OOAK Table Tennis Forum

I get mixed answers..........

Thanks

Thanks for link . I am not getting younger as the world changes.

Naah. That LARC expired June last year. The more up to date one is on ittf.com:

https://equipments.ittf.com/#/equipment ... _coverings

Besides - legal for what? If it's on the current LARC it'd be legal in USATT tournaments. On the other hand, if you want to use it in Hardbat competition, there's another list specifically for that - there are different lists of hardbat-approved rubbers for the US and for Europe.

Iskandar

https://www.eacheng.net/729-MYSTERY-755-2-p811744.html

Heh, What hell they doing? ITTF did never sanction such a product that 755-2. It is a false ITTF logo on the cover, fictional tradename to mislead people. Not registered in the current LARC.

Thanks for pointing out the difference on playing hard bat. I only playing regular ping pong

I thought "regular" table-tennis "was" hardbat (at least before 1952)

Anyhayhoo, the legal 755 (not 755-2) was used by the only two-time Olympic Gold Medalist (in both singles & doubles) Deng Yaping. This was in 1992 & 1996 before the 40 mm celluloid ball & 40+ plastic ball and I am not sure how good it would be today.

Roland Krmaschek uses 755 in ox (viewtopic.php?f=35&t=6377), seems to do pretty well with it for classic defense.

Sorry. Makes no sense to me. Doing "pretty well" is not the same as doing their possible very best or good enough, especially at higher & competitive levels. 755 is a fantastic close to the table block & smash frictionless long pip in the 38mm ball era (but not sure after that). This is also how Deng Yaping used it(close to the table, block & smash mode). I still have few sheets & I have even put them on some of my blocker friends' backhand or other side of Seemiller grip racket but not for a chopper.

The top of pips of 755 is so smooth that I am shocked it escaped the 2008 Frictionless Pips Ban. I would tend to think any away from the table chopper like Roland would want to use the most grippy and spinny long pips with very rough pip top like say Feint Long 3 etc. Unless Roland has an incredibly spinny forehand chop and deliberately prefers a far less spinny long pip like 755 on the backhand by choice. I am thinking it may be like this for Roland beccause I myself use a very spinny inverted (Yinhe Mercury) & get tons of spin on my loops but I get very less spin on my inverted chops compared to my long-pips chops from other side. I think it is my stroke because if I consciously try, I can also chop heavy with inverted but don't bother. Even when I tell my training partners this & don't twiddle during practice, they still hit long against my inverted chops but they can loop OK more times in succession against my very very spinny long pips chops (of an incoming loop). Weaker players do the opposite > they can keep the ball in play against my inverted chops but return my long-pips chops to the bottom of the net on their side, even if it can get that far.
Or maybe Roland is quite comfortable with 755 and does not want to try any other rubber

Or tell me some other reason. I am always willing to learn.

755 is NOT frictionless. It is actually nicely grippy. Have you played with it?

Smooth pip tops wouldn't mean less friction. I mean, what's got more friction - pips out rubber or smooth inverted sandwich? Same thing with Formula 1 tires - the dry tires are slicks - more friction. The wet and intermediate weather tires have grooves (tread) - this is needed to wick the water away from the rubber in contact with the pavement, but has less traction, otherwise they'd put treads on the dry weather tires, too. In fact, during the V10 era, there was a time when they made everyone use dry tires which had several grooves in it, they did that to reduce overall traction, to limit speeds.

Actual "hardbat" competition didn't really exist until, when was it? Sometime in the 1980s? Before 1959, you could use ANY surface on your bat - people used sandpaper, bare wood, etc. but the default was what amounted to OX pip-out rubber because that provided the best amount of control and spin-making ability. This changed in 1952, when Satoh Hiroji won the World Champs with a bat with bare sponge on it (about 6mm thick IIRC). People had used sponge before, but no one had ever won the WC with it. That set off a trend - people started selling rackets with sponge in all sorts of thicknesses and types. It set off a lot of politics - some people wanted to ban sponge, some tournaments actually DID ban it, some people actually picketed outside tournaments that did that. Eventually they decided, in 1959, that henceforth only four types of surface were to be allowed - bare wood (illegal today), OX pips out ("hard rubber"), and two types of "sandwich" - a topsheet (either the pips side out or the pips side in) and a layer of sponge, total thickness 4mm.

Actual "hardbat" competition was sort of a reaction, a desire to go back to the OLD DAYS when hard rubber ruled. Note that, ironically, in the OLD DAYS, EVERYTHING was allowed, while in today's hardbat competition, ONLY (specific types of) hard rubber is allowed. The idea was to slow down the game and reduce the amount of spin possible, and allow defensive players more of a chance (defensive players dominated in the 1930s and 1940s). To do this they had to come up with a list of allowable rubbers (short pips). The American list is not the same as the European one. Hardbat wasn't the only solution to the same "problem" - in Japan there's 44mm table tennis (higher net, larger ball, pips out sandwich with 1.5mm sponge only). And lately there's Sandpaper table tennis (with some really major money behind it). And I suppose "TTX" is yet another one.

As far as anything being "illegal" - that only applies to sanctioned tournaments. If you're not playing in these, you can "legally" use anything your opponents will allow you to get away with.. I suppose that would also apply to company picnic tournaments, church tournaments or even your University's Intramurals, though there it's more likely you might run into a table tennis cognoscentus who might object...

Iskandar

I can vouch for 755 having a decent amount of grip as well. It's not P1r in max sponge, but its not frictionless either.

As for defining doing "pretty well," Krmaschek was on the czech national team in the 90's (see the link I initially posted), and plays(played?), in the Bundesliga. Just because he's not in the top 100 ITTF rankings anymore or winning national tournaments doesn't mean he isn't doing well for himself, and he's certainly better than I'll ever be.

My point was that 755 CAN be used for classic defense with the new poly ball, to good effect. It's certainly not a combination so egregious that it's impossible to use, as Krmaschek demonstrates!

We can go in circles over and over till cows come home, about 755 doing "pretty well" & being "good enough" compared to being the "best possible rubber" for the job. But as was stated before by boosted, if that is what Roland prefers, hey it is what it is.
Also, where did boosted ever say (or even remotely imply) that 755 was impossible to use ?