Daily Table Tennis Chit Chat

[Jslick89]

Deadly third ball attacks are really a function of serve and serve return and how they set up the 3rd and 4th ball. No one has deadly third ball attacks against good returns. That said, the main thing you pointed out is that the experience and ability gap between you and DerEchte fueled that. That is a very hard thing to overcome with the level differences between you both.

If you can attack DerEchte's serves reasonably well and not push them ( a big if because they are pretty tricky and high quality and I wouldn't expect someone at your level to do that, even I struggle massively with serve return of his stuff), then a lot of stuff becomes much easier.

Good point. I definitely need to work on the serve return. i was able to touch a few of Der's serves short and get some points, but a lot were just easy points for him. The variation in spin and placement def gave him a big advantage.

 

[pgpg]

visited another club in Tokyo where they have this system where anyone can challenge anyone in best-of-3. Its a chance to play with higher ranked players. hadn't been there for a while. While some guys were still way above me, i managed to win (again) a guy who used to nearly always beat me, but ok he's aged quite a bit. and I beat 3 other players i never managed to win before:
- a lady that honestly I could/should have won the other times but I played too much to her strengths before and rushed too much.
- a very short guy playing playing J-pen with short pips. he's got a very fast long serve which used to give me a lot of trouble but i could manage to return them well today
- 2-wing attacker but more FH oriented. My first ever match with him. I was refereeing this match against a very good chopper that he won, and I thought this guy would be way too good for me and indeed he crushed me 2-11 in G1.
At that moment, i just thought i should try to score a few points not to be ridiculous so he would be ok to play again with me next time.
But somehow I started receiving well, being more relaxed especially with my BH. my blocking game was very good and i saw myself land some very difficult FH topspins from difficult positions: well below the table while on the move, but my ball was low and very spinny; half long balls... won G2 and G3 at deuce. In both games i was well ahead but he came back but I didn't lose focus and could close it, after saving one match point in G3.

i treated myself with a beer 🍺.It feels so great !

How does a TT scene in Tokyo work? You have a specific club you frequent or you have several to choose from in the neighborhood?

The reason I ask - my niece is likely heading to Tokyo this fall for a last year of school and then probably college in Japan, so there is a decent chance I'll go to visit her some time in a next year or so . Would love to fit in some TT as well.

 

[NextLevel]

Blast from the very ancient past.

 

[Takkyu_wa_inochi]

How does a TT scene in Tokyo work? You have a specific club you frequent or you have several to choose from in the neighborhood?

The reason I ask - my niece is likely heading to Tokyo this fall for a last year of school and then probably college in Japan, so there is a decent chance I'll go to visit her some time in a next year or so . Would love to fit in some TT as

There is an existing thread on Tokyo TT scene. It’s not like in my home country where a club has a venue which is often a public one and club members have exclusive access to it.

Yes (high) schools or Universities may have their exclusive facilities, else you can play in a private TT school together with a coach, but the most usual place is the big multisports complex center which has a TT room and anyone can come, wherever they come from. There are also some other options.

Really many places to play here and also many tournaments going on every week, almost everyday !

 

[Der_Echte]

I remember that hall, real damn difficult for me to play that hall, way too loud - could not time shyt that day. Still, NL had few problems and deserved his easy way over me - all I did waz complain that day instead of enjoying friends.

5 years after this vid, I was maybe 30 lbs heavier... now I am 25 lbs less weight than is this vid.

 

[Emin]

I just sealed my Stiga OC to test the lacquer and it smells like chocolate.

 

[dingyibvs]

Just had a good day of matches at the Alameda club. Played 8 matches today! I used to be so exhausted after 4 matches, but today was my 3rd day in a row playing and I managed 8. Set a new record on my fitness band, says I burned 2200 kcal with a HR max of 178 and average of 139. Played fairly well today, obviously was tapering off by the end.

The older Chinese guy I used to play against in my garage (I posted a video of us playing a while back) is back from his trip from China. I played him and beat him pretty comfortably 3-0. He was pretty shocked by my BH improvements. I also beat another older penholder whom I'd never beaten before. I'm getting more comfortable with my new rubbers.

I've found one thing that helps my BH quite a bit. As a clubmate described, I play like I'm basically "camping" for the FH shot. I think that's why translating BH practice results into game results have been rather slow. I've tried to counter that by intentionally attempting to hit everything with my BH, but I think that's the wrong tactic. Instead I just need to make a small change by simply assuming every shot is coming to my BH until proven otherwise. That seems to work quite well, and I can just react instinctively to cover my FH which I'm more comfortable with and you also have more time with FH shots. When he game starts I often forget to do that, but when I do remember it works extremely well.

