Daily Table Tennis Chit Chat

[dingyibvs]

Damn, you are really tempting me to try out Zyre lol. D09c really lasts not long enough, and D05 is just way too bouncy for good short game. I also have relatively short strokes on both wings now and create quite a lot of spin with my contact usually, so for me it is not so much about the looping but more for durability and also how does it feel in the short game esp serving and pushing?

It's not too bouncy, and it's surprisingly spinny with brushing strokes. It's a little bit tougher to touch short compared to say D09c but IMO makes it up by being easier to push long with a more disguised stroke. I've played against it far more than with it this far, and I'm constantly surprised by how deep and spinny the long pushes my opponents give me are.

I bought 2 used sheets, both red 2.7mm. I think I gonna try it on my BH for real for a bit. I've used the R9 for the past month, and it's really amazing for a control BH game which TBH is what suits me right now. But I'm too weak to resist trying the Zyre and see if I can be a two-winged bomba guy lol. Also, I know some people who are traveling to Japan in Nov/Dec, so I need to decide if I want them to bring me some Zyres by then!

I'm traveling for 2 weeks starting tmr, so I won't be able to try it until I come back.

 

[Tyce]

Another match, another 4-1 loss. Took the first one, and I was insanely close to take the second singles. Lost 16-14 while I was up 2-1 in the 4th and then lost the 5th.
There's light, I had way, way more grip on both opponents. My BH opening was very solid, I didn't do a lot of wild stuff and my focus was strong.
We're also just 3 points behind the next team, so we're not out yet.

 

[J-fed]

Another match, another 4-1 loss. Took the first one, and I was insanely close to take the second singles. Lost 16-14 while I was up 2-1 in the 4th and then lost the 5th.
There's light, I had way, way more grip on both opponents. My BH opening was very solid, I didn't do a lot of wild stuff and my focus was strong.
We're also just 3 points behind the next team, so we're not out yet.

Keep going. Sounds like you are getting close.

 

[Archosaurus]

Had a casual session today. Hit a bit with National NEO H3 blue sponge on W81 Pro Inner.

I actually do think my specific National sheet may be slightly more performant than the last non-NEO Provincial I had. I think the topsheet is ever so slightly tackier, but the rubber isn't really slower either.

Is it worth the price delta? No, not really, unless money is not an issue, but in that case just buy STAR Player.

The sheet also measured less consistent on the sponge although more consistent on the topsheet. Weird. I'd expect it to be +-0.25 or whatever, but it was similar. Sponge hardness was similar to 41A Provincial despite being a 40A, topsheet was softer.

I'd post the numbers but I overwrote them by mistake and I don't remember them, although the topsheet measured 54.0 O +-0.10 or so.

If the National sheet is noticeably more durable or something like that, then I'd keep buying them, but if it lasts the usual 2-3 months, then Provincial it is.

I also fucked up the gluing immensely and had to re-glue it, which may have negatively affected it, but I don't think so.

I haven't given the W81 a fair chance yet, but I still don't like it. The vibration is really resonant at low forces and it just kinda feels terrible, while it becomes sharper and more okay at high forces. I wouldn't describe it as "crispy" at all. The blade feels really "thick", probably mostly due to the handle. I can't feel the ball as well on serves and it feels like it's further away from the rubber than it is.

It's also faster at low speed and slower at high speed which is just entirely the opposite of what I want; and it's also stiffer.

The craftsmanship and durability seems greatly improved compared to DHS B2, though. It's a nicer blade in those aspects. Stuff is well sanded, lines up straight and so on.

It just kinda plays badly. It may be that my specific B2 punches above its weight in this price range, or maybe I got a bad W81. I will still use it for a couple more weeks at least before making a final judgment but to now it's disappointing. I would much rather go with a B2, Long 5, Viscaria, hell, even a Long 3 or Clipper over the W81 lol.

EDIT: Granted the blade may be great for someone who likes a stiffer, more compressed feeling. That someone just probably isn't me. I like a flexible blade with a wide range.

 

[NextLevel]

So much stuff going on in life so i have not been able to get to the table. But i will hopefully be able to play slightly more but not a lot. Had to cancel my trip to the NA Teams this year for a good reason. Will start trying to improve my overall fitness and hope that improves my TT as well when i resume. Just try lose a pound a week or a pound every two weeks, nothing drastic, I will be happy if I am much fitter and stronger even if my TT sucks lol.

Hopefully will have a lesson this Sunday and i can start from there. The main focus now is taking the ball later with good quality in order to expand the possibilities in my game.

 

[J-fed]

So much stuff going on in life so i have not been able to get to the table. But i will hopefully be able to play slightly more but not a lot. Had to cancel my trip to the NA Teams this year for a good reason. Will start trying to improve my overall fitness and hope that improves my TT as well when i resume. Just try lose a pound a week or a pound every two weeks, nothing drastic, I will be happy if I am much fitter and stronger even if my TT sucks lol.

Hopefully will have a lesson this Sunday and i can start from there. The main focus now is taking the ball later with good quality in order to expand the possibilities in my game.

Best of non luck.
You can get there. Make the decision and stick with it.
If you fall off the wagon get back on quickly and hold on tighter.

 

[jk1980]

Had a tournament today and won against the ones with less points and lost against the ones with more, so nothing unexpected.
What i realize is that i can probably make the most "gains" if i learn to strongly receive or rather attack all these low spin serves, because these are even done on a level way above me. Most are comfortable just pushing them back, but really the have low backspin and i should be able to attack and place them. If i do a backhand flip that i would use against proper backspin, the ball just goes wide, because there is so little backspin in it.

With the "weapons" i have i am sure a more experienced player could draft a proper and more successful playing system, but with me still thinking about shot selection, the whole strategic part of a match is not available to me.

