OOAK Table Tennis Forum

They added a bunch of stuff to the service rules - six inch toss, can't toss backwards or sideways, palm must be absolutely flat, contact point must be visible, etc. So a lot of serves that were legal in 1980 are illegal today. This was mainly in response to hidden serves - those really became an art in the 1990s.. I wasn't playing for most of that decade so it was a big surprise to me when someone did it to me the first time. Low-level players didn't know anything about them, you had to attend tournaments or belong to a large club.

Iskandar

Once we hit ten votes, the poll becomes statistically irrefutable.

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There should be an option that goes "Don't care about the changes, don't use them anyhow"..

Iskandar

Thanks, come to think of it, I had heard about the flat palm and visible contact requirements. I'm in favour of all of those changes.

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2. S&T Black & White / Armstrong SH-I 1.8 / TSP Curl P3 Alpha R OX

It is important to note a few things about the chronology and hence cause and effect. This responds to some things earlier in the thread. I have played through all of these changes (when I played my first tournament, rubbers were typically red on both sides).

The short version if you don't want to read all this is that the OP has it backwards.

In circa 1999, nearly all of the top players in the world were using all-wood blades with 38 mm balls. Carbon was a bit of an outlier. Conventional wisdom was that it was too fast, uncontrollable, and a bit of a gimmick and good players didn't need it. For example, players like Waldner or Persson, and essentially all of the Chinese, they mostly used all-wood blades. Variations on the Stiga Clipper were kind of the state of the art in a lot of ways. Of course, nearly everyone was speed gluing their rubbers. That became common in the 80s (was first done by Hungarian players in the 70s I am told and took awhile to catch on to everyone else). Pretty much any rubber with enough speed glue became an offensive weapon, and its main effect was not to make it faster, it made it spinnier and gave it an incredible feel. In 1999, at my club at 7 PM, it stank like a chemical factory.

40 mm balls were introduced about the same time as the rule against hiding serves in order to increase rally duration and to make the ball more visible on TV. 11 point games were also designed to make the game more dramatic and compelling to spectators (the idea being that there would be more crucial points, more deuce games and such). All this happened within a relatively short time. Again, the motivation was to make the sport more viewer friendly and dramatic. We didn't have table tennis forums, but in general where I live, people did not mind the change from 38 mm to 40 mm all that much. Some people hated the serve rules, some people liked them. Depended on how you served. People adapted to the 11-point psychology quite quickly.

Not too long after that, composite blades began to be more popular, but the banning of speed glue in 2008 sent that trend into overdrive. There was a huge flurry of technological development after that, which has continued to the present; mainly in rubbers (although it should be noted that some of the first "speed glue effect" rubbers appeared before the ban, for example Butterfly Cermet and Donic F1 Desto. (Cermet was pretty much a total failure, but that is how it was advertised). We did have forums after the speed glue ban. It really increased EJ behavior too.

Now, in 2017, nearly every elite offensive player in the world uses a composite blade of some kind, including Zhang Jike, Ma Long, and Ding Ning, the most recent Grand Slam winners; and even players like Samsonov whose career stretched back to the 38 mm ball era. Also the variety of composite blades has exploded, and "pure" carbon blades are not used by many people; rather the best blades have carbon woven with something like zylon or arylate (or aramid), or unusual new carbon weaves like Textreme. With 40+ balls, we now see a bunch of new rubbers designed to deal with its properties (or at least marketed that way).

So I would argue that it is safe to say that technological development did not spur most of the rules changes, rather the rules changes spurred technical changes in response.

I have enjoyed playing in all of these eras. I still enjoy playing a lot; as long as we are using seamless, or good ABS balls like Nittaku or DHS D40+, and not crappy cellulose acetate, I am happy with my ALC blade. Glad I don't have to glue up each time I play anymore.

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Butterfly Viscaria Black tag
2.2 mm Nexy Karis M on FH and BH

One other thing I should add is that for 20 years the ITTF has pursued an agenda to try to slow down the game and make it a bit simpler. They do not generally admit to this. Nevertheless it is obvious. Whether you agree or disagree that this was a good thing to do, that is what they have been doing.

