OOAK Table Tennis Forum

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Finally I am not able to find a club nearby, and I gave up. The one I found is very far away and I have to travel at least 1-2 hours, and I am not moving out atleast for 8-9 months from this place. So now I have accepted the fact and have started playing with recreational players in my office and my locality.

When I first started playing with them, I saw that they are not at all serious. No warmups, no rallies, no practice, nothing. They dive into play straight away! And they are not bad players, they are very good at whatever they do. The best thing that they posses is their RANDOMNESS. Sometimes I find that I made a strategy at Day 1 or Match 1 will not work against them on Day 2, or even in the same match. But their style of play is always constant, i.e. a hitter will be a hitter, a looper will loop all his way through every ball and somebody who lobs is always a lobber. So what difference does it makes that they play so inconsistently and steal most of the matches from me? Their inconsistency cause me so much frustration.

So after 2 weeks of play, I finally decided to analyze their moves, and its quite funny actually, finding sense in their recreational play. I enquired a bit more, and these were the people who played table tennis in early times, and are here just for fun. But they have developed a different kind of game, rather than the conventioanl one.

I play 1 or 2 hours a day with recreational players everyday, and I will try to post experiences here. Comments are welcome. As I am learning right now, it would help me improve my game too. And I hope everyone will enjoy reading this.

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Blade - 729 8040
FH - Gambler Outlaw 2.0mm
BH - CTT National PoGo 0.6mm

Because recreational players usually play with very little spin (either due to lack of technique and/or due to their equipment), the long pimples may be working against you, as they work best against spin. You have a few options:

1. Add as much spin to the game yourself, and a lot more spin will come back
2. Change to double inverted or use your inverted side a lot more
3. Buy them new and spinny bats

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Yes, I agree. I've found my LPs to actually be a disadvantage when I have to play a really low-rated player who has walked into the club with a cheap pre-made. I almost always win against these players now, but sometimes I have to work harder than I should have to.

 

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Good recreational players with cheap bats can be a terror if you take most balls with your LPs.

Luckily these types of players usually have major problems with heavy underspin and heavy sidespin serves, sometimes not even getting one back on the table the whole match. They also often can't handle pushes and heavy topspins.

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Even though your recreational opponents may be unorthodox and random, at the end of the day you have to just look at the individual balls that are coming to you. They all have a certain amount of spin and have a certain trajectory etc - there is nothing new or fancy happening. Your job is to correctly read the ball and then play the appropriate response. A large part of moving from a beginner/intermediate level to a more advanced level is the ability to consistently beat 'bunnies'. If you are having trouble doing this you might need to work more on your ball-control and consistency. Also, if you are having trouble with the 'nothing' balls the recreational players send to your BH you may want to consider changing from LP.

The problem is while LPs are an achilles heel against recreational players, they are a deadly weapon against a higher standard of player. I guess you would call this the "long pip paradox."

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My whole set-up costs less than a sheet of Butterfly Dignics

I find that recreational players like the game to be fast paced and that they really struggle against LP when you use it to slow the game down and drop balls low and short or long and high. As long as you can combine this with a decent FH to be able to put balls away when they pop them up you should find ways through them.

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I agree that it can be difficult playing with LP against recreational type players because they do a lot of 'nothing' shots with no spin. However that's an area that an LP player needs to work on. He needs to be able to either hit with the LP, twiddle and then BH loop, or run around and FH loop.

I am not willing to change to double inverted again, because for me its a practice arena. I am getting all the things with trouble for a LP mostly, but I consider it as a practice session. When I am going to any club nearby and playing with LPs, somebody is going to figure out the weakness of LPs sooner and later and use it against me. So why not try to manage or find alternatives with it now only Mostly I hit against no spin balls.

There are variations in the recreational players also. Some are hard hitters, but some can produce insane amounts of spin using cheap premades also, due to their very odd grip and their playing style. So I do get people who can create spin, but mostly they are the no spin folks.

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Blade - 729 8040
FH - Gambler Outlaw 2.0mm
BH - CTT National PoGo 0.6mm