I won one game 3-1, but it really took me 3 and a half sets to notice that the opponent could not do much with the backhand (apart from pushing, blocking and countering). Once i noticed i won my next 5 points directly by just pressuring his backhand, but man that was way too late. I could have had a much easier game if i had noticed that earlier.
I see other people happy enough to go into pushing battles but that is simply not how i wanna play (even though it could be more successful against some opponents). It is kind of painful seeing other people being more successful even though they could not loop a backspin ball if life depended on it, but hey... it is what it is and unfortunately if i bait them try to loop my backspin pushes they do try to do that perhaps twice a game, so it is not a good tactic to gain points.

My home work now has to be to play against many players that do these half-assed serves and attack them properly. I feel like this would get me more easy points against lower level players and take away the pressure against better players.

 

[barusu]

I had my first ever tournament. I lost all three games in the group phase 🙈. The last game was really close, 2-3, i lost first 2 rounds, won next 2, but lost on the last matchpoint 10-12.

But hey, at least this time i met many cool people (one of them is a trainer for paralympic TT), i could actively attack and i had my nervousness under control ✌️. Cannot wait for the next tournaments!

 

[Archosaurus]

Incredible day today.

Just a few days ago I fucked up the gluing immensely on my H3 National sheet when I put it on the W81 and almost binned it, but thanks to blue sponge I managed to get it off with great pain and re-glue.
Today someone """accidentally""" put my bat in his bag when I set it down on a table and would have walked off with it if I didn't make a fuss about it, and when I left the club I left my bag at the club and thought I left it on a train, so I was pretty convinced I'd just lost that racket as well. After I come home I drop a bunch of food on the ground and just now I bit my tongue. I also played like total shit today, par the course.

I'm not superstitious but I think the H3 needs to get off the W81 and I need to be careful today LOL.

I'll give the W81 to my partner to try carbon with H3 Commercial to see how he likes it, and probably just sell it to him for peanuts if he likes it, because personally for me the W81 is kind of shit.

 

[Archosaurus]

Another day of internal comp, another terrible performance. Well, objectively I did lose some sets 9-11 vs much better players, but I'm not happy with it. I'm just getting points with stupid shit and not proper play. My attacking play is actually degrading dramatically and I'm now roughly at the level I was at 4-5 months ago. My usual practice partner took me convincingly 3-1.

This is normal for me, though, I've had much worse slumps and consistent degradation of performance in other games and sports. I think it's just how it goes for me. I might play really badly for months and months until I suddenly improve when I simultaneously fix a lot of issues. It has happened many times before in other things.

 

[jk1980]

since we had the topic of having AI help training and analyze matches here quite often and there was a lot of misinformation regarding the top, i would like to share my experiences.

to my knowledge there is NO AI model aimed at table tennis and the usual culprits like Gemini, ChatGPT and the like can not and will not analyze table tennis videos. If you tell them to, they will hallicunate and either just go by the youtube video description and spit out generic stuff that would be true about any video or it will in best case take still photos ever x minutes and derive data from that. This is not enough to form any kind of analyzis that would help one to improve.

there is this liimba side which claims to enable the upload of matches and allegedly cut your table tennis videos and analyze rallies and points, but to me it looks like it is a "branded" version of the betterplay.ai service that would cut table tennis videos into highlights and rallys.

Lets be real: if the AI is not even able to count the score, then it cant derive anything that would be helpful to improve.

I do have a Claude Pro subscription and i asked Claude how it could help me to improve or analyze table tennis and this was a little tedious but definitely worth it.

Since there is no way for AI to understand a match video (it offerend to take snapshots of videos and compare posture) it lead me to feed AI with a way that it can understand. Unfortunately transcription is not included in most AIs services, so the only real way to give AI data is to provide text. What i did then was watch a video of my match and narrate it in a structured format like this:
0 - 0 opponent serves underspin to my forhand, i push to his backhand, he pushed to my backhand, i try to step around and loop, opponent blocks out: point for me.
0 - 1 opponent serves wide to my backhand, i try to flick but the ball goes wide, point to the enemy
1 - 1 my serve: i serve long underspin to the backhand, opponent pushes to the forehand, i loop into his forehand, he counters down the line into my backhand and i miss. Point to the opponent.

Is it quite some work ? yes !
But the result was that it could count the score properly and analyze patterns that could be distilled down to what i should be working on.

The result was really encouraging and took away from the doubt i had regarding my plan A system for matches because it told me that i would win 80% of the points on my serve with my true and tested tactics and that i would only win below 30 % on the opponents serve so receive against a specific type of serve would be the biggest lever to improve scores.

Claude would tell me to watch for specific patterns in given situations where i could prepare better and especially the analyzis of the result of a play was really helpful.
If i only win 30% of the points when the opponent serves it sounds different then my subjective feeling in or after the match.
Note that it's not like that i only return 30% of the opponents serves and all other cases are a direct point for the opponent, but rather that my receives lead to a rally or ball exchange that is unfavourable to me and leads me to loosing the point.
This connection between receive and losing or winning a point after the 4th or 5th ball was not native or felt by me.

 

[Tyce]

I'm bummed. Another match of being close but not winning, this time 0-5. Also lost (in 2-3 of course) to someone I beat in our home game.
It's hard to shake the feeling that I'm simply doing something wrong.

 

[jonol]

I'm bummed. Another match of being close but not winning, this time 0-5. Also lost (in 2-3 of course) to someone I beat in our home game.
It's hard to shake the feeling that I'm simply doing something wrong.

Do you think possibly you're spending too much time analysing and not enough time applying?

The vague sense you're doing something wrong could just be more to do with a lack of confidence in your skillset and strategy.

 

[latej]

Yes, baby, now I know how...