OOAK Table Tennis Forum

Vs Cheeran

- Always attack his serve because it’s just better tt. You should ideally use your forehand a little more often against his serve, although it’s okay to loop some serves with the backhand too. I understand that you’re probably trying to save some energy and reduce the impact.
- You moved your serve around decently, but make a larger percentage short to the forehand or very fast to the backhand or middle.
- Use your reverse serve more against this guy because it’s currently your spinniest and best looking serve, even though we are working on some other stuff that hasn’t showed up yet.
The reverse serves almost always works best when you direct it short to the forehand or very long to the backhand. It’s not so good when you go to the middle of the table on their backhand with the reverse because the opponent gets to play a heavy backhand push return which is comfortable for them.
- Use your forehand down the line a lot because he has a habit of moving back and he’s more ready for the ball on the forehand half. This is also just a good strategy in general.for when people are constantly moving away from the table too often.
- When he goes back from the table, use your forehand almost always...don’t stand there and play backhand or else you’ll be reaching for the ball without being able to force the play

Vs Miller

- Move the position of your serve around a lot. He’s only really comfortably returning with the backhand side of his racket, so constant changes of length and direction will work best.
- Attack his middle a lot because he doesn’t really have a defense there. If he moves around and plays backhand, attack even more to his forehand because that becomes his new middle. If he keeps moving around too much, attack directly down the line occasionally because he’ll be too busy covering his forehand side. Attacking the middle against most defenders is a good idea, especially early in the point.

Vs Amir

- Against these guys who block close to the table with Anti or LP on the backhand, you can serve long and very fast to the backhand and get ready to attack. The key is to get ready. You are guaranteed an attackable 3rd ball, even if it’s slightly awkward.. They will even directly miss quite a few fast serves because it’s hard to control. Of course the variation is to serve short to the forehand so they don’t get used to it. The serve should be very short though, not half long to the middle like you did occasionally.
- Make a lot of your first attacks to the forehand. When boiled down, he really wants to stand there and block lots of balls with the LP. You can go directly to the backhand as a surprise, but go directly into the forehand 80% of the time. I think you played a few too many attacks directly into the backhand and he got comfortable against that..

Vs Narender

- He serves a lot of long balls to your middle and you’d get an advantage if you loop them with your forehand directly into his forehand.
- I’d be trying the reverse serve into the forehand to get some easy returns and open up his forehand for the 3rd ball.
- Using lots of slow spin on your first loop should be most effective against this type of player who tends to hold his racket up and poke at the ball on the block. Most of your first loops should be directly into the forehand because he has a decent flaw in his fh blocking technique. His backhand block isn’t great too, so you don’t need to be very worried too much about direction. Just loop with lots of spin.
-You need to prepare for the ball to come back a little better than you did in this match. Be ready for him to make 2-4 balls and focus more on the play.

Incomp Match

-This player is pretty good from both bh and fh, so attacking to the middle or forehand is probably the best option. You definitely want to be fighting for the first attack against this guy because he likes to make the play.
- He didn’t like your reverse serve, so I’d be using that into the backhand.


General comments and thoughts

- You need to focus a bit more and be prepared to fight and get into the play. I understand you’ve had a long layoff, so just keep this advice in your mind.
- You moved your serve around quite well, but the quality can improve significantly. We are working on this together.
- Use the reverse serve more because it’s great. Do it often to the right hander’s forehand and left hander’s backhand. You'll get lots of returns to your forehand giving you the option to attack anywhere you want.
- Take advantage of long serving by your opponents. Use your forehand to loop some more of these serves, especially the ones that are just drifting long to your middle.
- It's good that you get a lot of topspin on your loops and it will win you a lot of points.
- Slowly work on your fitness with enjoyable activities, including tt training.

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Thank you very much I will definitely keep all those in mind. I’m too used to serving reverse to the bh for sure. I will also need to start serving very short to the fh.

As for my other 2 wishes I grant you a day off for each wish as you have more than earned it!


Thanks,
Prince Dan

I'm off to see the world!!!

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Lol

Prince Danny, Mighty is He, Danny DaPanda...

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Cobra Kai TT Exponent (Mercy effs up your Game)
One-Loop Man: One Loop... Again????
Lumberjack TT Exponent

"We don't rise to the level of our expectations, we fall to the level of our training" - Archilochus

Lmao

Simple FH, Middle, FH, BH to partner's FH drill:



Things I like:

- Good early timing
- Reasonably relaxed shoulders

Things I'd like to improve:

- More use of the body / hips / core in the stroke
- Maybe bend the legs a little more
- Watch for balance, especially watch out for shoulder dipping

I'm well out of touch in terms of 2020 mechanics (my brain is probably still in 2016/17), and my style is rather different from most folk on this thread, but I would appreciate/welcome comments / observations / feedbacks / suggestions.

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Yasaka Sweden Classic | 802 OX | C8 OX
Check out my blog - LordCope's Latest Learning Log - 10+ years of accumulate mistakes!

