Daily Table Tennis Chit Chat

[NextLevel]

Played TT at Allen and Sons in LA on Friday. Ate dinner after. Had good fun. Didn't expect it was going to work out, but sometimes, you get lucky.

 

[Der_Echte]

Hi @NextLevel ,

That small TT club probably has the best lighting for play conditions you will ever see in a tt club.

The walls are close, they have carpeting or something halfway up the wall, background in not white, lights are diffused, plentiful enough, not overly bright.

It all adds up to minimal glare and good light distribution.

LOTS of the people who play there LOVE doubles.

 

[Der_Echte]

Looks like Yip knocked out my training partner in the U1875. If you see him, could you ask him what he thought of my friends game? Any advice? It's always nice to have some extra perspectives.

Looks like ur friend also defeated Johnny Yam, one of my friends i see a lot.

Johnny is for the last few years a consistently 2000+ rated player. Yet, you will see some matches or entire tourneys where Johnny gets wild hairs up hiz azz and decides to go wild cowboy for points, game, or entire matches. He just decides to go for the flashy feel good shot attempts that ultimately are not high percentage.

In follow up tourneys, he eventually wins vs the 2000-2100 crowd and gets his rating back.
This tourney, he had one certain opponent he had three losses vs where he had zero business losing, he had the skills to win, but his attitude and decision making earned him his losses. it is fair.

Sometimes you win simply by breathing oxygen, getting the ball back on the table and showing you can win the point if the opponent plays wrong.

 

[dingyibvs]

Looks like ur friend also defeated Johnny Yam, one of my friends i see a lot.

Johnny is for the last few years a consistently 2000+ rated player. Yet, you will see some matches or entire tourneys where Johnny gets wild hairs up hiz azz and decides to go wild cowboy for points, game, or entire matches. He just decides to go for the flashy feel good shot attempts that ultimately are not high percentage.

In follow up tourneys, he eventually wins vs the 2000-2100 crowd and gets his rating back.
This tourney, he had one certain opponent he had three losses vs where he had zero business losing, he had the skills to win, but his attitude and decision making earned him his losses. it is fair.

Sometimes you win simply by breathing oxygen, getting the ball back on the table and showing you can win the point if the opponent plays wrong.

Hah, my friend was the one Mr. Yip knocked out in the semis. I don't think he's quite good enough to take down Mr. Yam yet as he's a conventional two winged looper with a solid balanced game, so not typically the type to pull big upsets.

 

[Der_Echte]

Hah, my friend was the one Mr. Yip knocked out in the semis. I don't think he's quite good enough to take down Mr. Yam yet as he's a conventional two winged looper with a solid balanced game, so not typically the type to pull big upsets.

U R right, had him mixed up.

Your friend defeated E. Popov, who is one tough cookie for his level, a very good win... but he lost to two local Sac players who in my opinion should lose 0-3 to your friend.

LDM7 beats these two like a drum. OK, well, not like a drum, but I always see LDM winning vs these two even since a year ago.

So that would puzzle me some. Not a lot, it is typical for a player to do well vs a player or two and do poorly vs a player or two.

What is puzzling is your friend would need some very solid offensive play to defeat E. Popov... that cat isn't gunna let you hit it by him unless you really juice it.

The other two players your friend lost to do not have a very consistent offensive game... they self-destruct going for it all. it is truly puzzling he lost to those two. maybe he just ate sum Popeyes double super meal and got assigned a court with poor light. stranger things have happened before.

 

[Der_Echte]

So here is what your friend did...

 

[Der_Echte]

I would think ur friend would get re-rated to around mid 1500s and gain/lose points from there. Prolly end up losing around 10-15 points after ratings adjustment.

 

[dingyibvs]

U R right, had him mixed up.

Your friend defeated E. Popov, who is one tough cookie for his level, a very good win... but he lost to two local Sac players who in my opinion should lose 0-3 to your friend.

