Playing safe against “weaker” opponents

[tabletennismaniac]

This weekend I had lost to probably the lowest ranked player I had lost in the last 5 years. I have played quite OK during the the day, but in that match I was heavy favourite. The opponent played completely fearlessly (as expected for an underdog) - taking very high risk shots and landing them - only kudos there.
But after the match I felt supper pissed because of the attitude I entered the match with. I have tried to win by playing it safe - taking as little risk as possible, trying to outplay him mostly by pushing and blocking even though I normally play very aggressive.
I tend to notice that it is how I mostly try to play agains weaker players and usually it still works out as I end up just being more consistent - not in this case were I ended up just blown away from the table!
I really believe if I would have played my normal game the outcome probably would have been different - however, I just got stuck in a passive state until it was too late.

I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one who experience this and looking forward to hear how you deal with this?
How do you force yourself to not revert into passive mode in cases like this?

 

[Tyce]

This weekend I had lost to probably the lowest ranked player I had lost in the last 5 years. I have played quite OK during the the day, but in that match I was heavy favourite. The opponent played completely fearlessly (as expected for an underdog) - taking very high risk shots and landing them - only kudos there.
But after the match I felt supper pissed because of the attitude I entered the match with. I have tried to win by playing it safe - taking as little risk as possible, trying to outplay him mostly by pushing and blocking even though I normally play very aggressive.
I tend to notice that it is how I mostly try to play agains weaker players and usually it still works out as I end up just being more consistent - not in this case were I ended up just blown away from the table!
I really believe if I would have played my normal game the outcome probably would have been different - however, I just got stuck in a passive state until it was too late.

I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one who experience this and looking forward to hear how you deal with this?
How do you force yourself to not revert into passive mode in cases like this?

This is actually something I've been working on a lot recently.

First off, you gotta realize and tell yourself that reverting to pushing and blocking is not playing it safe. What that does is giving away the initiative to the opponent, so rather than being safe, it's making you vulnerable.

Once you get that into your system, you need to figure out how to play your own game at 50%. Better placement, more spin than speed, staying quick on the ball to put the pressure on, those are things that work for me. I can do that and keep risk to a minimum, playing to my opponents weak spots if possible

If you find this hard to accomplish, think long and hard if your equipment is even suitable for playing at 50%. Playing too fast or too hard equipment is awesome for the full power shots but not so much when you need to be able to play a controlled offense instead.

 

[Takkyu_wa_inochi]

unfortunately it happens to me as well sometimes... its not always easy. OTOH sometimes we win matches against higher ranked players because they do the same mistake so perhaps it balances.

the good answer is to play a lot of matches always try to be active and play the same. maybe adjust the speed and risk taking but don't compromise on a minimum level of ball quality, focus, and awareness

 

[Matteones]

I have had the same problem throughout all my table tennis history.
I agree with what the other ones said about not changing your game when you play against supposedly weaker players and I'll build even further on it.
Take a good look at who you are as a player (not who you wished to be).
My game is to attack before my opponent, and to attack hard, I am not what you could call a discoursive player, even if I would love to be one.
If I manage to take the initiative or counter strongly when I can't be the first to put a topspin in, I play to a very high level and I am at a very high amateur to semi-pro level.
If I try to play controlled and I end up pushing and blocking/fishing my level goes down 4-5 notches.

If you are like me, especially in matches where your nerves are high for whatever reason, against lower ranked players you face a choice:
- play half ass shots and risk losing.
- play your best, as if your are facing a very good player, and blow them off the table.
It took me years to hammer it into my habit, and occasionally I still relapse (it is incredibly difficult for me to start with a relaxed style and then switch into higher gears, I get stuck there for the whole match if I do) but I'd rather blow them off the table, and it is more respectful to them as players too.
If I start strong I can instead switch to a more relaxed playing style when the match is ongoing and confidence is higher (still tricky though).
This does not happen in training or when nerves are relaxed, I can, in that occasion, play with a relaxed style without losing so much of my level.
Ending note: playing it safe means using your A game (if your A game is serve and third ball strong attack, that's playing it safe) not changing it to your B-C game plan.