So you start a match and in the first game your opponent is blocking your loops long. In the next game he adjusts and is bringing the ball back. Is there a standard adjustment good players know to make or do you just get ready to battle out long points?

_________________
Cobra Kai TT Exponent (Mercy effs up your Game)
One-Loop Man: One Loop... Again????
Lumberjack TT Exponent

"We don't rise to the level of our expectations, we fall to the level of our training" - Archilochus

@big d, how do you go about giving it back to LP/anti players? How to you work to mess up the game of these players, given that the aim of many in using such equipment is to mess up the game (and the mind) of so-called conventional players?

Citation needed?

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Yasaka Sweden Classic | 802 OX | C8 OX
Check out my blog - LordCope's Latest Learning Log - 10+ years of accumulate mistakes!

Dummy loop! I used to do them by accident bc I would unintentionally lock my wrist with effortful tense swings. It drove some opponents nuts bc everything looked the same but half my loops had no spin and they would block them straight down into the table. Of course I didn't know which were which either, but I pretended to be a genius of tactics and disguise.

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Smile in the mirror. Do that every morning and you'll start to see a big difference in your life.

Yoko Ono

I usually accepted that it was not my day.

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Tactics Enthusiast

It's probably that best question that's been asked on this thread and there is a lot of truth to Dr. P's response.

This is an issue that happens at all levels. At 2000, you get blocked down. At 3000, you get kicked blocked and forehand countered down. It's basically the same problem.

The forehand topspin against backspin is physically the hardest shot in tt to play. It hurts your knees, hips, back, triceps and shoulder. It makes players have to go to the gym and do squats along with rotator cuff work. It's the reason you are so tired at the end of a long tournament. Looping against push is hard work.

So what really sucks is when you get blocked down or countered off the table. You make the loop against backspin, then you make the second loop, and suddenly you're running around the court like a hamster trying to chase down ugly blocks. Why do we even bother?

The problem is that you get an edge when you attack first in tt, especially when you use proper technique along with the require hours of training. Edges are probably hard to find in a 2 horse race, so they are worth working for. At the highest levels, pros will fight hard for the right to make the first attack. Sure, you'll see many very impressive counter attacks that will get etched into your brain and make you believe the first attack edge is over. This is not a statistical analysis though and it's highlights biased.

Slight edges are not guarantees. Every poker player knows this because they have almost as many losing sessions as they do winning., despite their well-earned edge.

Getting back to Laj's question. What do you do if you are getting blocked down or countered off? What if you've looped everywhere and they just keep blocking and countering? Here are your options:
- Keep working hard and hope they start missing
- Try something tricky like dummy loops
- Start pushing and blocking yourself
- Increase the spin on your or speed on your first ball

Blocking someone down is hard. If you don't believe me, try it yourself. Play the next tournament and spend the entire day pushing and blocking and let me know how you go. When someone is blocking you down, they are probably playing very well, within the context of their own game and limitations.

I personally like option 1 and 4 of the above mentioned, though all have some merit and can be considered. I have bench coached many matches where I've encourage the player to keep working and the game has changed around. I've also lost a good share too. Losing is a real thing.

I benched coached for Kamal when he won the last ever World Tour final against Freitas. The match is below. It was the 5th game starting at around 6:55 that scared us a lot. Early in the game, Freitas blocked and countered Kamal down a couple of times and it hurt his spirit, to say the least. Then Freitas stopped missing and gained confidence. It's never good when the opponent starts playing well!

My advice after the 5th was to serve short and put everything into the first attack. Make the first attack really hurt early in the next game. That's basically all I said in one minute. You can watch the 6th game for yourself and see how really going for the 3rd ball more can change the momentum, even against a guy who started playing in the zone in the 5th.

My general advice is too keep playing your best game and hope for the best. If the guy blocks you down and you've done everything you can, then put your mask back on, wave to him and say "good game".

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Hi Elbowed.

It probably goes without saying that you need to practice a lot against these. Theoretically it’s very easy to understand but what happens at the table can truly be quite hard to comprehend.

Few things that I think work against these players at this level are following:

Need to have a decent backspin and no spin serve.
Slow and heavy loops definitely work against them, make them wait for the ball. If it’s too quick technology comes into play and they just have to touch the ball to mess u up.

Brett might throw up but this my experience
You need to mix it up a lot if somebody wants me to loop should I reall loop to them?

A lot of the time I do no spin pushes and ask them to do something the ball, if they can’t then I can loop hard to them on the next ball.

Looping wide to fh is key they probably don’t have a fh block let alone counter topspin

Vary your serve return as well. I think I’m able to play the same serve couple different ways especially against Amir and Miller. I can sometimes loop sometimes push.

It is definitely worth to note: that lp players over 2100 for whatever reason have really heavy serves.

Speaking of that wonder how Peter’s bh serve is coming along

That was a great question by NL and a great answer, Brett. Thank you.

I think I'm getting worse recently haha. But it's probably because I haven't been able to play as much.

I did some multiball yesterday (and by did, I mean I was feeding multiball). If I sent you a few short clips, would you mind having a look?

They are my students so I don't want to post it publicly.