OOAK Table Tennis Forum

Well, some weird weeks here..
Got sick on the week before the club champs - played there (two days ago) because it seemed like I was already fine. But the next day I felt worse and today I feel.. not well..
So no TT this weeks really. The results in the club champs are.. tolerable. The body (mb the mind?) needs rest

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Yesterday (league night) was basically the first day I played feeling well
Slapped the Victas Triple Double (Sextuple ) Extra.
First day so I expect it to break in the future..
For now: from the beginning it was absurdly tacky. Like you can't even play normally with it. The B2 when new is very tacky and this was one level above that - absurd.
This tackiness wears off a little and the rubber becomes usable. First impressions: slow, spinny, controlled, can rip shots with it and they still land on the table. Won't be jumping to conclusions cause I expect it to gain some speed after a couple (throuple? ) training sessions. The important part - no problems after B2. Will write about pros and cons after some time.

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So just came home after a very good 2hrs training session with my teammate (he's a lot stronger, the guy played professionally in Ukraine before moving to Bulgaria). So I do a lot of blocks to move him, then he does this to me, some reaction combinations and stuff like that and one bo 5 match.
So the Victas TDE today played really good - it became alive - now it's fast and the control is there. I would compare it to Battle 2 Prov on the blue sponge but with more control in the lower and middle gears. That's pretty much what I wanted cause the B2 is great when making strong shots but the problem is in the control when you're not in position. It's much harder to make a proper shot that won't put you in a tight spot.. Basically - it's a more demanding rubber. TDE has better control in such situations. So lots of pros for now and no cons.. Will see next week when I play more matches with different opponents

27.02 Update (next day)
Played some matches with different opponents (a chopper mixed in there too) - really like the TDE.
It has great gears from low to really fast, it's tacky and the control is definitely better than with the B2 (more dwell and feeling).
A specific difference is the topsheet. Although tacky it seems harder than B2's topsheet. This demands some adjustments, but not a lot though
The speed is now great, maybe even a little faster than the B2 but the progression from slow to fast is different - more tamed. With B2 I would say that it's slow-slow-slow-fast and here I would say that it is slow-medium-faster-fast (graded by effort you put in the shot). This really helps to use the sponge to impart more spin on medium shots - this is what I hoped to gain from this change.
So overall - TDE - very nice

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Short update.
Finished second in the Club champs - this means next year we'll be playing in the upper division (second division in Bulgaria). The plans there will be to stay and not fall down to the lower division.
Not playing well currently. The mental state is not the best. Somehow lots of things happening currently around me so can not concentrate really well in matches. So that's that.
The TDE seems nice - adapting to it better and better. Some things are much easier with it, some wild things (like occasional chops) are a little harder and need some adjustments.

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After some sparring and training sessions found out a quite interesting and sad thing.
So currently I see a problem in my game - when I receive and the opponent attacks a 3rd ball to my BH then I'm often not confident blocking with the anti (lot's of errors) - it's easier to twiddle and block with the inverted rubber.
Of course this happens not with all 3rd ball attacks but when the opponent is strong (this is a relative term here - a strong opponent means he can beat me ) then the quality often is enough to trouble me.

So in training session I block a lot with the Anti - block opening loops, normal loops, different loops overall. And I would say that I can handle them pretty well. Not as good as with the inverted rubber but still - pretty good.

So I told my sparring partner to do the exercise where he serves to my FH short, I give him a relatively weak receive to his FH and he attacks the receive to either my FH or my BH. And the results where a disaster: BH (anti) blocks where like 80-90% errors, FH(regular rubber) - no problem.

If we tweak the exercise so that he attacks only to my BH then the errors drop to like 10-20%.

So the conclusion that I currently came to is that my stance/posture is wrong when I expect a whole table attack (when I return from a receive that will be attacked) - to upright and not properly grouped to receive the attack. Will try to work on this.. More such random exercises and need to remind myself more about this in matches (It seems like have a very bad habit in this regard.)