 

[Dr Evil]

If you rarely play with weaker players, you're likely to run into trouble with them. It's like playing against a different style, like long pips or anti. The rhythm and patterns are different. Much easier for nerves to disrupt your game when you're out of your comfort zone. If you want to beat weaker players easily with your normal attacking style, practice doing it. Handicap games, where you can only afford to lose a few points per game, are helpful with this. Most likely you'll quickly evolve a lower-risk version of your normal style. If you want to beat them with a passive push blocking style (a useful skill), first make sure you're actually better at it than your opponents, and then practice beating them with it.

 

[RefereeNumber2]

It's a good question.

The hardest part (in my experience) of playing weaker players is maintaining the motivation/positive emotional state to play at my best every point. When playing a tough opponent, this often comes naturally. I can feed off the energy of big shots and exciting rallies, even when it's my opponent winning the points. In the back of my head I still want to win, but I'm not focused on the outcome. I'm just trying to enjoy that feeling that we're each pushing each other to a higher level.

What's deadly is if you become focused on the eventual outcome of the match instead of executing on the very next point. When this happens, you can go strings of points in a row playing much slower and more reactive than your best level. This can happen against anyone, but it happens more easily against less challenging opponents. In these cases, I have to get the "next point" motivation from somewhere else. Having an audience, even just a single person who you know is watching (e.g., a coach), can help. I've tried having a private goal to beat a certain score-line, but this is a double-edged sword because if you miss it, you might feel even worse.

My advice: have a point-to-point ritual that you can focus on throughout the match, so that you're not thinking about the end result. The purpose is so that you can have some way to mentally reward yourself for playing well, and maintain that positive motivation. One of my go-to's is to imagine my coach is watching and giving me simple feedback after each point. Somehow imagining the match from someone else's perspective helps me, but YMMV.

 

[Tony's Table Tennis]

I think you switched off and couldn’t switch on in time.
Then mistakes happened and you got under pressure.
You probably thought it would be an easy win.

It happens to really strong players too.
You could call it careless, or loss of concentration, motivation or many things.

When it happens again, you need to jump start and finding your form and rhythm and it is okay to go in phases of playing safe to get there.

 

[NextLevel]

Even Harimoto has problems with this, so it is not special to you, taking more risk when your opponent is taking more risk against you is a challenge for the better player most of the time, especially against an athletic opponent. While those are friendly matches, watch Quadri play in the WRM-TV videos against the Japanese amateurs, even the long pips girl he "lost" to. He is mostly playing a control style, attacking opportunistically.

I think it is also important to realize that a match is a single match, it is easy to second guess your play after a single match because you are focused on the result. It is also quite possible that a smarter version of how you played could have worked great as well, or that taking more risk could have backfired on you. Or if you had played 6 matches, you would win 5, but with limited time to learn, you lost the one out of the 6 matches and would have won the next 5 if you were allowed to continue playing.

While we all talk about playing "our style", the truth is that table tennis is as much a dance as it is a battle. The dance part comes from the opponent needing to give you the quality you want and you needing to read that quality correctly to produce your great shots. The battle part is about disrupting the opponent and making them uncomfortable. I think very often, players who think if table tennis as being about
1) themselves playing better and worse and not about
2) using the opponent to play better by making the opponent give them readable balls and trying to make the opponent play worse by trying to frustrate the opponent's expectations

tend to place too much pressure on their technique to win matches and not enough on things like placing the ball better, looking for smarter patterns etc. Of course, many players become much better by improving their technique so they sometimes take the pattern checking and opponent disruption aspect of the game for granted. But against a player going all out on risk, especially as the "worse player", I think it is very important to try to focus on disruption, early and often as well as playing your own game. Latest by the start of game 2, there needs to be an emphasis on not letting the player get what he likes. Of course this needs to be practiced as well and is level dependent, testing in and out footwork, transition from forehand to backhand to forehand or backhand to forehand to backhand or middle then wide, even with pushes can be devastating for some players. But it isn't always achievable by someone trying to overpower the opponent by hitting the ball as hard as possible.