LDM7 beats these two like a drum. OK, well, not like a drum, but I always see LDM winning vs these two even since a year ago.

So that would puzzle me some. Not a lot, it is typical for a player to do well vs a player or two and do poorly vs a player or two.

What is puzzling is your friend would need some very solid offensive play to defeat E. Popov... that cat isn't gunna let you hit it by him unless you really juice it.

The other two players your friend lost to do not have a very consistent offensive game... they self-destruct going for it all. it is truly puzzling he lost to those two. maybe he just ate sum Popeyes double super meal and got assigned a court with poor light. stranger things have happened before.

Hah, we'll he's not very experienced in tournament play, first tournament and all. We've trained a couple times together, and I gave him some pointers on continuous looping since that's my specialty, which was also the focus of our last training session before the tournament. Glad to see it working out for him lol.

Like me he still has some fundamental weaknesses, particularly with his BH, so maybe he got a little cavalier with that against lower level players who probably gave him a lot of tempting balls to attack. I think that's something we'll both be working on over the next few sessions.

 

[Der_Echte]

In my crappy opinion, the BH is so damn easy to develop into a weapon that will finish loose balls to the BH... it is a matter of seeing it and being decisive.

Typically, you get 2-3 loose balls to the BH that are just asking for it. Some do it, some are late and give away these easy points.

 

[dingyibvs]

Had a solid short day at the club today. I usually take a nap after dinner before going to the club at 8, but today I overslept and woke up at almost 8:30! I hurried up and got to the club, challenged a table right away. The guy I ended up playing is this 1800 guy, and after minimal warm up we got started, and I was hardly awake yet lol. As expected, it didn't start too well. I've been trying to be more aggressive with my BH service receives since I can read the services and I've got the necessary strokes to attack most things long or short. However, I'm just a bit slow reacting to the service, and being as sluggish as I was it was doubly worse. I ended up losing the first 2 sets, but won the next 3 to win the match. We went on to play a second one which I felt very comfortable, and was winning pretty easily when we decided to try out some rackets.

I ended the day with some practices with a RPB guy I play pretty often. He recently changed from a 5-ply wood blade to a Yasaka Ma Lin Carbon. Both my training partner and I tried his new racket, and we agree that the thing is a friggin brick. It's very stiff and very heavy, a dramatic change for him. I let him try out my HL5 + D09C FH + T64FX BH CPen blade last week and he loved it. It's faster than his old blade, spinnier, and weighs just over 170 grams. I let him borrow it indefinitely this time since I don't play CPen anymore and have no use for it, hope he enjoys it.

 

[latej]

This feeling when you actually do put everything into the stroke but the rubber just doesn't convert it to spin. Utter total disappointment and depression. Get me from this misery ;-)

Thin top-sheets need to be banned ASAP. Long live Loki, Long live H3.

 

[blahness]

Playing against the SP guy made me realize that my sudden BH down the line switch has to be working even against nontopspin balls for max damage. Otherwise I will never get the chance to play the down the line BH at all because it'll be the opponent that is punching hard or doing any kind of disgusting crap at me because he already knows that I'm gonna open diagonally to his BH against nontopspin balls, and is just waiting to pounce on that shot.

At their level pushing will only get me destroyed even harder too, so this is the only way I guess.

 

[dingyibvs]

Playing against the SP guy made me realize that my sudden BH down the line switch has to be working even against nontopspin balls for max damage. Otherwise I will never get the chance to play the down the line BH at all because it'll be the opponent that is punching hard or doing any kind of disgusting crap at me because he already knows that I'm gonna open diagonally to his BH against nontopspin balls, and is just waiting to pounce on that shot.

At their level pushing will only get me destroyed even harder too, so this is the only way I guess.

Need location control with every shot! The nice thing about the down the line stance is that it can be easily used to go cross table. The reverse isn't true however. Using the cross table stance to go down the line is a weaker and less stable shot.

