OOAK Table Tennis Forum

Hmmm. Okay. So what you mean is deception is the key. Got it.

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Weapon 1: Andro Kinetic Supreme Hinoki/Zylon OFF-; Andro Hexer HDs (FH 2.1/BH 1.9)
Weapon 2: Ross Leidy 'Smokey'; Friendship 729-5s
Club1: Daylesford - since 2010
Club2: Ballarat - since 2011
Blog: A Naked Bear

Good point foam. Up to a certain level serves can be effective just because they have a fair amount of spin on them. After that however experienced players have little trouble just so long as they can read what spin is on the ball. More advanced players serve mostly short because their long serves get attacked. When they do serve long the serves are usually very deep and they try to catch their opponent by surprise.

If you are able to have a very effective first loop then this can greatly increase the effectiveness of your serve. ie if your opponent returns loose (eg a long push) and you don't take advantage of this then there is no pressure on him to return tight. If however you punish loose returns then this puts more pressure on him to be more precise with his returns (eg he has to keep the ball short and low). This narrows his options and forces him to play riskier returns and this in turn can lead to errors on his part. As the chess saying goes: "A threat is more powerful than its execution".

Against weaker players who tend to push/chop their returns I would be serving a fairly high percentage of topspin/sidespin. If you serve long and they return defensively then serve most of your serves long as you will be guaranteed a deep return which sits up. But also bear in mind that a lot of players struggle to keep short topspin/sidespin serves tight.

Basically you want to develop serves with different spin using the same motion. Make sure that your serves are fairly heavy otherwise the difference between the chop/topspin and no-spin ones will be too mild to cause anyone any bother.

When you get really really good at serving then get Blue to show you his reverse-pendulum - it's a beaut!

Well it looks fancy, but I don't recall it giving me much trouble Of course with Dtecs, nothing gives you trouble

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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.

I wasn't in possession of a reverse pendulum serve when we last played Reb!

Blues trick serve works on me. It comes out of nowhere lol. Oskar yes deception so long as the serve looks for all intent the same as you can possibly do with either strong side backspin or strong side topspin then you have an automatic +2 points per game and that's a big jump in level. I'm not very good at it myself and I was very anxious to see how high a level play it would fool the first time I used that type of serve last year. Turned out it was enough to trick most Division 1 players temporally and that's enough when it's someone you don't play very often. On the other hand there's a couple guys in my club on 600-800 points that pick it every time because they are used to it. You probably want 3 or 4 different serves with the same kind of variation to keep it mixed up when you are not really good at it.

I noticed at the Olympics Henzell totally bamboozled Samsonov on serve time and time again. I'm guess because they don't play often despite Samsonov being much higher rated.

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Donic defplay senso
Haifu whale soft (grips-euro)
Nittaku pimplemini 1.0mm

Hey guys, my brother and I came up with a new logo for the Ballarat club. I don't know if you've seen the current logo they're currently using (a kind of manga-style boy holding a bat), but we're trying to bring the club into the 21st century with a more serious image.

Tell me what you think:

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Weapon 1: Andro Kinetic Supreme Hinoki/Zylon OFF-; Andro Hexer HDs (FH 2.1/BH 1.9)
Weapon 2: Ross Leidy 'Smokey'; Friendship 729-5s
Club1: Daylesford - since 2010
Club2: Ballarat - since 2011
Blog: A Naked Bear

Very Ballarat! Interesting you are going 21st century with an obvious connection to local history! I like it Oskar

As you've spotted we used the Eureka stars (8-pointed), but formed them into a T-shape. I think once they're embroided on the new club shirts (that our club buys for every member attending Country Week - yipee!), it's going to look great. Just imagine 30+ players from Ballarat marching into MSAC wearing our new uniform. We're going to make a Chinese-at-the-Olympics kind of entry!

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Weapon 1: Andro Kinetic Supreme Hinoki/Zylon OFF-; Andro Hexer HDs (FH 2.1/BH 1.9)
Weapon 2: Ross Leidy 'Smokey'; Friendship 729-5s
Club1: Daylesford - since 2010
Club2: Ballarat - since 2011
Blog: A Naked Bear

Nittaku 40+ plastic balls -- some thoughts

I recently bought three boxes of the ITTF approved Nittaku (Made in China) plastic balls. No exact dimensions are given but it says on the pack "40+", so I'm assuming these balls will always err on the side of the larger end of a 40 mm diameter.

Anyway, out of the box they seemed fine: bright, hard and seamed. I was definitely looking forward to having a bash with them.

To be honest, I couldn't find anything negative about the balls. Maybe they seemed harder somehow, but that didn't affect my play. Were they heavier? I didn't do that thorough of a test. Both offensive and defensive strokes made the ball fly in expected ways. Loops, drives and blocks behaved normally; as did pushes and controlled chops. The balls had good "teeth', so spin didn't seem affected. The ball remained quite bright even after two or three hours of heated action in a very dusty room. My bat's rubbers were much worse off!

The balls have a distinct seam. When I first saw it I have to admit to a little disappointment. It only lasted a few seconds but I was kind of hoping for a seamless ball -- something fancy. Something I was sure would fail. After about an hour I even forgot it was a new plastic ball (or one of the variations).

Really, these balls seem to pose no threat to our great sport. Out of five stars:

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Weapon 1: Andro Kinetic Supreme Hinoki/Zylon OFF-; Andro Hexer HDs (FH 2.1/BH 1.9)
Weapon 2: Ross Leidy 'Smokey'; Friendship 729-5s
Club1: Daylesford - since 2010
Club2: Ballarat - since 2011
Blog: A Naked Bear

This is good to hear Oskar. I'm hoping for the best for the new ball!

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Enjoy the game. It is a never ending learning experience once you play and keep the ball on that 45 sq ft of space or should I say half of that space.

How much were they Oskar and where did you get them?

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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.

Butterfly Australia sells them.
I umpired the Australian Top 10 Senior open and they used these balls. A lot of balls were broken during this tournament. Only in the men finals they had to use three different balls. If someone that hits really hard use these balls, the ball breaks and the weird thing is that the ball usually breaks in half but it doesn't break through the seam.
The other thing that I noticed while umpiring was that sometimes when the players were hitting balls with a lot of top spin, the ball somehow "rolled" instead of bouncing, so I could see the opposing player missing the shot and the ball was going with a height lower than expected with the old balls.

They were A$7.00 per pack of three from the OOAK shop. I bought three packs. I suppose my main intention was to get a feel for the types of balls about to enter our market.

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Weapon 1: Andro Kinetic Supreme Hinoki/Zylon OFF-; Andro Hexer HDs (FH 2.1/BH 1.9)
Weapon 2: Ross Leidy 'Smokey'; Friendship 729-5s
Club1: Daylesford - since 2010
Club2: Ballarat - since 2011
Blog: A Naked Bear

I suppose this proves that testing on many levels needs to be done before any thumbs up. When the season starts again after the school holidays, I'll get a few of my club's elite players (hard-hitters) to give them a go. I'll ask them to try as hard as they can to break them, within the rules of the game! No stomping.

_________________

Weapon 1: Andro Kinetic Supreme Hinoki/Zylon OFF-; Andro Hexer HDs (FH 2.1/BH 1.9)
Weapon 2: Ross Leidy 'Smokey'; Friendship 729-5s
Club1: Daylesford - since 2010
Club2: Ballarat - since 2011
Blog: A Naked Bear