OOAK Table Tennis Forum

Put a newly arrived Nittaku Best ANti (1.8mm) onto a spare Defplay and played for a bit at the club.

Weird. Played it as an OX LP, which I'm most familiar with, and it was not behaving like one. Slower, not that much reversal close to the table, did not get good feel for chops yet. Lost a match to someone 200+ points below me. Obviosly a work in progress, but does not look too good at the moment.

Sword combo still feels awesome, however, especially forehand. Somehow it clicks - good balance and speed. Perhaps EJing does have a point...

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USATT: 1807 | League: 1887

Since I liked Sword 309 a lot, I ordered two more . These arrived yesterday (fast again!) - weighed at 90 and 92 g, so pretty consistent. What I also like is that aliexpress shop threw in a couple of rubber protectors that actually FIT oversized defensive blades, which is pretty nice.

Will probably pair one of the extras with Dornenglanz and may be will try P4/P1-r with sponge on another one. Still waiting for additional AK47(blue) sheets - they were on a nice sale at ~11$, so grabbed a few. Chinese New Year got in the way for this order, though.

Still playing reasonably well, I think, most of improvement is on FH side, or perhaps it's an improved consistency - rallies seem to be longer these days. Further exploring this 'mudflap' shot that Zhang Guochi does with LP, lots of fun when it lands.

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USATT: 1807 | League: 1887

Put together a Sword combo #2: Dornenglanz on BH and 2008 XP on FH - did not have anything else for inverted. 2008 is in 1.8 mm and says sponge is 40 degrees, which presumably is on the softer side of things.

Played for a couple of hours in a club, but did not get to put it through a strenuous test - Saturdays are pretty laid back.
It felt pretty good overall, reminded me again why DG is such a great rubber.

One observation I made is that when I'm not particularly challenged in a match, it's much easier for me to stay in a rally (duh!), partially because I have fewer power shots to deal with, but also it's much easier to take my time, not rush a shot, and place it well. Every time I read Russian TT forums, people there bring up the 'pause' one is supposed to take before playing the shot - both for offensive and defensive players. The closest thing I've seen here - a popular tip of "you always have more time than you think".

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USATT: 1807 | League: 1887

Really, the wings are fine to you? I can't fathom that. Unless you have unusually small hands for a big guy. I have pretty large hands for my size. Or...unless I happened to get 2 aberrant sword blades. Strange.

It really is a great blade, even if one doesn't consider the cost. It's an amazing blade at that cost.

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Blog: "Holy Chtchet!" ⇝

Projects: Player Equipment Grid ⇝ Comprehensive Thin Inverted Chopping Rubbers Grid ⇝ Please send me corrections or new submissions

I must've missed this one...what is this mudflap shot you speak of?

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Blog: "Holy Chtchet!" ⇝

Projects: Player Equipment Grid ⇝ Comprehensive Thin Inverted Chopping Rubbers Grid ⇝ Please send me corrections or new submissions

Not my term - 'nathanso' described it this way here:

viewtopic.php?f=35&t=32433

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USATT: 1807 | League: 1887

I did have about a day of adjustment where I thought that I might get blister here and there, but it seems to be OK now. Perhaps it forced my grip to be lower on the handle or may be my grip was weird in the first place, hard to tell. Don't think I have small hands, but then I'm not measuring them obsessively either .

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USATT: 1807 | League: 1887

Haha! Well, I'm not measuring, but I know I can palm a basketball, and that none of my buddies can...most taller than me.

There is probably a difference in the batch of blades, as mine are fairly old now. Maybe the fixed it, or maybe I got a weird set. I'm glad it's working for you, how's the Scylla compared to DG?

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Blog: "Holy Chtchet!" ⇝

Projects: Player Equipment Grid ⇝ Comprehensive Thin Inverted Chopping Rubbers Grid ⇝ Please send me corrections or new submissions

I think Scylla has harder pips and less dangerous balls close to the table - one of the guys in the club keeps telling me that DG was the worst for him when he played me. Can hit underspin aggressively with both.

Chops are fine with both, I think. Disclaimer - DG on Sword is brand new right now, and probably still has more grip than usual (comes with a pretty sticky protective foil out of the package).

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USATT: 1807 | League: 1887

Saw email in my inbox with the header of "Clean Your LPs the Okki Nokki Way". Took me a while to realize that they are talking about other kind of LPs (music ones)... Was somewhat disappointed.

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USATT: 1807 | League: 1887

I just found this comment re best anti.the anti is good against serves and heavy topspin but it doesnt do much along the lines of deception.its hard work chopping etc but im very used to it.im trying ox dtecs and loving them-i find them easy to play with on the slow defplay.im near the end of the season so im not going to use the pips yet in a match with good players.i will later and ill see how it goes.the anti has amazing control but good players soon read it.its got me up the league ladder so to speak but the ox pips may get me futher

Apparently slick antis are where it's at right now for deception, so cool kids play with Diabolic and such. Tempted to try at some point - watch this, especially how ball bounces on some of anti returns (dealing with chops apparently is a breeze, especially if they have some sidespin ):

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USATT: 1807 | League: 1887

Posted this earlier in another thread:

I got a couple of Zeus sheets recently from aliexpress (Black OX) and just put one of them onto Sword 309 Def.

I think base sheet is really thin (also shiny), it took some effort to put it flat on the blade even with glue sheet, it was so 'wobbly'. Ended up with few air bubbles, but needle took care of it. Ribbed tops, and just by eyeballing it next to Dornenglanz (which appears to have smooth tops to me), it *looks* like pips are more densely packed on Zeus. Scylla has 'fattest' pips among the three I have in front of me right now, I think, so looks even denser. By the way, shouldn't pip dimensions and spacing be listed somewhere on the packaging? Feels like it is important for LP playing characteristics...

Hard to tell how fast it is, will give it a shot over the weekend.

So, moved 2008 XP to it and tried it for one match at the club today. To be honest, nothing special: didn't think Zeus was particularly fast, and few chops I made did not seem that loaded either. Went back to Scylla/AK47 thing for the rest of the day.

Did beat J, our local LP/SP guru (~2200) 3:0 in the first match, but lost other two 0:3 - somehow my aggressive LP shots stopped landing. In the first match I won plenty of points in LP-to-LP match ups and he missed plenty of attacks against my chops or pushes. Looks like he made adjustments and my spark went away. Still, I beat him twice in the last month, so that's a plus (club matches with nothing on the line though, so won't read too much into it).

Then lost a match to someone close to my level - annoyingly was mounting a comeback with being up 7:1 in the 4th game, but lost it at deuce. Bummer...

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USATT: 1807 | League: 1887

pgpg's blog has over 50,000 views. That is one well watched blog my friend.

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Goof-off chopping bat
Gambler All Rosewood
Aurus Soft / Gambler GXL .6 sponge

Status - Out of Business Janitor/Babysitter

Yep, saw it too - hopefully it's not mostly Google/Yahoo/Bing indexing crawlers .

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USATT: 1807 | League: 1887