OOAK Table Tennis Forum

I have been wondering if playing with a quarter -wrinkled antispin rubber is legal .

It is just a small area at the top of the blade .

Actually I don't think there is a central regulation for that. I believe only for pimples if there is a loss of pimples that exceed 30%. For anti, I don't think it is a problem if wrinkled. Might be a bigger problem for you than the opponent, as you can't predict how the ball behaves if hits the wrinkled area.

_________________
"Spin is my only way, haven't got else to say. Have you checked your anti? Let it all for you untie!"

Blade: Dr. Neubauer Matador (flared handle, 7-ply, allwood, OFF-)
Forehand Rubber: Butterfly Dignics09C (2.1 mm, black, hybrid)
Backhand Rubber: Der Materialspezialist Scandal (1.2 mm, red, frictionless)
Playing Style: Modern Defender

I just smoothed out a sheet of Scandal because it was wrinkled from switching it to another blade. I used a heat gun to warm the top sheet and some clean paper towels to rub the top sheet smooth. I seems that the top sheet would take a good amount of heat and didn’t look different. After some pressure and rubbing to be careful to cover a large area the top sheet smoothed out so that it was hard to feel any of the previous wrinkles. I had used a hair dryer previously but it didn’t work as well. Make sure to keep the heat gun moving so that the top sheet is heated evenly. Be patient so that you didn’t try to fix it too quickly. I’ve played with it now over two sessions and it seems to play well with good reversal and dampening.

I am pretty sure there is a rule somewhere that the surface of any rubber has to be plane and even. Independently valid wether Anti or pimple or whatever.
I think I read something about people ironing their antis to get rid off the wrinkles but with heat there's always a risk to remove the sponge also.

Have you found such a rule yet?

_________________
"Spin is my only way, haven't got else to say. Have you checked your anti? Let it all for you untie!"

Blade: Dr. Neubauer Matador (flared handle, 7-ply, allwood, OFF-)
Forehand Rubber: Butterfly Dignics09C (2.1 mm, black, hybrid)
Backhand Rubber: Der Materialspezialist Scandal (1.2 mm, red, frictionless)
Playing Style: Modern Defender

This is in the USATT rule book:
2.4.7.1 Slight deviations from continuity of surface or uniformity of
colour due to accidental damage or wear may be allowed provided that they
do not significantly change the characteristics of the surface.

I don't like rules that have grey area in them, and this one is open to wide interpretation. What "significantly change" means could be very different to different people.
I'm just a club umpire, but in my opinion, having a rubber that is wrinkled on part of it would constitute a "significant change", because if you did happen to hit it on that portion, the results could be unpredictable.

Others can feel free to disagree. This is my interpretation.

_________________
"The greatest teacher, failure is"
USATT Rating: 1725
Blade: Stiga Cybershape Carbon
FH Rubber: Butterfly Tenergy 19 2.1
BH Rubber: Dr Neubauer ABS3 1.5

I have never seen anyone playing with wrinkled antispin nor wrinkled inverted rubber. I guess hitting with it would be unpredictable indeed, but I'm not really sure what would exactly happen. One should make an experiment with that but that would be way to expensive for anyone to do such a thing.

In low-level leagues these kind of rubbers with artificially modified characteristics are far more frequent than in the higher leagues. Maybe this wrinkled antispin could even occur in such a league, but not too probable, as few players use antispin and even if they do, they might be looking after it carefully. You can see the very odd and strange looking inverted rubbers more often, you know, ones with holes through you can see the sponge, gray areas, tapes, black circular lines, disappeared logos, even loss of topsheet. All symptoms confirming the rubber is pretty old.

Now these rubbers are matter of having no grip at all, or very little. Now, we know the very low grip level changes the properties drastically, weak spin, but also spin-insensitivity. My questions is, could this kind of rubber be granted for its condition? Does the significant loss of grip count as "significant change"? For me it definitely does. Even a bigger problem, that if that is the case, the low grip rubber might have no grip in the middle, but in the outer parts it might still have some, so it becomes impossible to foresee if the ball will have spin or not. You just don't know what is up with the surface of the rubber, only thing you notice is that it behaves strangely and differently by every shot. Antispin rubbers are similar, but at least they don't have grip nowhere, they are consistent and "predictable" for that matter. Of course, we could apply this logic here too... would the antispin gained grip count as significant change to the surface?

To put is simple, what even counts as "significant change to surface"? Wrinkled area, outweared area, dusty area, discolored area, gripless area? If we think about it, anything can be "significant change".

What I want to say is that the rule is pretty much unclear, as dwruck stated. Lots of unanswered questions, simples ones yet most complex answers can't satisfy. What is the purpose of the rule? What counts as significant change to the surface? How could you prove that a change would or wouldn't be significant? The rule's purpose should be specified and of course the circumstances that alternates the rule's outcomes should be specified (when to apply and when to not).

Maybe a rules should be applied here as it is for the pimples as far as I remember. I think it is something like if you have more than a 30% loss of your pimples, the rubber is illegal to play with. It is much harder to decide what should we do with the inverted rubbers, but something like that could work, or no.

_________________
"Spin is my only way, haven't got else to say. Have you checked your anti? Let it all for you untie!"

Blade: Dr. Neubauer Matador (flared handle, 7-ply, allwood, OFF-)
Forehand Rubber: Butterfly Dignics09C (2.1 mm, black, hybrid)
Backhand Rubber: Der Materialspezialist Scandal (1.2 mm, red, frictionless)
Playing Style: Modern Defender