OOAK Table Tennis Forum

lol... what a bullshit
so maybe play 7min for fun for viewers and cointoss at end to decide who wins
btw. i will be watch chen weixing vs mihai bobocica live this evening in standard format

for me best spectator friendly changes would be diversity of styles in top
easiest way to do it is to increase net high (i dont know how much, maybe 2-3cm would be ok)
ofc remaining with old celluloid 40mm ball (better flight arc, more spin)
but problem with this for ITTF is that nobody will earn money

other good rule would be changing set/points
bo5 in sets (first who win 3 sets) for 15 points each set
full lengh time match would be very similar but each set would be around 50% longer making it better for strategy plays

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Butterfly Defence II / Victas Curl P1V 0.5mm / Tibhar Evolution MX-P 2.0mm -185g

You're a quite recent member, so you never experienced the speed glue ban, the frictionless ban and more than half of the polyball discussions. The fora were the first ones to bring out those "rumours" and guess what: they became reality. When it comes to the ITTF, it's better to be alarmed too soon and too late, especially when it is stated by the president of the ITTF himself. You'll experience that when the ITTF elimininates (a part of) your game because of money.



I agree more styles should be represented in the top. Rule changes would be necessary to accomplish this. But let's investigate those rule changes in depth first... And in dept I mean in real depth.

Yeah, I'm a "recent member" who's been discussing table tennis online longer than the forum has existed. I was around when they brought in the 40mm ball. If you think any of this recent stuff even begins to compare to the noise and fury caused by THAT change, maybe a look through the Usenet archives will convince you otherwise. In the end it was all noise and fury amounting to nothing, the change went through and in my opinion the game is a great deal better for it. I saw the whole thing repeat itself with the polyball discussions - the conspiracy theories, the hand-wringing, the dire predictions about the demise of the game and this type of player or that type of playing style disappearing as a result. Now we're actually using the things and NONE of it seems to be coming true. Sure, some of the balls break easier than celluloid balls, some polyballs are better than others, but as a whole we're adapting pretty well and the game hasn't changed all that much if at all.

Iskandar

But you probably never used frictionless or speed glue... or did you?
Styles didn't disappear? What about classical defense or blocking styles as Waldner's? Penhold? SP hitters?
The game hasn't changed as much until now. A change doesn't occur over night, but over a much longer period of time. I saw the game after the ban of speedglue: it was like the game was a slowmotion of the one before the ban. I wouldn't say this today.
If you think the game has become better of it because of the change from 38mm to 40mm, then the audiences attending TT tournaments disagree with this. The game has become more stale, less dynamic. I doubt a spin-based player will agree with you.
I wonder how you see the future of this game: hardbat?

The change from 38mm to 40mm was pretty much the death knell for choppers and blockers. To me the game was worse off with the 40mm ball.

Everyone I know complains about the lack of spin and speed with the 40+ plastic ball. The two-piece balls are just awful and play differently than the one-piece balls. It messes up our game to have to inconsistent play between types of balls.

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The MNNB Blog has had some pretty amazing stuff lately. Just click this text to check it out. | My OOAK Interview
Table Tennis Video Links: itTV | laola1.tv | ttbl | fftt | Challenger Series | mnnb-tv

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

you all want more spectacular game?
make more speed and more spin while making bigger table

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YjVO8ETSCs8

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Butterfly Defence II / Victas Curl P1V 0.5mm / Tibhar Evolution MX-P 2.0mm -185g

Haha that actually looks pretty fun!

I'd say the opposite was true. The 40mm ball allowed Joo Se Hyuk and other choppers to achieve higher rankings than was possible with the 38mm ball. The choppers were always there but the attack game was so powerful that the choppers had very little chance of making it into the top ten. It's still the case that the attack game predominates but the balance swung enough the other way that defence has become more viable. The game as a whole has become more interesting, with longer rallies instead of third ball bang-bang-bang-it's over. ITTF made a decision to slow the game down with the 40mm ball and they succeeded.

Iskandar

Yes, I did use speed glue. None of this namby-pamby low-VOC speed glue, either, I used the real stuff, the stuff that could give you cancer if you breathed too much of it. It probably hurt my game more than it helped, but boy did it feel nice. Was I upset over the ban? Not particularly - who was going to check? (No, I didn't use it in tournaments - well, I did in the University Intramurals once, but that was before the ban.)

