experiment and understand until the feeling is there.

 

[Takkyu_wa_inochi]

In vacation in my home country, I went to a summer tournament with a friend coming from London (!!). We went straight from the airport to the venue where we were a bit late due to the flight being delayed.

No warmup and I play my first match against a player of my level. Lost the first game easily :-( but did very well in the second. In the third I'm down 9-10 but then up 11-10 with serve. I choke, don't choose the good serve and miss my chance. Lose 11-13 and the fourth easily. Too bad because if I won the third I'm pretty sure I would win that match. His confidence was really going down.

Easy match then I play a LP veteran quite well ranked (over me). I win the first easily but then he adapts to my serves to his LP. He attacks well with them on any easy ball. I get a bearing in the second and third. In the fourth I play better and lead until 8-7 but i choke miss a serve and it's over. Too bad I should have accepted rallies more instead of taking too much risk attacking first backspin balls, and try to pin him to his FH more.

Easy game after then a youngster who beat a better rank guy than me so I was kind of warned. He had a good FH and doing weird stuff with his BH. I was down 1-2 and only then realized he had LP !!! I was down match point in the fourth but I was serving and already applying my A plan against LP serving long with backspin to LP and third ball attack with FH in diagonal and I was scoring 85-90% on it. I didn't choke win the fourth 13-11.. The fifth set was a tough battle as well. He saved two matchpoints but I stayed calm and didn't choke and managed to win 13-11 again...tchoooooooo

Then a good win against an adult with LP 3-0 with a decent rating, and for my last match a veteran leftie very highly ranked ( more than 500 above). A lot of touch and he was using a lot backspin which I had trouble to control. Despite that I wasn't ridiculous at all because i had a lot of winners, he has some problems against my serves and in rallies I did well . There were some nice blocks and counters on my side. -8 -4 -8 is the score, I was even ahead 8-7 in the last but I had a serve miss which helped him.

4wins 3losses for an 18/52 finish. I think I can do better next time.

Anyway a lot of fun and the organisation was perfect. It's the best tournament that I know which is so well organized