OOAK Table Tennis Forum

What's MOST interesting is that fastmover talks about attacking first...and explains that many players just push heavy. Pushing heavy is in itself a strong attack that you should never discount. Pushing deep to the backhand and then pivoting is one of my favorite moves.

You know I suffer from poor footwork, slow recovery time too. Blockers can be a nightmare. Only recently have I started beating a guy at my club on a regular basis who is very solid with ball control, blocks at the table.

I've had to train a lot to marginally improve this. There is a training partner who has an aggressive block that returns pretty dead. I still cannot loop his block every time - but I'm getting better at it (from 10% of the time to maybe 40%). I've developed faster arm speed and a shorter stroke when required. I've learned to hit both sides of the table and even have the ball come out the side some on my loops. I've learned to add footwork that increases my options for the next shot - or even get to just get to the blocked ball. If I play a 200 point better blocker I may lose...but I'm ready for that next challenge.

Now I'm struggling with retrievers, they get back and just return my loops. Now I need to learn to vary the speed and spin, watch for the spin coming off of the retriever's ball, get better at taking the ball early and more over the table all while often creating the pace the entire time. I will likely need to swing more with my legs.

Guess the point is...identify why you are having issues with a style of play and how can you overcome them. I always start with: how can I make it so they don't attack my serve and then how can I attack the 3rd ball? In the end you want a ball you can attack - the heavy long push deep in the corner is not that.

Also I agree with NL's post and BRS' they have some good specifics for you.

There is one last thing I want to mention...even against blockers who I know will block and all of that, I still give them what they want in practice matches. So much value getting that practice in! I also want to see if they can return my serve in a way that will give me a problem...gives me feedback on the quality of the serve. I play this one guy who half the time puts the ball in the net and half the time who returns the ball extremely well. I'd say half of my serves were a little high and it's something to work on.

I take this as a trick question.

It becomes advantageous to attack first on the very first day you play because you should be building your game correctly. Forget about your opponent and build YOUR game. Forget about the results.

Say 100% of the guys at my club are very strong blockers, but can't attack. Should I just push heavy to these guys because it's my best chance of beating them? TT isn't a game of Rock/Paper/Scissors. In RPS, if my opponents have a tendency to often go Rock, I should tend to go Paper more often. But TT is infinitely more complex than RPS and other opponents can do literally anything. Also, if I just push heavy every time I play a match, I won't develop the required skills to attack against players who can't block a ball on the table. I will remain a low level club player as I refused to build a correct foundation because of fear of losing.

To be uncapped at TT, you must be able to serve short and make the first attack. This is because the strategy is optimal against the majority of players and not just the 4 guys at your club. If you do have 4 guys at your club who can block you off, that's great news. By the time you overcome them with spin and power, you'll move up in rating and you'll find a whole new group of players to lose to. You'll be asking the forum if you should continue to serve short against guys with awesome flicks/flips or something.

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Limping in with AA 100% of the time so you don't lose

Yesterday, an intelligent 2500-2600 player asked me the following question - Should there be a 'shove' chart (all-in chart) for TT. For example, if you are winning 9-3, should you just 'shove' every point by serving long? Let's assume you have a 40% chance of winning a point by serving long and fast (equivalent to a poker all-in). Is this the most efficient way of finishing the set as it requires minimal effort and you should win most of the time? At what point on the chart should you have to serve short and work for your points?

I gave the above questions way too much thought late last night.

For those of you who don't play poker, there is a point when you have so much more money than your opponent that it becomes optimal to go all-in with marginal hands. There are charts that exist to show you the optimal strategies.

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I think it depends on your tolerance for losing games that you led 9-3. Assuming you are serving at 9-3, with a 40% win rate you will often lose both those points. If your opponent gets to 9-7, you are going to have to serve short then or face a real chance of your opponent serving at 9-9 and feeling very positive about it. So why not just play properly.and finish the set 11-3, it's actually less work in the end.

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Just out of curiosity - what happens when you do this? You've got so much more money than your opponent, what happens if you raise the bet to more than he can cover? Does he automatically have to fold?

As you can tell, I know nothing of poker.

Iskandar

I've been down this road but a little different. You are up 9-7 or 10-8 and serving. Getting 1 of those 2 points is really important...serve a couple that he had trouble getting on the table, right?

When up big I think quite differently if there are more sets to be played vs this player. Do I really want to do my best plays? Shouldn't I try some super standard plays and hope for the best? This is much like playing safe in poker because it's still early in the tourney and you want to protect your gains. It gets dangerous when your up big too...some players give up the games and start hitting wild shots that amazingly go in. This is like poker in where someone goes 'on tilt' and gets a lucky streak to get back into things. See Djok vs Federer in the US Open semi finals a few years back for a fine example of this.

Iskandar: The player with less chips can double up if they call the all in by the player with more chips. The player with the most chips at the table can often bully the other players because the most chips cannot lose in the tourney...but everyone else can. Players will rarely bluff the big stack because of this risk. Chip stacks in tourney poker matter MORE than the cards in some situations.

My small take on it, cool idea to apply some game theory to TT.

The goal of poker is maximizing profit and taking the most EV line given the information at hand. Similarly, in TT the point is maximizing our chances of winning and taking the play that has the best expected chance of winning the point is always the right move, regardless of what score it is. So, serving fast and long with 40% chances is obviously a mistake if we have better options at hand, it doesn't matter what score it is, we are simply throwing our edge away and it will add up in the long term.

Btw (as I understand it), we are shoving wide when effective stacks are short not because we have more money and we can afford it or because we want to end the game quickly, it is because the shorter we are the wider range of cards have a positive expectation when shoving compared to limping or open folding.

I thought a lot about this suggestion, but somehow I cannot implement it. When I plant my right foot I can't push off it: it feels like there is something mushy underneath and I have no foothold. Like I am trying to jump off a swampy ground. As weird as it sounds. Maybe there is something wrong with my weight positioning.

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Then you have no weight on that foot and it isn't really "planted." Your foot can be touching the ground but carrying no weight. It is impossible to push off a leg with no weight on it. This is why the phenomenon WH showed in the Heavy Left Foot video happens. It's unusual for a right-hander to have all your weight on the left leg, but it fits the feeling you descibe exactly.

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Turn your hips back for the backswing. You can't get much forward hip rotation without the backwards rotation first. Think of every shot as a two step process. You have a bit of a zero step approach at the moment as it's only a lunge forward and a drag of the right leg.

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Everything you said is correct and you've obviously played poker before.

It's more strenuous to play with positive EV and it can add up over a week long tournament. The theory first mentioned was designed to save energy.

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LTT85 and DTT19 are now available on ttEDGE.com

LTT85 is about smashing. DTT19 is designed to help you make decisions after your serve.

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After playing at the club yesterday, with whip mechanics in mind, I realised that often, when I engage the lower body, the arm has stopped moving, which means it's much harder to achieve a good whip. Is there a way to teach yourself to become more sensitive to where you are in the backswing ? As I feel it's difficult to focus on this in a match or even in training when you're playing at a high tempo.

Are you going into the backswing too early? A while ago I had a private lesson with Brett. He kept telling me my backswing was too early to get a whip. He would give a commentary too early, too early, OK, too early as I hit each ball in multi ball. I realized I needed to wait, go a bit faster into the backwing and immediately then go forward to get a good whip action. So for me the timing of the start of the backswing is the key to get a good whip. Get this correct and then good mechanics will flow.