OOAK Table Tennis Forum

Yes he's had a private Table Tennis Studio in San Jose ,Ca. He teaches full time at Tech Giant and coaches full time. He's studio is in Down Town San Jose...by new planned Tech Giant HQ by Hwy 101, Hwy 880.

well, I have a new coach - none other than Barney Reed Jr! He's an excellent coach, and more importantly, a really great guy...

I have only had a couple of sessions, but already I have learned a lot. Hopefully I can put it into practice (well, matches, if you know what I mean....)

Great stuff!

Do they run competition there, which you can enter? It would be interesting to hear how you're ranking compared to Aussies.

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California seems to be the hotbed for table tennis, which I didn't realize when I came here, but is very fortunate. It will take a while and quite a few tournaments to work up to a "real" rating, I think - I started at 800 (!) a couple of weeks ago, won some tournaments at under 1550, U1700, U1800 level - so rating is currently around 1695.

I am told that California ratings are below the level of the rest of the US - i.e. the players here have a rating a fair bit below what their level would be in the rest of the US. Whether this is true, or why it would be, I am not sure - but there are some very, very good players here at level 2000. I am hoping to work my way up to around 2000-2100, but I am going to have to work at it to do so!

You can see most of the West Coast tournaments here - http://omnipong.com/T-tourney.asp?t=8&Region=1

from what I recall about that localised "lower than avg" rating (from almost 10 years ago), it was due to a combination of high number of players playing within california and not that many externals playing at said tournaments.

might have changed since.

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Chasse Patate

I think there's enough people travelling to the US Open/Closed and then playing in California tournaments that this isn't probably very true. IIRC both tournaments were held in Vegas in the last year or so, that's pretty close to California. I've seen people claim that this region or that region has anomalous ratings, but seen no actual proof. What would be proof? It would be players going to national tournaments or tournaments in other areas and doing exceptionally well or exceptionally poorly in ratings categories, and winning/losing to many players they shouldn't win/lose against. And it wouldn't be just one player either, but something that happens consistently to a lot of them from a given area.

A 1700 player is either very good or not particularly good, depending on where you're looking from! I'd have no chance against one, but a 2000 rated player could beat one very easily. Danny Seemiller (last time I looked) was 2550, not sure what the highest rated player in the US is these days (it was about 2750-2800 in the late 1990 - Cheng and Fan Yiyong).

Iskandar

It boggles my mind that 'they' gave you 800 initial rating, since you are obviously much more capable, as your victories in U1700 and U1800 show. Perhaps now you have your answer why ratings in California could be suppressed, rather artificially in my mind.

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USATT: 1807 | League: 1887

A possible reason is the large number of juniors here - ICC has literally hundreds of juniors, with many of them being trained intensely by top coaches - and these juniors don't tend to travel to other states to play. I have beaten a couple of players over 2000 down in LA, and lost to a local 1100 junior - who would have beaten the over 2000's easily!

The initial rating seems to be from a League rating, and when you have just arrived in a country, it can be wildly inaccurate (I think my Google League rating is about 750)

hmmmmm
Unlike ratingscentral where you are inserted with a default rating of 1000 (may not be the case?), I thought USATT initial ratings were meant to be autocalculated after your first tournament? ie, you are listed unrated for your first tournament and you lose to a 2000 and beat a 1500, it will drop you in at 1750.

Maybe it's changed? getting pre-assigned a rating of 800 sounds dodgy, as it can drastically affect your opponent's point exchange.

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Chasse Patate

Yes, the rating was recalculated after the first tournament and matches re-assesses on a rating of about 1470

I think you get recalculated if your points swing was too big as to not drastically affect the rest of the system - but the point was you shouldn't have had that initial 800 rating at all

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Chasse Patate

At a proper tournament, any unrated player would be evaluated by the tournament director before he were allowed to enter any of the ratings divisions. At my first tournament (Columbus, OH IIRC) I was asked to play games with two players. One was obviously better than I was, the other not as good as I was. Based on the scores, I was given a provisional rating of 1112 (again, IIRC). So they allowed me to enter the U-1200 but not the U-1100. So yes, I'm surprised they allowed you to play in the lower ratings divisions at all.

That 1100 junior, if the rating is an actual rating and not a club rating or league rating, would be someone who's improved a lot since his last tournament. They'd adjust his rating upwards before subtracting points from the opponents he beats at tournaments. They probably wouldn't allow him to enter the lower events, either. And he won't have to go out of state to get his rating adjusted, any local USATT tournament would do, if he beat O-2000 players.

Iskandar

so previously, the software was supposed to do all of that. must have changed since

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Chasse Patate

I looked back at the history of entering the tournament to check exactly what happened.

Two weeks earlier, I had started at ICC with a rating of 800. I played a Saturday league at ICC, and was adjusted to 1358.
This 1358 league rating was then used to determine event eligibility in the first tournament I played in.
The rating was re-assessed after the tournament to 1470, and all matches recalculated based on this.

Out of interest, this is how ratings points adjustments between matches are calculated: http://www.teamusa.org/USA-Table-Tennis ... ystem-work
one negative thing about this, if you are trying to climb the ratings quickly, you are limited to a maximum of 50 points for a victory over players with a rating 238 and higher above you. This means that if you beat someone say 500 higher, you still only get 50 points!

Ah.. so they didn't actually allow you to enter an actual tournament with a rating of 800.

On the web page you mention, after the table, they talk about ratings adjustments. This is what they do if someone is obviously rated too low (or too high) - an example would be that junior who hasn't played in tournaments for a year and is now rated 300-400 points above the ratings he got from his last tournament. He enters the tournament and ends up beating everyone he plays against rated within 400 points above this last rating. Does he gain 50 points for each of these games (and each of his opponents LOSE 50 points)? No. They'd adjust his rating FIRST. They would estimate that he's actually rated somewhere above the highest rated player he beat and lower than the lowest rated player he lost against (allowing for the possibility, of course, that the highest rated player he beat actually had a higher rating than the lowest rated player he lost against, in which case they'd average it out). And THEN they'd calculate how many points he won (or lost) based on this adjusted rating. So yes, you can gain several hundred points in one tournament, but you'd really have to have improved that much in between tournaments. This is usually only possible with elite juniors who are being intensively coached but haven't played in tournaments in a while. Just beating ONE opponent rated 500 points above you (only possible if he was playing with a broken leg, maybe.. ) isn't enough to get adjusted, you'd only get 50 points. Beat SEVERAL people rated 500 points above you, that's a different story.

Iskandar