Daily Table Tennis Chit Chat

[Archosaurus]

The left leg placement is interesting in the second video. I'm assuming that he's treating it as if the ball is coming long, but I've been taught to use the right leg as a guide to cutoff the ball and it's pretty adjustable for the half-long and long balls as well as different heights.

A lot of 1500+ USATT players at my club and in the state can push/chopblock on short topspin, which will in all likelihood have more sidespin than top, so getting the push on the side of the ball helps a lot for control. The typical response is to go for the wide short forehand or long backhand with it. I just opt to flick or drive it with a more closed angle if I recognize it and it's high enough. Recognizing the low, slow topspins is tricky.

Half-high, not half-long.

 

[NextLevel]

Sure, it's a fair point about it making all of your receives better in general.

But I would argue that at any club level nobody can push short reliably, against anything. I've counted and it happens about 5% of the time. Even our National level players do not reliably do it against eachother. Most of the time people are pushing barely half-long but the other guy feels insecure about it and pushes it to make sure; which I suppose produced the same effect as a short push!

If you can find video of let's say a 1800 rated match where both players are reliably pushing short, then I'll eat my shorts.

So this statement is misleading. @ThePongCommenter explained why it is misleading and unfortunately you are still displaying a rationalistic attitude to this. The fact that people cannot serve short doesn't mean that you have the skills to attack what they send half long. In fact, I have beaten people by *trying* to push short and having them make mistakes because they kept waiting for the obviously long and mistimed the half long that wasn't rushing onto thier racket with momentum. In other words, quality can be level relative. Just because I tell you a ball is not short doesn't mean you can read and attack it as not being short.

So it all goes back to that there is little need to overly debate these things online. You either find a use for them in your game or you don't. Generally, all the players giving you advice have largely given you enough context for you to either find relevance or ignore it. In the end, the best form, unless you really don't want the advice at all or the person is just being so rude to you you feel the need to retaliate, is to just acknowlege and move on. Not everything someone tells you will help your game, especially if you are not training or competing. But it is all good stuff to start with as an idea if you do train.

I can tell you that as @blahness pointed out, if you compete, there are players you will almost always want to start out of the backspin game if you have the ability to do so and you also want you give yourself time so going long really fast is not what you want. So you go chopping or pushing topspin over the table even if the ball is not 2200 level tight. You know they might open but you find their opening easier to handle than you attacking and feeding them topspin to counter. All these things are *level* relative. But they all go back to *your* style. Just because you can't execute a skill at a super competent level doesn't mean that the skill won't be decent at your level.

In fact one of my weaknesses when I was 1200 was that I pushed literally every serve. And as crazy as it sounds, it worked against many uncoached players even up to 1400 because I had a really heavy push. I was trying to keep the ball on the table so I was trying to push *shortish* and make the ball heavy even if it popped up sky-high and prey on the fact that many people at that level cannot competently handle backspin. Of course, when players got too good at handling that play, I evolved. Obsessing over what people do at this or that level is not as important as looking for skills that fit into how you want to play. Someone gave you an idea, acknowledge it, decide if it fits your game then move on.

 

[Archosaurus]

So this statement is misleading. @ThePongCommenter explained why it is misleading and unfotunately you are still displaying a rationalistic attitude to this. The fact that people cannot serve shirt doesn't mean that you uave the skills to attwck what they send half long. In fact, i have beaten people by *trying* to push short and having them make mostakes because they kept waiting for the obviously long and mistimed the half long that wasn't rushing onto thier rwcket with momentum. In other words, quality can be level relative. Just because i tell you a ball is not short doesn't mean you can read and attack it as not being short.

So it all goes back to that there is little need to overly debate these things orline. You either find a use for them in your game or you don't. Generally, all the playees giving you advice have largely given you enough context for you to either find relevance or ignore it. In the end, the best form, unless you really don't want the advice at all or the person is just being so rude to you you feel the need to retaliate, is to just acknowlege and move on. Not everything someone tells you will help your game, especially if you are not training or competing. But it is all good stuff to start with as an idea if you do train.

I can tell you that as @blahness pointed out, if you compete, there are players you will almost always want to start out of the backspin game if you have the ability to do so and you also want you give yourself time so going long really fast is not what you want. So yoj go chopping or pushing topspin over the table even if the ball is not 2200 level tight. You know they might open but you find their opening easier to handle than attacking and feeding them topspin to counter. All these things are *level* relative. But they all go back to *your* style. Just because you can't execute a skill at a super competent level doesn't mean that the skill won't be decent at your level.

In fact one of my weaknesses when i wws 1200 was that I pushed literally every serve. And as crazy as it sounds, it worked against many uncoachrd players even up to 1400 because i had a really heavy push. I was trying to keep the ball on the table so i was trying to push *shortish* and make the ball heavy. Obsessing over what people fo at this or that level is not as important as lookijg for skills that fit into how you want to play. Someone gave you an idea, acknowledge it, decide if it fits your game then move on.

Fair. I feel like at my level especially, a tight half-long push with heavy spin is more effective than a little bit too high, not so heavy short push.

