Table Tennis Statistics - Have Your Say!

[rainneverever]

I see a chart of their ratings at a specific instance but I could not find a graph based on multiple entries over the length of each players career - which them forms a curve for each. If that exists could you provide a link to it? Thanks.

I agree that comparing between two different rating systems would not make much sense but I can still see going back and calculating new style ratings for old players and then comparing them. Of course this is a natural thing to do in Aprad Elo's system, but then I don't know enough about the system used in International Table Tennis to know for sure if it applies to it as well. It was my understanding that the rating system in the US Table Tennis Association was based on the Elo system, but I could be wrong.

EmRatThich once made a video showing the change of top 10 WR with WR points from 2015 to 2017.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=el6dcesTa5Q


If you want a graph, it is much easier. The only thing is to obtain ranking and/or ranking points records. ITTF used to have such page for each player, monthly ranking, ranking points and rating points (the rating points are the meaurement of levels, the difference between two players' rating points is used to determine what they gain/lose once the match was finished.) Unfortunately, such webpages are NO LONGER accessible after ITTF changed their IT service provider last year! Only 2014-2018 ranking records can be found on ITTF website now.
http://results.ittf.link/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=7&Itemid=236


Some website saved archived players' ranking and ranking points. The website below has records from 2001 to 2018, good enough for players under 30 years old but not covering the early career of Timo Boll, Vladimir Samsonov and etc. When a player's ranking was folded due to inactivity, this website did not specify the month so better double check with ITTF website and old news article. Also noted that the very early ranking points of players under 30 should be from junior tournaments.
https://tabletennis.guide/rating_ittf.php?gender=1


I was trying to make a graph with ranking records from tabletennis.guide for current top 10 players; however, I ran into problems. Lin Gaoyuan is shown to have 6 rankings in 2014, 62-63-60-57-63-62, but ITTF website said he has 5 rankings 63-59-57-64-63. Frustrated, I don't know which data I should trust.
Again, I insist my request that ITTF should make the accurate historical data (match results, ranking points, rating points, etc) available to public. People who are interested in data mining can then investigate by themselves.

 

[rainneverever]

I made graphs showing WR and WR points of 5 players who have reached WR#1 in 21st century. There are 17 male players who have ever reached ITTF WR#1 since 1991 when computerized WR started in use. 6 of them are still playing, Vladimir Samsonov, Timo Boll, Zhang Jike, Dimitrij Ovtcharov, Ma Long, Xu Xin. Combined the data from ITTF (2014-present, WR only), ZoomTT (2001-present, WR only), tabletennis.guide (2001-present, WR and WR points, with missing information), I decided to make the graphs without Samsonov.

The first two graphs showed all the WR points and WR data from the sources mentioned above. The scale of WR points under old ranking system was changed once in 2007 and changed again in 2010. The new ranking system has different scale, too. There are many missing data points in 2009. I believe news articles on WR for those months can be found on the internet or magazines but I did not have time to check. These 5 guys started to play internationally in the order of age and Timo was established when the other 4 started.

Then we can take a closer look at the WR points from 2010/2 to 2017/12 (Y axis: 2200-3500 points) and WR (2010/2-2018/3). I guess this may look different from the chess player curve. It may be interesting to compare with some retired players like Wang Liqin, Ma Lin, Wang Hao, if old ranking data available.

The graph ends up looking like arcs with names attached and years along the bottom with the arcs intersecting as one player surpasses another or one player dips due to age etc.

 

[sderyke2002]

Thanks for your effort I was working on something for the 2000-2006 era with the top thirty from each of the beginning of the year lists. It too is rather irregular and highly bunched together so it is harder to read than the chess plots.

I did not plot all players in the top thirty but arbitrarily focused on a hand full of the major power players to make the graph a little easier to pull ideas from.



I think this looks different than the chess players because the time line is so compressed and there is obviously some smoothing going on due to the compression in the chess graph. The chess players ratings cover almost the players entire life, not just a dozen years or so.

I plan to do something similar with the data for the other two rating scales you mentioned. It would also be interesting to see the data for all the months (not just the start of each year), but that is a lot more work than I wanted to try right out of the gate. I also would like to know if anyone has ever gone backwards in time and applied the rating equations to the results of the historic player (at least since the invention of sponge and inverted rubber.

 

[Dan]

Hi TT Guru, is it possible to find out how many games/sets players have played in their career? I would love to see how many games Ma Long has played in comparison to lets say Wang Liqin. Is this possible?

 

[TT Guru]

Hi TT Guru, is it possible to find out how many games/sets players have played in their career? I would love to see how many games Ma Long has played in comparison to lets say Wang Liqin. Is this possible?

Hi Dan, this is definitely up there in the priority list. Might be a bit of a stretch to get that data before WTTC. Currently working with all results 2008-2018 and should have everything back to 2001 soon enough. Wang Liqin was around before then so it's unlikely we'll see his totals for some time. Are you going to Halmstad? Hope to see you there!

 

[WorkerBee]

I really enjoyed seeing this list of Ma Long's games and records with other top players on YouTube recently. Is it true? Does anyone else compare or is even close?

Liang Jingkun: 5-1
Ma Lin: 30-14
Michael Maze: 7-0
Jun Mizutani: 16-0
Oh Sang-eun: 9-2
Dimitrij Ovtcharov: 17-0
Ryu Seungmin: 7-3
Vladimir Samsonov: 9-5
Werner Schlager: 9-0
Tang Peng: 14-0
Wang Hao: 30-27
Wang Liqin: 32-12
Xu Xin: 41-11
Yan An: 8-3
Kaii Yoshida: 6-1
Zhang Jike: 31-10
Zhou Yu: 10-2

PS, what is Ma Long's win-loss record with Fan Zhendong (including the China Super League)?

 

[rainneverever]

Why not checking the record on ITTF and ratingscentral by yourself?