Frictionless? No, I never did use that, or played against it, I wonder what I missed. Was ITTF right or wrong in banning it? I suppose a case could be made for both, but so far I have not heard both sides, I've only seen people complain about the ban, and some of those complaints bordered on the hysterical (like some of the anti-40mm ball arguments were).

As for audiences - what audiences are you talking about? Have you actually polled actual audiences to see if they like the current game compared to the 38mm one? The table tennis audience as a whole today is a great deal bigger than it was at the time, when you consider that they actually show table tennis on Cable TV, that there are videos on ITTF's web site and on YouTube.

Yes, penhold pips-out hitting is practically extinct, but it was also practically extinct in the late 90s. Even the Chinese were playing with inverted back then, and abandoning the penhold grip. There was this very good (played in the top level league) German player who came through my University in the late 90s. He went to the USOTC and got a rating of 2250 or so. He came back and told me there was this weird guy playing pips-out penhold who didn't loop. I was surprised - IT WAS THE FIRST TIME HE'D EVER COME ACROSS A PENHOLD HITTER! Said it ruined the game! Classic defense? Name one classic defender in the World Top Ten after, say, 1965. Were there any???? And you want to blame this on the 40mm ball??? Maybe we should blame it on sponge...

It's the same whereever you go. Table tennis isn't the only activity I'm involved with, I've seen this same sort of thing with other organizations. The governing organization is always up to no good, they're out to get us, they don't know what they're doing, the president is corrupt, etc. etc. etc. ITTF, AMA, IOC, the Bar Association, doesn't matter. I'm sure there are football forums where FIFA gets lambasted every day (and I'd say, where FIFA is concerned, there definitely is stuff to get mad about). In the US there's this thing called the Tea Party that embodies this. The stuff I see here about ITTF is actually pretty mild compared to stuff I've seen in the past about other organizations. It's just the nature of online forums (and life in general).

Iskandar

I'm going by what Matthew Syed and Koji Matsushita said about the 40mm ball. Also, I think Joo would have been a multi-time world champion with the 38mm ball.

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The MNNB Blog has had some pretty amazing stuff lately. Just click this text to check it out. | My OOAK Interview
Table Tennis Video Links: itTV | laola1.tv | ttbl | fftt | Challenger Series | mnnb-tv

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

He might've been, but not as a chopper. He'd have been forced to become a two winged looper like all the other champions were.

Iskandar

At least five or six. Not sure what their top ratings were, but here are a few top defenders from that era. birding&table.tennis can probably name a lot more.

Eberhard Schoeler
Norio Takashima
Ding Song
Liang Geliang
Chen Xinhua
Li Gun Sang
Matthew Syed
Koji Matsushita
Hiroshi Shibutani
Daniel Tsiokas

Also there are a ton of women...

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The MNNB Blog has had some pretty amazing stuff lately. Just click this text to check it out. | My OOAK Interview
Table Tennis Video Links: itTV | laola1.tv | ttbl | fftt | Challenger Series | mnnb-tv

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

Wasn't Liu Guoliang penhold pips out hitter and grand slam champion or on his way to achieving the grand slam at that time?

I actually thought the same about it. Nice find, garbol!

It did hurt your game more than it helped. That's fine and off course you weren't upset about it. But there are people which game it helped more than it hurt. It's their game the ITTF hurted the most. And for some people it's still not the same as it was before.

Hysterical? If the ITTF decides your style is illegal from one day to another, then that 'hysterical' tone is totally understandable.

Your comment about audiences reminds me of AgentHEX. I'm talking about audiences who are near the TT action in real person, like the ITTF Pro Tour audiences. MNNB posted a couple of pictures about how full those seats were... Talking about ITTF website and Youtube isn't relevant: those technologies didn't exist in the past.

Your indifferent attitude about rule changes/sport organisations/life seems quite rational, but in the end you've given up the fight and supports the status quo with your attitude. You call those revealing injustice hysterical, we call attitudes like yours indifference. I'm curious how you'll react once injustice hurts your person...