The speed glue ban was justified on health grounds but by the time they actually banned it in 2008, the solvents used in the glues were pretty safe, even if they stank (which one can learn by reading patents on new speed glues starting in the mid 90s). The real reason for the ban was to slow things down. Same reason they increased the size of the ball from 38 to 40, AND the real reason they increased the ball from 40 to 40+ (which they kind of slipped in when they mandated a switch to materials other than celluloid). Remember, there is as yet no "world-wide ban on celluloid production". (It is however a hazardous material to produce and Chinese lives matter, so now that I have grown accustomed to 40+, especially ABS version, I don't mind anymore, although I was very unhappy with it at the beginning, especially in my comments on it here at OOAK around 2013-14).

Bear in mind that the increased size and weight of the new balls has a much larger effect on the way they play than the material they are made of -- at least in terms of the ways they are different from 40 mm celluloid. And that was done for a reason.

Just know that the ITTF has been finding ways to do this for a long time. They do this and then to meet player demand, manufacturers come up with ways to increase speed and spin in spite of whatever ITTF has mandated.

Players are forced to adapt some with each new rule change. Adapt or die.

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Butterfly Viscaria Black tag
2.2 mm Nexy Karis M on FH and BH

"Die" seems to be the route taken by most styles of play, although that trend must have been in motion before the ITTF started monkeying around with the ball - I recently watched a 1987 match between Waldner (who appeared to have the Swedish equivalent of a mullet) and a North Korean chopper where the commentator mentioned at the beginning that the conventional wisdom was that defenders were an endangered species. Short pips hitters are pretty much gone, penholders are mostly gone, blockers are gone, and so on.



I will also note that, from the perspective of someone who didn't live through these eras, the ITTF's responses to technical advances have been, erm, uneven:

Sponge rubber: initially OK, later banned in its initial guise (Sato used something like 1/2" of sponge on each side at the 1952 WTTC)
Sandpaper rackets: apparently banned by accident
Tacky rubber: OK
Anti: OK
"Normal" semi-grippy long pips: initially OK, much later banned in their most popular guises (Matsushita and Ding Song both used the original Feint Long) due to the actions of a comically stupid cabal in the aspect ratio debacle. Then some were banned again in the pip density brouhaha.
Single-color combination rackets: initially OK, banned after six years of Cai and Klampar (and Carl Prean?) clowning people and a much greater number of imitators clowning themselves
Speed glue: initially OK, a while later very briefly banned, later actually banned
Low-friction long pips: banned after the left hand side of the intelligence bell curve got vocal
Booster/tuner: banned
and so on.

In short, "complain about whatever you have trouble playing against until it's forbidden" seems much more effective than "adapt or die" if you're able to swing it.

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Seeking joy and fitness in recreational modern defense.
My blog: "Two rubbers, one racket"
Kill the game against long Pimps with Coach Li!

Currently experimenting with short pips:
VKMO+ Gambler Volt-T + TSP Spectol Blue (1.5)
Joola CWX + Nittaku Hurricane III Pro Turbo Orange + Spinlord Gepard (1.8 )

I would say this is a pretty fair assessment.

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Butterfly Viscaria Black tag
2.2 mm Nexy Karis M on FH and BH

One side. He played Japanese Penhold. Bat supplied by Armstrng, 5/16" (IIRC) thick yellow bare sponge. Just being pedantic here.

In any case, yeah, I suppose we could go back to 1959, when they "allowed" sponge, therefore speeding up the game. Actually, they didn't - before that you could use anything you liked, including spreading molasses on a piece of plywood. What they actually did was ban everything except four surfaces - bare wood, hard rubber, "sandwich" (aka pips out) and "inverted sandwich". And it had to be less than 4mm in thickness.

They DID have the option of banning sponge altogether, there was a very vocal bunch of people who wanted to go back to hardbat-only. But they didn't. From all accounts, the sponge vs. hardbat divide in the 1950s was pretty bitter - some tournaments banned sponge, there are pictures of people picketing outside one of them.

While it's fashionable to slag on ITTF (and other organizations/governments) for doing things with "ulterior motives" because some "cabal" is in charge, I think the reality is far more mundane. Yes, there are hidden forces at work, there are opposing camps, there is politics. But decisions aren't made by one person alone or by a dictator. It's made by people getting together and hashing it out. Perhaps you don't agree with what happened, because you were on the losing side. Well, tough. That's how it works, here and elsewhere. The alternative is worse - you could have a dictator. What would have happened if Martin Kilpatrick had retained control of the sport back in the 1920s and 30s? Maybe we'd all be playing with sandpaper. Maybe a large majority of people would happily go with this. Who knows. A dictator is fine, until you disagree with him, and then you lose anyway.

