stubborn in disobedience of the rules. Bad example to follow.

says Fair Play first
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. "The foolish will never obey by the rules", As Russian folk proverbian has it. And more so if umpires forgiving such a folly by the server.
 
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Is he Lebesson?

I think he has been doing that for years.... and I don't recall him being penalized for that.

I might be wrong though, because I have only watched a few of his videos on YouTube.
 
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. "The foolish will never obey by the rules", As Russian folk proverbian has it. And more so if umpires forgiving such a folly by the server.
Is there not a rule where the ball sight cannot be blocked in the entire ball trajectory, so the receiver can follow the path of the ball until the contact with the racket?

EDIT:

1691499808051.png


I understand that 2.6.4 and 2.6.5 confirms what I said in this comment.
 
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Is there not a rule where the ball sight cannot be blocked in the entire ball trajectory, so the receiver can follow the path of the ball until the contact with the racket?

EDIT:

View attachment 26215

I understand that 2.6.4 and 2.6.5 confirms what I said in this comment.
you are correct.
however, the implementation of the rule is so poor (this should be an ITTF referee + umpire issue and not a TT player/forum member issue) that it has been going on for a long long long time. If any one that is foolish, it is the referee and umpires, and the players are the clever ones.

Many high level players use their head and/or shoulder to block the ball - so many from China and from other countries too.

It is actually very easy to learn to do that, all you need to do is learn to toss and let the ball land downwards in between your head and your bat - this is to let the head block it.
The shoulder to block it is to open your shoulder a bit late (so head and shoulder blocks it), but umpires tend to focus on the opening of the shoulder with the arm being out of the way, so using shoulder could be more risky with a sniper eye umpire, But they don't really look at the head.
Why not? ask igor that question
maybe old eyes, or not taught the rule?

It is like a police watching a crime and foolishly does nothing...why?
 
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Is he Lebesson?

I think he has been doing that for years.... and I don't recall him being penalized for that.

I might be wrong though, because I have only watched a few of his videos on YouTube.
Let's just say that when you serve like that, there is at least one umpire in the universe who has penalized you for that. Always at least one (I am being conservative, there is definitely more than one). But because others didn't always follow suit, you take your chances. And technically, he does toss the ball vertically after all the dancing, so it doesn't affect most high level opponents focused on the match. But sometimes, like many players, he blatantly blocks with his head, but such illegal serving has been done by everyone for years, so let's ask ITTF for the latest on that...
 
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Why pick on Lebesson now? And if you're going to pick on him in slow motion with a some smooth country rock, then why do you disrespect him in such a low resolution? I know you come from a country that can do great things with a simple potato but this is a spud too far!

Also, Lebesson does actually stop his movement for a split second before throwing the ball up. Since the pre-movement is always the same his serve isn't too bad on the scale of illegal to legal. IMO
 
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No joy is endless. God knows all the guile.
Sadly we cant hear what the reason for the let call was.

But lebesson got called let more often and changed it serve a little bit. The older videos are pretty disgusting though. He hides the ball so hard and threw it even lower than nowadays.

But besides that his serves arent that illegal if you wanna categorize it^^ yeah they are weird because of his hand movement but in the end, the hand is still, he throws the ball really vertical and then... Fucks up the rest.
But still there are way worse instances than his imo. And ofcourse you are right, the umpires and the ones at fault here being unable to execute rules. I mean they should wake up AT LEAST the moment a pro player having issues reading serves and making continously uncommon errors within their returns.

Although i am not so sure what god has to do with that oO
 
I mean they should wake up AT LEAST the moment a pro player having issues reading serves and making continously uncommon errors within their returns.
Why should a professional player first report that he is affected? Even without being affected, an umpire must revoke those services.
 
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Why should a professional player first report that he is affected? Even without being affected, an umpire must revoke those services.
That is true in theory.
In practical circumstances the umpire has to check for too many errors in movements that can accure in a second. Sometimes even less than that. In most cases these umpires are human, and therefore unlikely to notice everything.
The checkup for a vertical throw is a huge issue itself. I mean looking directly into a throw makes it nearly impossible to see how vertical or not a throw is.

To compensate for that they should use some indicators. As the example i mentioned.
And no i dont mean they should wait until someone reports that he is affected, they should see the effect happening.

Example:
The umpire focusses on the height of the throw and see everything is in order. The service gets executed and all of a sudden the other player still missreads tremendously so the ball flys way out to the side of the table. That incident should be a good indicator that the focus of the umpire is wrong and should be more shifted towards head, shoulder and arm position of the serving player, to check if he is hiding the ball while serving. Or if the server throws the ball not vertically.

