OOAK Table Tennis Forum

I think it might be interesting to see how great the breakage on poly balls is out there. So choose the greatest number of poly balls that have broken in a session. A session may be defined as a couple of hours hitting, or your league/pennant team table on any given night. Feel free to put a comment to clarify how you have defined the session in which your maximum breakages occurred.

If possible comment the brand of ball that has been involved in the number. Also, feel free to comment the average breakage numbers you'd experience in a session and whether that number has reduced over time or with changes of ball brand.

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I'm always in the dark, but the Dark sheds lights upon everything!! Beauty is only pimple deep! Beauty is in the eye of the pipholder!
S/U 1: Blade: Bty Gergely . FH Black Andro Rasant 2.1 . BH Red Tibhar Grass Dtecs
S/U 2: Blade: Bty Gergely . FH Black Hexer+ 2.1 . BH Red GD Talon
S/U 3: Blade: Bty Gergely . No rubbers...thinking of adding Red Dtecs and Black Rasant
Aussie Table Tennis Shop / Aussie Table Tennis Facebook Page / Equipment Review Index / Read my Reb Report Blog: click here.

My record is 6 Yasaka 40 + 1 star balls for a two hours training session.
Now I switched to XSF 1 star ball and the maximum is 2 balls for 2 hours. But never less than 1 ball

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My ooak blog.

My TT team playing an opposition team broke 7 balls over the course of 3 hours some time ago. The were a mix of Nittaku SHA and Joola 40+ balls. Another table on the same night broke 6. Not sure how many the entire stadium racked up. We now use mainly Tibhar 40+ balls and on average only break about 2 per night on our table, which I reckon would be the average for most tables in the stadium on most nights..

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I'm always in the dark, but the Dark sheds lights upon everything!! Beauty is only pimple deep! Beauty is in the eye of the pipholder!
S/U 1: Blade: Bty Gergely . FH Black Andro Rasant 2.1 . BH Red Tibhar Grass Dtecs
S/U 2: Blade: Bty Gergely . FH Black Hexer+ 2.1 . BH Red GD Talon
S/U 3: Blade: Bty Gergely . No rubbers...thinking of adding Red Dtecs and Black Rasant
Aussie Table Tennis Shop / Aussie Table Tennis Facebook Page / Equipment Review Index / Read my Reb Report Blog: click here.

haven't broken a single XSF ball (even the training balls) apart from standing on them

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[Other gear I've used]
Blades: Butterfly Defence 3, Butterfly Defence Pro, Butterfly Innerforce ZLC, Butterfly Innershield, DHS Power G7, Stiga Offensive Classic Carbon
SPs: Friendship 802 (1.5), TSP Spectol (1.3, 1.8, 2.1), TSP Spectol Speed (1.3), TSP Super Spinpips Chop Sponge 2 (0.5, 1.3)
LPs: Butterfly Feint Long II (1), Butterfly Feint Long III (0.5, 1.3), Tibhar Grass D.TecS (OX), TSP Curl P1-R (0.5, 1, 1.3), TSP Curl P4 (1.3)

I selected 2 as the question is asking what the MOST is. HOwever, I'd like to qualify that. The most I broke were the cheap original BTY poly balls, of which I broke 2 in one session, but in only 1 hour. I never used them again. Even though most of the tournaments use them here, I refuse to practice with that crap.

The XSF Seamless (and the clones) are fine, and I've broken 1 about every week, about 3 sessions, 12-ish hours.

I will say that all of my Nittaku Premiums, since buying them for the capital league, have all remained unbroken except for one. We are at the end of our second season, so several sessions and lots of hours. Those things are tough, and play the best by far IMO.

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Early seamed balls broke very frequently. I've not broken a single XSF ball in more than a year.

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Yasaka Sweden Classic | 802 OX | C8 OX
Check out my blog - LordCope's Latest Learning Log - 10+ years of accumulate mistakes!

It is not a very useful poll given that breakage depends greatly on what type of polyball you consider (about 5 different varieties at least out there now, and possibly more).

And of course there is the issue not just of breakage, but how many balls in a box are useless because they are far from round.

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

We broke 5 or 6 during play Saturday at the Butterfly America's Team Tournament. Probably another 3 or 4 on Sunday also...I just didn't keep count. The teams were given 3 balls each to start the tournament, many I spoke to were out Saturday night. (we were taking our broken one's back to the desk and asking for a replacement ball) Usually the balls were just creased from an edge or hitting the table legs or something like that.

On a side note, these balls seemed rough compared to the smoother one's I had played with previously. Anyone noticed anything similar with recent batches of the Butterfly G40+ balls? Wasn't my just my imagination, I had one of my Butterfly balls with me and compared it to the balls they gave us.

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Donic Waldner World Champion 89 FL; Donic BlueStar A2 (Red) Max; DMS Firestorm (Black) 1.8

I can remember evenings where we've broken 6+ celluloid balls... My opinion is that the current poly balls (in our case xsf and butterfly seamed) are at least as durable, if not better.

Sent from my LG-D855 using Tapatalk

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Timo Boll ALC ST
FH Tibhar Evolution MX-P Max
BH Tibhar Evolution FX-S 1.8
185g

Might not be very useful to you Baal, but I was interested to know. I don't really care if its not useful to you...and the reason I asked for comments to go with it was to see what brands are breaking most.

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I'm always in the dark, but the Dark sheds lights upon everything!! Beauty is only pimple deep! Beauty is in the eye of the pipholder!
S/U 1: Blade: Bty Gergely . FH Black Andro Rasant 2.1 . BH Red Tibhar Grass Dtecs
S/U 2: Blade: Bty Gergely . FH Black Hexer+ 2.1 . BH Red GD Talon
S/U 3: Blade: Bty Gergely . No rubbers...thinking of adding Red Dtecs and Black Rasant
Aussie Table Tennis Shop / Aussie Table Tennis Facebook Page / Equipment Review Index / Read my Reb Report Blog: click here.