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Yesterday took participation in another monthly tournament.
Finished 6th out of 56. Basically got lucky with the draw somehow. So beat whoever had to beat and lost to the guys that I couldn't beat. No close matches cause the opponents that beat me where much-much stronger - but I still played well. Somehow their tempo is not so overwhelming as it was so there's definitely some progress on my side.
On 18th will participate in another tournament that's much tougher - I'm a total outsider there (last time didn't get out of the group stage) - this will be fun. Maybe I'll finally take some videos.. will see

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So after 5 weeks of moderate match play/sparring sessions (overall 2-3 times a week of TT) the TDE bubbled up.
Yesterday was league night and the BH was absolutely uncontrollable, and the soft touches from the FH where problematic.. Also the spin was lacking.
After inspection I came to a conclusion that part of the topsheet has unglued from the sponge - double checked my thoughts with the club owner and he agreed that it seems like it.
We decided to take of the rubber so we can validate if that was a speculation or not. While peeling the rubber off (carefully) it became very obvious that the topsheet has unglued in several spots (bubbles came out when you squeeze the rubber a little).
So that's that - 5 weeks seems like to little for me. And I really liked how it played
I've read about such problems with this rubber on other forums but hoped that this is not something regular..
Well, slapping the Battle back for now (cause even if I wanted to - there's not TDE red MAX in stock in our local shop) - will see how it goes from there (maybe a Xiom Tau... 2?)..

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Am I imagining things or is your opponent using black both sides & twiddling ?

I really don't remember if he had a second (black) rubber or it was just some kind of black paper glued there but what I'm sure of is that he was not twiddling - he was always using the same rubber (the pips).

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Video?

As far as I understood zepina was commenting on this post - viewtopic.php?f=58&t=32569#p350808

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Thank you

So after the TDE died I needed quickly to get something (cause the TDE is not in stock in our local shop currently) cause today we had a teams tournament (teams of two so we played individually and doubles sometimes).
So I got the Loki Rxton 3 Blue.
It's hard, has a tacky topsheet and spins the ball well.
Currently - slow.. not sure it'll break enough so I can use it.. cause yep - I played well with it but it was really hard - very demanding and also not helping the player a lot.
Will see after a couple of sessions how it plays - if it doesn't break and gain like at least 20-30% in speed then I'll change it. It's more like a test for fun, so the results are not very important
It's definitely not a bad rubber though

Next day update:
Another 3hr sparring/sets session.
The Loki played faster today - still too slow for my liking. Still doesn't help you play - you need to do everything yourself The spin is good.. I think it still needs time to break.

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Yesterday had another sparring session (2.5 hrs) against a defender (who just changed from P4 0.5 to 1.0..).
I re-glued the Rxton Blue the day before because I didn't like how I glued it the first time (too much glue and it was a little uneven).
So yesterday the rubber played even better - I would say that it can (probably) rival the Battle 2 that I've played with for quite some time.. Still it seems not as powerful, but has great spin, pretty good speed. It's definitely not suitable for players who are used to European rubbers - it provides very little amount of help. I like it cause it grabs the ball very well and I can rip it as hard as I want - the rubber does not have super catapult so it'll go in. The short game is great too.
It seems like it still has a potential to break in a little more.. But compared to the first day it became much livelier (like +50-70%) so.. you know.. for 8 euro seems fine
I even have a match video that I played with it for the first time and the match was not half bad.. but haven't edited it still.
So I'll stick with this blue rubber for now and see how it goes (not going back to TDE.. and reading and searching for another rubber... don't want that for now ).
Will write a comparison of the Rxton rubber with B2 and TDE after a couple more sessions

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And here's the match that I played this Saturday.
It was my first time using the Rxton 3 Blue. It was brand new, rather slow and very new to me. So there is some obvious tension and uncertainty in some shots but overall the match was not bad.
The video footage is taken from the club's surveillance camera so the quality is.. meh.. and the sound is quite pitched. But still - this is better than nothing

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