 

[NextLevel]

Just had a good day of matches at the Alameda club. Played 8 matches today! I used to be so exhausted after 4 matches, but today was my 3rd day in a row playing and I managed 8. Set a new record on my fitness band, says I burned 2200 kcal with a HR max of 178 and average of 139. Played fairly well today, obviously was tapering off by the end.

The older Chinese guy I used to play against in my garage (I posted a video of us playing a while back) is back from his trip from China. I played him and beat him pretty comfortably 3-0. He was pretty shocked by my BH improvements. I also beat another older penholder whom I'd never beaten before. I'm getting more comfortable with my new rubbers.

I've found one thing that helps my BH quite a bit. As a clubmate described, I play like I'm basically "camping" for the FH shot. I think that's why translating BH practice results into game results have been rather slow. I've tried to counter that by intentionally attempting to hit everything with my BH, but I think that's the wrong tactic. Instead I just need to make a small change by simply assuming every shot is coming to my BH until proven otherwise. That seems to work quite well, and I can just react instinctively to cover my FH which I'm more comfortable with and you also have more time with FH shots. When he game starts I often forget to do that, but when I do remember it works extremely well.

You sound like Fang Bo : he argues with good logic that for sound technical forehand players, there is always time to play a forehand so focus your stance in being able to play a backhand. It's really funny that when I play, people who don't understand my game think my backhand is a control shot to set up my forehand. In reality, the problem is probably that my rubber is relatively slow, but that I juat use my backhand like most players do - to reduce footwork demands when they play someone who can absorb forehand attacks or someone who makes forehands harder to play.

 

[dingyibvs]

You sound like Fang Bo : he argues with good logic that for sound technical forehand players, there is always time to play a forehand so focus your stance in being able to play a backhand. It's really funny that when I play, people who don't understand my game think my backhand is a control shot to set up my forehand. In reality, the problem is probably that my rubber is relatively slow, but that I juat use my backhand like most players do - to reduce footwork demands when they play someone who can absorb forehand attacks or someone who makes forehands harder to play.

I don't think I saw that episode by FB, but makes a lot of sense. Man, I have so much I need to work on lol. Today I noticed that again I was falling back to old habits when covering the wide FH. I was fading away to the back and right when I'm making the shot instead of pivoting around my left foot. That results in poor contact which leads to poor consistency as well as bad recovery. I guess I only practiced footwork for one practice.

At least my new FH technique is starting to settle in, with more right to left weight transfer and proper activation sequence. I think I'm gonna focus on two things while playing in the future: protect my BH, and pivot around my left foot when covering the wide FH. Those 2 things don't happen at the same time so I think I should be able to keep those things in mind.

 

[Takkyu_wa_inochi]

had a tournament Saturday, the next day after my very good training day reported above.
back to normal and mediocrity as usual.. 2W2L against similar rated opponents

one of those losses, it really hurts, i was up 6-0 in G5 and managed to lose it 9-11. basically i was in a very good state of mind for those 6 points then i ran a bit out of steam, he scored 2 points on his serve and i started choking... this kind of matches is why my rating can't go up.

the other was 0-3, against a young chopper (with SP on BH), only G1 was a real contest 9-11. I had won another chopper just before him. but this guy was a bit better, he didn't go back as much to (counter-)attack and more importantly his BH serve with sidespin long or halflong to my FH was very problematic to me (a known issue I've been working on but under stress NG this day)

But the main reasons i lost is I just wasn't moving enough and my serve game wasn't high quality.
--
I feel i've perhaps raised my max lvl in competition, but not really my bottom level, which is occurring a bit more often than it used to be.

 

[turbozed]

I don't think I saw that episode by FB, but makes a lot of sense. Man, I have so much I need to work on lol. Today I noticed that again I was falling back to old habits when covering the wide FH. I was fading away to the back and right when I'm making the shot instead of pivoting around my left foot. That results in poor contact which leads to poor consistency as well as bad recovery. I guess I only practiced footwork for one practice.

At least my new FH technique is starting to settle in, with more right to left weight transfer and proper activation sequence. I think I'm gonna focus on two things while playing in the future: protect my BH, and pivot around my left foot when covering the wide FH. Those 2 things don't happen at the same time so I think I should be able to keep those things in mind.

