OOAK Table Tennis Forum

I have not played in a few years & when I came back I found out ball has changed and i was told it is a whole different ball game with the new plastic ball.
So for old type chopping, how does this change the equation ?
What rubbers do you recommend. ?

Chopping with inverted rubbers, or pips?

AFAIK there hasn't been much of a change in inverted rubbers. Tenergy & Hurricane 3 still seem to be pretty popular; not sure about newer stuff like Dignics (though a clubmate swears by it for chopping).

For long pips, I think people have mostly been sticking with what they're used to. Filus still uses FLIII, Gionis FLII, Chtchetinine P1r, and so on. Joo was using P3aR instead of P1r for a short while (I think during his stint in T-League, but I could be wrong), and there's a video of Suh Hyowon using P3aR as well (though not in an official match). There's been a few videos of Masato Shiono using one of the new stiga rubbers (either Horizontal or vertical 55, I forget which), but he works for Stiga so take that as you will. Kentaro Miuchi switched from FLII to Stiga's Vertical 20. Ma Te changed blades, but I think he's still using the Palio LP rubber.

There's been some success with short & medium pip choppers; Hitomi Sato & Honoka Hashimoto use a medium pip (Super Knuckle DO, or something like that) & have been doing well. Hou Yingchao and Han Ying have been doing very well with TSP Spectol. Short/medium pip chopping does seem to be pretty popular right now, with the new ball. As for whether it'll better than long pip chopping in the long run, who can say!

The ball speed and spin is lower now that makes defense easier to control but less effective. I think modern trend is to use faster equipment: blades, FH and BH rubbers.

In other words, you'd be more likely to outlast the other guy, but tricking him (er, forcing him into an error) will be more difficult.

Iskandar