 

[tabletennismaniac]

Thanks all! Great insights that definitely helps.
I can see myself in most of your replies.
I can also totally relate to the point of going down levels if not playing your game. My game is aggressive close to the table style putting a lot of pressure on the opponent.
If I go back from the table and start to play slow - its instant game over, unless the opponent is really a lot lower in level.

 

[sebi]

I try to go all out and win dominantly, when i am sure i am in a good position and understadn how to win back off a bit and try to have a bit more fun for me and the other player. But at first i make sure to be on it and do it in every set from the beginning

 

[XpingpingpongpongX]

I am also learning this too. When playing the supposedly weaker opponents, I wanted to have some fun with them instead of doing mean serves and attacking. But many times, I lost a few points, got pressured, and lost the games. So now I keep reminding myself stop being nice, this is sport. I was never systematically trained, so I would expect anyone with a paddle can beat me. Still learning that.

 

[Topspinslinger]

The best advice someone gave me is knowing that if the opponent has a good day or you are having a bad day you are not better.
Tabletennis sometimes is you versus yourself mentally.

So if I give my best from point one I never lose, only the better player that day wins🙂 And I am super okay with that because it was a good match probably
Only when you give up and stop trying you lose, no matter the outcome.

I've won matches when I was not confident or I felt like I missed every ball, even easy ones with this mentallity. As Anders Lind said, winning on bad days more important then on good onces.

 

[NextLevel]

The best advice someone gave me is knowing that if the opponent has a good day or you are having a bad day you are not better.
Tabletennis sometimes is you versus yourself mentally.

So if I give my best from point one I never lose, only the better player that day wins🙂 And I am super okay with that because it was a good match probably
Only when you give up and stop trying you lose, no matter the outcome.

I've won matches when I was not confident or I felt like I missed every ball, even easy ones with this mentallity. As Anders Lind said, winning on bad days more important then on good onces.

My coach always told me it is most important to bring your best game when the player is worse, that is the player that wants your points and will take risks to get them because he has nothing to lose. Against the better players, whether you play well or badly, the result is "expected", so if you are fortunate enough to put pressure on them that makes them uncertain, you can then continue to fight and put pressure, but that getting up for better players and relaxing for weaker players was entirely the wrong way to gain stability in your results.

 

[XpingpingpongpongX]

From the opposite point of view. Sometimes when I play against better players (like 300 ranking better), I got a few good shots and/or lucky shots, and is winning like 8-5 or something. Then I think more than half of the times, I still lost at the end. What should I do to keep pressuring my opponent and have a better chance to win? Is it my strategy? my mentality?

 

[NextLevel]

From the opposite point of view. Sometimes when I play against better players (like 300 ranking better), I got a few good shots and/or lucky shots, and is winning like 8-5 or something. Then I think more than half of the times, I still lost at the end. What should I do to keep pressuring my opponent and have a better chance to win? Is it my strategy? my mentality?

The internal dialogue of a table tennis player can be dangerous, mostly because it can promote too much focus on self. For me, the most important thing is to not let the motivation to execute be primarily about the results of the points, you need to have enough experience and information about how you play to be able to determine whether a pattern is good for you or not, *regardless of whether you won a specific point or not*. For me, it is almost always a good result when I get an attackable ball from a serve, *whether I win the point or not*, even if the return surprised me. Because I can keep it in my memory banks as a possibility and try to get something out of that pattern the next time,