It's probably this video @NextLevel was referring to:

Fang Bo is a great coach. Glad these new AI translated videos are coming out recently.

 

[Gozo Zyreruna]

You know you are in an uncle's club when you, a right-handed shakehand two side inverted ESN rubber is the minority.

The majority players are JPen uncles with no rubber on the reverse side, just painted black.

or

The majority players are Shakehand with one side long-pips

or

The majority payers are shakehand with one side short pips and the opposite either a long or an anti-rubber.

 

[dingyibvs]

Had a grueling two-a-day today, also the 4th day in a row of playing. In the afternoon I hosted 2 players I've met in the clubs in my garage. One was Bill, the older RPB player I've shown playing me in my past video. The other is one of the top players at the Alameda club, Hui. He's another older RPB player whom I've never beaten before. We practiced for a bit then played some matches. I made 2 adjustments in the game against Hui, one is using the shovel serve, and two is protecting my BH as I talked about earlier.

Maybe it was the adjustments, or maybe it was just home field advantage, but I ended up beating him 11-9 in the 5th! The best I had managed before was winning 1 game against him. He used to be the top dog of the regulars at the Alameda club, but recently another player, Andy, started getting some coaching and started beating him often. Andy has a very, very consistent brush loop on both wings and has excellent placement. He would beat me by just repeatedly brush looping to my BH. Hui wanted some practice against it, so he had me brush loop against him which was a great brush looping practice for me as well.

After dinner, I hosted my regular practice partner. We both made some great progress in our BH. First, he's developed a solid BH counter technique over the past few weeks, and now we can do BH counter practices which we did. I also did some BH loop practice, and I finally felt like I'm looping with my BH the way I wanted to. I had excellent placement, and I was making great contact with great spin and speed each shot, placing it to either corner almost at will.

After that, it was his turn to attack, and we practiced attacks against blocks, then we practiced attacks against opportunity balls where I would back off the table and give him soft, high-ish balls to attack. Finally, we combined it together by doing BH counters but intermittently I would block instead to change the pace and let him try to attack the opportunity ball.

Lastly we practiced some troublesome service receives. He's been having trouble with long, fast services, so I served a bunch to him for him to attack. This is still a work in progress. Overall we're gradually incorporating some more game-like situations into our practices as we improve with our fundamentals, this way we can start to incorporate some of our practice gains into our game play.

 

[Der_Echte]

Glad to hear @dingyibvs seeing results of discovering what was needed, the training, and the impacts of it.

 

[Fshtt]

Is sealing worth it

 

[Tyce]

Is sealing worth it

Do you stick rubber on more often than maybe twice before you change blades? Then yes. Plenty of blades are more fragile than that, and plenty of glues are sticking pretty aggressively hard, too.

 

[dingyibvs]

Glad to hear @dingyibvs seeing results of discovering what was needed, the training, and the impacts of it.

I think the big thing that's helped my transition is that I no longer "panic" when a ball comes to my BH. I'm now just taking my time to evaluate the speed/spin of the ball and react with my stroke.

It seems to be a recurring theme when I'm developing new shots. When I start to "get" it, it always feels like I actually have more time than I previously thought.

 

[Cordell]

I have taken a liking to playing from a 1.5-2 meter distance recently. I think it's in response to my setup being (as much as I don't want to admit it) too fast for me. I do overshoot a lot less from a distance, unsurprisingly, and it also gives me some more time to think about doing a proper stroking motion - I have caught out the coworker I usually play against with some more topspinny loops (Or at least something resembling a loop 😂)

I did order myself a tacky pair (H3NProv 39BS and 37OS) for either side to slow it down a bit so I can play from up close where I prefer to be. But this kinda compromise ain't bad at all, so I'll use my rocket ship until the rubbers give up and keep the new ones in a drawer as a backup.

 

[OvrChkn]

Near the 6 and 4 month marks on the C1 and Z, respectively. The C1 has started to feel less lively and the Z kinda feels bouncy with less grip due to the tackiness wearing off, so I've been twiddling the two sides to some success.

Working a lot on counterloops the past few weeks. I can handle high spinny balls on my forehand, but I always Charlie Brown myself on the backhand.

 

[NetProphet]

Hey folks
Is there a section in here that does reviews on the best Table Tennis Tables?
I found reviews for everything else but not tables.
What's the best (foldable) table that you've ever played on?