Iskandar

Sure. I used the term 'cabal' about the aspect ratio and pip density rules because they were put in place in a fly-by-night manner (even by international sporting association standards) by a small number of people who purposefully avoided the normal voting mechanism for rule changes.

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Seeking joy and fitness in recreational modern defense.
My blog: "Two rubbers, one racket"
Kill the game against long Pimps with Coach Li!

Currently experimenting with short pips:
VKMO+ Gambler Volt-T + TSP Spectol Blue (1.5)
Joola CWX + Nittaku Hurricane III Pro Turbo Orange + Spinlord Gepard (1.8 )

That wasn't aimed specifically at you, actually. And it doesn't just happen in table tennis. I've seen a small organization of enthusiasts in one of my other hobbies literally tear itself apart due to opposing camps. Very ugly. Rumors, allegations, the works. And it happened online. One side eventually ousted the other side and took over, and a bunch of people just quit. I stopped participating after that, it wasn't fun any more. And I wasn't even involved in the argument, wasn't on either side. As a result I have a deep distaste over this sort of thing.

Iskandar

The description "cabals" is appropriate for international sports federations in general -- more than almost any other kind of organization -- because that is in fact what they tend to be. Do a search on why they are almost all located in Switzerland and why many may soon move to one or the other of the Gulf States. It would take too long to discuss it all here.

There is a window-dressing of democracy with elections and such, but the President and the people in his inner circle can manipulate things in such a way as to say in power for very long periods of time (a model originated by the International Olympic Committee throughout most of the 20th century). For recent examples, see for example Adham Sharara, Sepp Blatter. There is some line that they can eventually cross where the stench gets strong enough that they have to be jettisoned. (In the case of FIFA it was the threat of some people going to jail and the light that an independent judicial system was starting to throw on things). Bear in mind that FIFA has decided to hold a World Cup in Qatar. How could that actually happen? Does it seem like a rational decision? Anyone who objects to the term cabal has to explain FIFA. We will see what happens with Weikert going forward because ITTF is set up exactly the same way.

The first sign that this is the case is when there is an utter lack of transparency (or lies) as to why decisions are made. ITTF -- certainly at least under the previous President -- has told some whoppers.

Still, maybe things are a little better now. I say maybe.

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Butterfly Viscaria Black tag
2.2 mm Nexy Karis M on FH and BH

Also, I would not fear that anything we write on forums to criticize rules changes made by ITTF will tear the sport apart. The main reason is that ITTF has a history of pretending to listen to players' concerns about rules and then moving forward anyway with whatever they had decided to do. They can do this because they are not elected by players or the general membership of the organization. You and I don't get to vote. Timo Boll doesn't either.

Some of the things they decided to do may have been good, some may have been bad for the sport as a whole.

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Butterfly Viscaria Black tag
2.2 mm Nexy Karis M on FH and BH

I'm not worried about the sport being torn apart. It's just plain unpleasant when there are people who keep slagging and making allegations all the time, even when it has to do with, say, the audience at WTTC. Doesn't matter what happens - big audience, small audience, it's always someone's fault, and there's always some motive behind it. There's obviously stuff that's happened in the past that's caused bitterness, but it's unpleasant when that bitterness is on display all the time and seems to color how one looks at everything.

Iskandar

I was actually at the WTTC for a couple of days this year. It was well attended.

I'm with you on some of this though; perhaps most of it.

I get really tired of reading that the sport is "unwatchable" or that the "ITTF has ruined the sport" with these "rubbish balls" and such. Worse, that "sponge ruined the sport" but thankfully there seems to be only one person on internet forums still throwing out that nonsensical canard. I still think the ITTF is very poorly run, and in recent years was surrounded by the unmistakable whiff of corruption, and there are incredibly basic things in the year 2017 that they can't get right. But I enjoy playing and watching as much as when I was a kid. The current crop of top players are incredible and entertaining.

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Butterfly Viscaria Black tag
2.2 mm Nexy Karis M on FH and BH