Most good players I know who have stable results focus less on how they are playing per se and focus more on how they are deploying or executing plays against the opponent from point to point. The main purpose of memory in those moments is to create and frustrate expectations - for example, if I have won points out a particular serve over and over again, then if I am not sure what to do, then maybe that is the serve I should go to. Or I can start out serving a specific way and maybe I have served to backhand every time I have done that in the match so far but trusting my practice (and this is key, don't invent serves during a match at critical moments or you will miss the serve completely), I serve to a different point on the table out of the same starting point to surprise the opponent. Or I served a let serve with a particular spin and the opponent touched the ball and read the spin off the touch. I do the same serve again but reduce or increase the spin to look for errors. Or I have pushed to the backhand almost every time I have returned this serve. On this critical point since I have the lead, I try a push to the forehand, even if the ball pops up, because the difference in placement might surprise the opponent and win the point outright. Or maybe I have pushed a serve every time I got it in the past, this point, I flick it or wipe it to give the opponent a new look. If I miss the flick, the point is not to focus on the miss, the point is to look for information to improve the next point.

In summary, the key is to play without focusing on the results other than as information to use to play future points. The lead was 8-5 is not as important as knowing what patterns were fruitful, what patterns were not, and whether there are expectations that can be exploited in those patterns. If the stress of the points is getting to you, call a timeout and use it to think seriously about what you want to concoct.

Remember that the other player has a right to make good shots too - all you can ask for is that you made them make good decisions and shots to win. You cannot determine whether they win or not. In principle, if they are better players, if you cannot find something serious to exploit, you should lose the game. Don't let the score distract your from the reality of what should have happened if people were making good decisions during the points. If I pop up a serve and he missed, I should not be relying on that play to get me through the match even though I won that point.

 

[Love_TT]

This weekend I had lost to probably the lowest ranked player I had lost in the last 5 years. I have played quite OK during the the day, but in that match I was heavy favourite. The opponent played completely fearlessly (as expected for an underdog) - taking very high risk shots and landing them - only kudos there.
But after the match I felt supper pissed because of the attitude I entered the match with. I have tried to win by playing it safe - taking as little risk as possible, trying to outplay him mostly by pushing and blocking even though I normally play very aggressive.
I tend to notice that it is how I mostly try to play agains weaker players and usually it still works out as I end up just being more consistent - not in this case were I ended up just blown away from the table!
I really believe if I would have played my normal game the outcome probably would have been different - however, I just got stuck in a passive state until it was too late.

I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one who experience this and looking forward to hear how you deal with this?
How do you force yourself to not revert into passive mode in cases like this?

In Vietnam, when we compete in tournaments with mixed levels (E, F, G, H…), higher-ranked players usually have to give point handicaps to lower-ranked ones. For example, if the difference is one level, it’s a 2-point handicap, two levels means 2-3-2, three levels means 3-4-3, and if the gap is bigger, it’s usually even less balanced.

I often lose when I have to give a 3-4-3 handicap, for the same reason as you: I play too safely and mostly wait for my opponent to make mistakes. But because they already start with a lead, they play extremely aggressively, taking “impossible” shots that I can’t handle.

After about two years of struggling with this, I realized a way to overcome it. The key is to practice serves that are difficult to return—not necessarily super spinny, but with deceptive motions so the opponent misreads the spin. That way, it’s easier for you to focus on your 3rd ball attack.

Also, when receiving serves, remember that a common weakness of lower-level players compared to us is their footwork. They can hit the ball very well when it comes right to them, sometimes just as solid as we do. But once you force them to move and hit at the same time, their weakness shows and you can exploit it much more easily.

Just some thoughts to share with you.

 

[NetProphet]

How do you force yourself to not revert into passive mode in cases like this?

For me 90% of it is so I won't feel like you do now and end up writing a post like this.
I can say that because I have absolutely experienced what you've described, gone in thinking I don't need my best to win and then, crap, I'm 0-1 and 6-9 down and staring 0-2 in the face but (a) my serves aren't getting me the cheap points they used to and (b) I just can't turn it on, I'm stuck in 3rd gear.
So it's experience that kicks me to start incredibly aggressively and break the opponent early. Remember, they're not expecting to win, only to give their all. If you take the first set hard they often lose belief.
It also requires total tactical respect for the opponent too, search out weakness and patterns the same as you do against peers and those better than you so by set 3 your 2 up (or level at worst) with a real map for victory rather than 0-2 down without a clue!