EDIT: Reason being most players who are not in the higher divisions will just loop it into the side of the table or off the table, or push it too late thinking it was going to be short and pop it up for a comfortable attack for me.

 

[dingyibvs]

The % is about as bad as I'd expect to say that you can't actually do it vs an actual ball, but thanks for the video. Some of those towards the forehand* would probably be killer shots at club level.

I would not say it's a "critical skill" above 1600; if it was, it'd be what wins points reliably. How many points in a match do you win doing this? 0? 1? I would dare say you win more points at most levels by getting the first topspin shot on the table not super high and not super slow.

Yes, some of them would be killed for sure, but some would force a poor return and some would win a point outright if your opponent is not expecting it. And as @NextLevel and @Tyce point out, a skill doesn't have to win you many points to be useful. To expand on what @Tyce said, a skill's utility should not be taken in isolation.

For example, if you cannot push short against no spin, then I'll just serve you no spin all day long and wait for the long return to tee off on. That'll put pressure on you to try to return it short, which if you haven't practiced then it'll win me points as you dump some attempts into the net. All of a sudden, my short pushes start winning me points. But say if I never practiced flicks, and you figured out that you could just return it short but a bit high, and I'd have no choice but to push it back to you. Then all of a sudden being able to push short to you became useless, because I couldn't take advantage of the ball that comes after.

Also, don't let perfect get in the way of good enough. A lot of the time it's good enough to give your opponent something different from what they expect. For example, if you're receiving a topspin service late, people usually expect a flick, a block, or a pop-up. You give them a half-long loaded backspin ball, and they may well not be able to attack it successfully. Like @NextLevel said, just because it's not short doesn't mean you can attack it successfully. I can tell you with confidence that I win points outright with half long pushes vs. topspin very often. This is because of both points in the last paragraphs: I'm an aggressive attacker so my opponent often feel compelled to attack anything long I give them, ,

Lastly, you shouldn't conflate the returns vs. nospin vs. topspin. Topspins are much easier to flick, as you can just borrow the opponent's topspin, but much harder to keep low and short, as you saw in my video. It's not a critical skill to be able to keep topspin returns short, a decent push is enough variation compared to a topspin flick. It's critical however to be able to return a nospin short. Nospins are difficult to flick with decent quality, so the variations usually come from different pushes. The variations in length and location of a push vs nospin needs to be greater in order for the return to be effective.

 

[Archosaurus]

@dingyibvs

Yeah, fair. You can still have some success even with very imperfect skills. They just need to be better than the skills you are making your opponent use, and then with some luck, you should win.
It's a simple principle but I forget it sometimes.

Often I will push super heavy but very high and slow and even decent players (1000RC+) will net it. Then I will push no-spin, half-high and fast and they will throw it off the end.

I usually have a thought like "I'm lucky he made a mistake, because this won't work against someone better", but most of the time the opponent is playing 4, 5 divisions higher than my level; he is already someone better!

The way one coach explained it was that it's not so much about how powerful or quality the shot is and more-so about if it's a shot the opponent likes and has success against.

In my opinion it also helps to have a variety of meaningfully different returns so the opponent's mental overhead that they need to keep track of is larger. Then they won't be able to just get in position and start backswinging before you even hit the ball and might be later and weaker.

 

[Der_Echte]

Archo, you are doing 10 tons better than you did a decade ago.. but I know who you are talking to. You are not gunna out do this man in any aspect of TT.

 

[backspacer]

Had a league match today at 10AM and I overslept... I arrived 45 minutes too late, almost wasn't even able to fit into the tram because it was absolutely packed.

Matches here start with doubles and with me being absent that point was lost. I played my two singles back-to-back with no warm-up and won both of them lol but the overall match ended in a draw so yeah that doubles would have been key. Did also manage to achieve my goal for the year and cracked 1500 TTR.

 

[Archosaurus]

Archo, you are doing 10 tons better than you did a decade ago.. but I know who you are talking to. You are not gunna out do this man in any aspect of TT.

I don't know about that, but I do feel like I'm 10 tons heavier than a decade ago, that's for sure.

 

[blahness]

Sure, I recorded a few pushes to give you a general idea. I included the off the bounce push vs topspin as well but that's not one I use very often, the other two I do though. Of course, quality is higher than in actual games since I know what's coming. During games I usually focus more on keeping it low, resulting in 1) more errors pushing into the net, and 2) generally land a bit longer, especially vs topspin, so that they're more often half long.

Tbh, @dingyibvs you are doing something that is way harder than what i initially said, which is what @Archosaurus put together in bad faith in order to protect his fragile ego.

I was talking about a decent long spinny push off a sidetopspin service, not short push which is obviously much harder. At @Archosaurus' level he doesnt even need a short push.

Also 60 rpm is way more than what people are serving, ive seen pros actually serve less than that. Try 30 rpm. And most people dont serve pure topspin but sidetopspin and the sidespin helps a lot for pushing.

Tbh i have seen a lot of lower level tournaments and the guy who can push everything back and block loops reliably will win over a wannabe macho looper 90+% of the time.