The first league match I played with the new balls we broke six of them in my first match, four of them in the deciding set. I'm not 100% sure but it was either Stiga or Yasaka balls. Nowadays we usually break about one per table each session and 9 out of 10 times that's when someone hit it clean with the edge of the bat. We use XSF and Yasaka balls, the XSF balls seems a bit sturdier and more durable but IMO the Yasaka balls plays a bit better and have a more consistent quality between balls.

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Read about my adventures to perfect my style and the ever-present battle against the evil EJ virus!

I have the same experience. This last season I have been using Stiga most and they break someyimes during matches but not at all ad much as a year ago. Same with Yasaka. Seamless balls break less often, both a year ago and now.

I would say plastic balls is not an issue anymore, besides from being a little more expensive. But that I hope will change in a few years.

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Reb, I can tell you a pretty good answer to that based on a lot of personal experience, as well as the excperience of people at my club where we only use 40+ balls now, and also from monitoring all of the English language forums. Here is the information you are looking for, but it's not going to come from your poll.

Chinese seamed 40+ balls break the most, they bounce the lowest, and are most out of round. The most recent batches seem a little better in terms of durability but still not good enough and they still have low bounce and are not much fun to use. For awhile there people were saying that Double Fish and Butterfly were a bit better than DHS (and Joola, Stiga, Donic, all made by DHS). Who knows how many of those you could break in a session? Probably a lot. These should probably be taken off the market they are that bad.

Seamless balls break the least when averaged over time, but can sometimes fracture catastrophically when they hit an edge or side of racket. Seamless balls are probably on average more durable than most celluloids we used to use. I can make that statement very confidently having used them a lot since 2014, about two years now. You may recall that I was the first person on English language forums to vigorously support use of these balls, against considerable (and justified) skepticism. The skepticism came from the very bad prototypes. However, there is some recent concern that more of the XSF brand balls lately have been out of round. People continue to be very happy with seamless sold under other brands (Yinhe, Nexy, etc.), probably because those brands demand higher QC from the factory. As far as I can tell, you are ok with those. For price/quality ratio? There is nothing that comes close to good seamless balls. They have a high, consistent bounce, and they are very easy to see, being a very bright white color. I have the impression they are slightly slower than the other balls.

Nittaku Japan Premium 40+ are about average durability, better than Chinese seamed, worse than seamless, and probably comparable to their celluloid counterparts (Nittaku never made the most durable celluloid ball). Most people like their playing qualities the best, but as usual, nothing is unanimous. Hardbat players seem not to like them. A thread at MyTT raised the concern that some of the balls they produced in early 2016 are not as good and have a strange sound. I have not personally tried any that were made that recently, since I bought a large stash last fall. These are my favorite ball. I think they are most like celluloid. I tend to use them more than seamless these days. The new DHS D40+ ball may turn out to be a clone of the Nittaku Premium, but I haven't found a place where they are sold yet, so I'm not sure.

Butterfly G40+ is a strange ball. Very weird sound and they come with a very smooth surface which affects the way they play and fly through the air. Good bounce height, unusually straight and fast trajectory, but the durability issue with these is not that they break, but that the surface very very rapidly gets even smoother and shinier, and this makes them hard to use. This is as bad as fracture if you ask me. I dislike them a lot when they get very shiny, and so tend not to use them long enough to break them.

I hope this is helpful.

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

Yep, it is helpful. See, my poll is useful...look at al the good info its teasing out

Keep it coming people!

PS. I don't think I've played with a seamless poly yet. I did use an early XSF, but I'm pretty sure it was seamed. We have the Nittaku JAP's at my club, but they are only used by our A1 (really, why do the best players get the best balls when they pay the same fees as everyone else?).

_________________
I'm always in the dark, but the Dark sheds lights upon everything!! Beauty is only pimple deep! Beauty is in the eye of the pipholder!
S/U 1: Blade: Bty Gergely . FH Black Andro Rasant 2.1 . BH Red Tibhar Grass Dtecs
S/U 2: Blade: Bty Gergely . FH Black Hexer+ 2.1 . BH Red GD Talon
S/U 3: Blade: Bty Gergely . No rubbers...thinking of adding Red Dtecs and Black Rasant
Aussie Table Tennis Shop / Aussie Table Tennis Facebook Page / Equipment Review Index / Read my Reb Report Blog: click here.

Voted 2 on the basis of 2016 using NP 40+ & XSF, Xiom.

I used to predominately use NP 40+ made in Japan balls until very recently.
Last 2 sets of balls that is 6 in total all broke fairly quickly. I reckon I had that early batch from 2016 that Baal mentioned. At €7.50 for 3 I started using Xiom seamless. These were surprisingly good and seemed more round and harder wearing than the XSF seamless but were quite pricey - bought in a pack of 6 possibly €2 dearer than the XSF. A criticism I have of the seamless is the high bounce.

At the new venue i'm using double fish 3 star seamed - they are supplied by the club. Hard to use your own ball since there are balls flying everywhere. Not too impressed with these - the Chinese guy running the club doesn't like XSF or their clones so when for an economy seamed ball. He is looking for a better ball. I've now got used to playing with comparatively poor balls. Getting some feedback that I'm a bit hard on the free supply of balls and reckon that I might have get him a big box of balls. Hope no one minds if I take a bit of liberty and ask for some suggestions. He wasn't keen on that link recently posted of cheap balls on the table tennis deals link. He is looking for seamed with a moderate bounce.