 

[Der_Echte]

Need location control with every shot! The nice thing about the down the line stance is that it can be easily used to go cross table. The reverse isn't true however. Using the cross table stance to go down the line is a weaker and less stable shot.

Hi @dingyibvs

Yes and no if your body is squared diagonally to opponent to hit cross court that it is difficult to hit the BH down short side of table away from opponent.

It is true that when you hit in your natural part of strike zone with body squared a direction... that you will hit that direction instinctively. TRUE.

Still, there is a way to hit that ball down the short side WITHOUT turning hips or shoulders (to now square target to short side of table.

How? Can one do it without body turn?

You as a right handed player SLIDE your upper and lower arm to your RIGHT side 8 inches +/- ... allow ball to come just a little deeper than you would normally do for the cross court BH shot... now the ball is still in the "fat" part of the strike zone and you can hit it with force and still have good leverage and control.

One day when I visit east bay with trouble makers in tow, I will show you this strike zone adjustment and it will blow your mind.

 

[Der_Echte]

and yes @dingyibvs you are right, it is very easy to square body to short side of table and still pound that ball cross court diagonally... all you need to do is swing a little earlier and hit the ball a little more in front of normal... like maybe 6-8 inches or so.

Imagine a door opening to the outside and you opening it from inside... so when you open door 6 inches you hit one way... when you open the door another 30 degrees you are now going cross court so damn easy to do once you adjust your mind and space clock.

 

[blahness]

Need location control with every shot! The nice thing about the down the line stance is that it can be easily used to go cross table. The reverse isn't true however. Using the cross table stance to go down the line is a weaker and less stable shot.

I use the left leg straightening to go down the line which works amazingly well against topspin, plus my previous training for it has been all about topspin rallies - which I never get against all these penholders, it's always some disgusting ball - anywhere from sidespin to sideunder to no spin or even underspin from the spin reversal. I really prefer doing rallies with normal shakehanders.

Penholders never want to go into a fair BH-BH battle with me and its annoying af lol. They really like their dirty battles and drag you into the mud haha.

 

[blahness]

So I met the retired SP master there who was giving everyone a whooping lol. This time I came with a plan. I was gonna show him the power of the BH down the line switch. Turns out it's a killer even against players of his calibre - because hes always waiting for the ball in his BH corner lol. Although I still lost all sets, I was getting 8-9 points most of the time and got to deuce in quite a few sets.

The real difficulty is still receiving the outright nasty LGL like serve with good quality, and his very subtle block and push variations (he can make the pips reverse the spin, block it with no spin or add topspin to his block).

I feel like SP in the hands of a master is even scarier than LP. LP is at least a bit more predictable and slower. SP is fast af with the angles and plus its very hard to detect what they're doing with the ball (are they reversing the spin, killing the spin or adding to the spin?)

 

[OvrChkn]

Trying to aim for 6 ratings tournaments this year - first one tomorrow. Think I'm going to get to play a few 1700s, so hopefully I can put things together. Match-wise, I'm feeling more crisp against some of the 1400s in our club.

 

[Gozo Zyreruna]

Yesterday I played with a U10 Provincial representative player. The kid is 9 y/o. After beating him, I chatted with his father. I have played with the father numerous times and never once won him. This is what the father said to me,

" Gozo, I know you think of me using pips is unfair and what's not, but here's the thing, I am winning and you are not. He then gave me a cheeky wink.

p/s: Everyone in my club knows my position w.r.t. pips and my incompetence when faced with a pips out player.

 

[blahness]

Yesterday I played with a U10 Provincial representative player. The kid is 9 y/o. After beating him, I chatted with his father. I have played with the father numerous times and never once won him. This is what the father said to me,

" Gozo, I know you think of me using pips is unfair and what's not, but here's the thing, I am winning and you are not. He then gave me a cheeky wink.

View attachment 28303

p/s: Everyone in my club knows my position w.r.t. pips and my incompetence when faced with a pips out player.

If you can't beat them join em right? Haha....