But a better solution would be, if the umpire would study the player they gonna work with. Because in that case you wouldnt need to focus on so many things.
For example you are the umpire of Hugo vs Ma Long. Checking for throwheight of the ball from Hugos serves makes no sense. Ball position in hand would be something that would be more likely to call a let. Or that he didnt move his left arm fast enough...
For Ma Long it would be throwheight either. More like hiding serve behind is head or that he doesnt throw vertically enough.
Serving in TT especially in the higher levels is a habbit and has a pattern the players got used to it. That pattern should be known to the umpires at the higher levels at least.
Within the lower levels it gets hard as ive pointed out above.
 
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Here is a little shitshow of my fellow germans. Especially Ricardo hides his serve in several ways. First position is blocked by his head, then (depending on his serve) his shoulder and then even his belly because he hits the serve next to him and turns with it.
I think the umpire should have reacted AT LEAST to the many occasions Kay failed to return or returned so poorly, Ricardo could smash the next ball.
Funny enough that changed the outcome in his match agains Fanbo, which he should have lost imo, because Fanbo player way better over all. Sadly there is no direct VOD of that. I think you can find this in a qualifier stream for the currrent Contender.


I think the way they are currently doing their work as an umpire, they should have a Robot count the points and get rid of them. Their calls are often times way too random or completely absent. If you cant execute rules steadily for everyone your rules suck.
 
Fixing the video above, maybe Ricardo hides the ball several times but serves behind his "baseline" each time. That cannot be said of Kay, because almost all his services are taken above the table, beyond his "baseline".
Surely the referee on the raised seat must have been able to determine this very clearly? But not responding!
 
I think the way they are currently doing their work as an umpire, they should have a Robot count the points and get rid of them. Their calls are often times way too random or completely absent. If you cant execute rules steadily for everyone your rules suck.
A kind of VAR, with sensor lines, transversely in line at the head of the table. Problem solved.
 
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says Table tennis clown
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If you cant execute rules steadily for everyone your rules suck.
That is exactly how i feel about it, if one is not prepared to police the rules then don't make the rules or scrap them. Illegal serves and voc free boosting are not or can not be policed so get rid of these rules.
 
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Fixing the video above, maybe Ricardo hides the ball several times but serves behind his "baseline" each time. That cannot be said of Kay, because almost all his services are taken above the table, beyond his "baseline".
Surely the referee on the raised seat must have been able to determine this very clearly? But not responding!
Hm, i havent rechecked every serve but i would disagree that Kay does hit the ball directly above the table. His head is nearly above the table and he always hits his serve behind it. Something btw that gets called let from time to time, but not consistent enough to change it obviously.
Btw imo Kay hits his serveces around the spot where i hit them, as you can check in my profile pic. Just slightly more to the right because he hugs his table a bit closer

Besides that i see why this rule wouldnt be followed so strictly (i dont even recall having heard of a let because player hit his serve within the playing surface and not behind it). I mean the advantage of going slightly within the surface is so minor, but still the rule is needed, because in case you overdo it, you can get a huge advantage, especially on lower levels^^
 
Hm, i havent rechecked every serve but i would disagree that Kay does hit the ball directly above the table. His head is nearly above the table and he always hits his serve behind it. Something btw that gets called let from time to time, but not consistent enough to change it obviously.
Btw imo Kay hits his serveces around the spot where i hit them, as you can check in my profile pic. Just slightly more to the right because he hugs his table a bit closer

Besides that i see why this rule wouldnt be followed so strictly (i dont even recall having heard of a let because player hit his serve within the playing surface and not behind it). I mean the advantage of going slightly within the surface is so minor, but still the rule is needed, because in case you overdo it, you can get a huge advantage, especially on lower levels^^
As far as I can see you are more behind the table, Kay is much more to the side of the table. As a result, his services are very often touched above the table when he throws the ball upright. He could correct this if he threw his ball slightly backwards.
The champion in this is Lim Jong-Hoon, he is really next to the table, so that he always has his point of contact above the table. The result of this is that the playing field becomes noticeably smaller and becomes very important for him because of his third ball.
 
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As far as I can see you are more behind the table, Kay is much more to the side of the table. As a result, his services are very often touched above the table when he throws the ball upright. He could correct this if he threw his ball slightly backwards.
The champion in this is Lim Jong-Hoon, he is really next to the table, so that he always has his point of contact above the table. The result of this is that the playing field becomes noticeably smaller and becomes very important for him because of his third ball.
Ill keep an eye out to watch that. Never really noticed it.

But still, i wouldnt rate it worse than hiding the ball and/or the contactpoint. If you watched half of the match above you see way more issues dealing with Ricardos serves than the other way around. And both know each other well from the national stage.
I mean being unable to see what is happening makes returning full random. So getting an advantage or disadvantage is based on pure gambling. This takes away the whole purpose of a sport imo.
 
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