Basically at this level, people who can push properly literally will just do a heavy push and the most they can do is push back or do a low % opening loop which loses them points even faster. Even if they can execute an opening loop, a lot of people have practiced so much blocks that it is not even guaranteed a point.

And if that person has a decent opening loop, the "meta" strategy is just to push heavy against everything on receive and then do a spinny opening loop themselves. This strategy is almost outright unbeatable until a certain level.

The transition probably occurs at around say RC 1300 or so where the guys are a lot more stable on opening loops + follow up continuous looping that it starts to overwhelm this strategy.

Honestly, i must be living in a super different world where being able to push sidetopspin is something special. Seriously my life would be so much easier if people actually 'didnt know' how to push sidetopspin around me and actually just default to flicking sidetopspin serves. I would just serve sidetopspin all day long and then just comfortably loop the inevitable low quality long flick. Lmao. even at RC1500 i have encountered penholders who can return a long sidetopspin serve actually short (even if it is higher) which is just disturbing af. In fact, the more sidetopspin i serve, the heavier their push would be so i even try not to serve with so much sidetopspin. A weak flick is way easier to deal with than a nasty heavy af sideunderspin push.

Maybe because i am in Melbourne where there are a lot of Chinese immigrants where a lot of the players trained in the Chinese system, so this (pushing sidetopspin) is just not a strange concept. Or maybe Melbourne RC is just so underrated due to this too so i might be talking out of my ass here in terms of lower level tournaments.

But imo, good pushing (and blocking) is the most essential fundamentals to table tennis.

 

[jk1980]

after losing to one 1050 TTR youth player a week ago in the fifth set (not taking him seriously and already talking to a team mate how we would get a 5-5 draw if we just one those easy games against these lower rated players (and funnily my team mate also loosing to that one) i faced similar rated players today and i think last week was enough serving of humble pie to take this seriously now. We one 10-0 and i 3-0ed both opponents.

This is basically the "lowest" level you can play and if you would just look at some of the guys playing topspin against block you would think that they would be decent, but life and especially a match is not somebody playing easy balls for you to destroy.

In both of my games the opponents blocked out 95% of my opening loops. in the last game it was so predictable that i would win two points on my serve by opening up and then be comfortable to exercise backhand flicking the opponents serve. It (the bh flick receive) did work our only with 20% success, but it does not really matter because i knew that i would be gaining two points when i served again.

The first opponent that was looking better warming up than in the game was playing an butterfly ovtcharov innerforce ALC with double dignics 05. I told him that these are quite advanced rubbers, but if he got the time to exercise 3 hours a day it could surely work

 

[NextLevel]

Moved out a lot (but likely not all ) of the rankings stuff. Hopefully, we can get back to discussing our practice.

 

[Tyce]

Last night we had a home match, but I was rostered out so our third player could get some match time in. We took our 4th 4-1 loss and got our grand total of points up to 4. I don't know if I would have fared better, especially since I was also feeling a little off due to stupid stressing personal stuff lately. We're going to have to make up a LOT of ground in the second half if we are to retain.

 

[Haito]

Last night we had a home match, but I was rostered out so our third player could get some match time in. We took our 4th 4-1 loss and got our grand total of points up to 4. I don't know if I would have fared better, especially since I was also feeling a little off due to stupid stressing personal stuff lately. We're going to have to make up a LOT of ground in the second half if we are to retain.

Which league are you playing?

 

[Tyce]

Which league are you playing?

We promoted from 5th class to 4th class, both regional levels. Everyone in our team should be capable of making that step, but it's not coming together yet. Lots of 2-3 games, tons of 9-11 or higher scores. Of course that's not just luck, it's also not being able to close it.
Our eldest team member has played 4th for quite a while and has been in 3rd, too, but he's having trouble keeping up. The other guy has been storming up pretty well, promoting consecutively from 6 to 5 to 4, he needs to get used to having more opposition. Me too, I guess.

 

[kindof99]

Moved out a lot (but likely not all ) of the rankings stuff. Hopefully, we can get back to discussing our practice.

I actually don't like the moving out of those posts. Isn't this daily chit chat thread supposed for any chat topics?

 

[NextLevel]

I actually don't like the moving out of those posts. Isn't this daily chit chat thread supposed for any chat topics?

First of all, thanks for the feedback. I will consider alternatives in the futures. Maybe I won't move the posts but will open a new thread and ask that further discussion be moved there.

Secondly, great question. Its supposed to be primarily about discussing your training, practice, matches and results. Yes other topics come in once in a while, but it really is a community thread where you share your TT life and practice.

 

[kindof99]

First of all, thanks for the feedback. I will consider alternatives in the futures. Maybe I won't move the posts but will open a new thread and ask that further discussion be moved there.

Secondly, great question. Its supposed to be primarily about discussing your training, practice, matches and results. Yes other topics come in once in a while, but it really is a community thread where you share your TT life and practice.

Well, you made your decision. But my opinion about a good moderator is not to do something(like moving posts, deleting posts) just because he/she does not like it.