Where should you position yourself after serving? It depends on your playing style, footspeed, and the opponent.

If, for example, you favor your forehand, then you might position yourself toward your backhand side, so as to cover as much of the table as possible with the forehand. There are two things to take into account on this.

The first is obvious: how fast are you? If you are pretty fast, then you can favor the forehand even more.

Second, against any given serve, how big a threat is the receiver to return it aggressively to your wide forehand? If he can do that, then you have to be able to cover that shot, and so can’t favor the forehand as much. However, if he’s only going to push the serve back passively, then you can position yourself even more toward the backhand side. If you are in decent shape, you should be able to serve and attack every passively pushed receive with your forehand.

Note that I referred to passive pushes. Stronger players can push quick and aggressively, and so you have less time to get to them – and against them, you’d have to stay more in position or they are liable to get you with a quick push to a wide corner. (They might also be able to push short, but that’s another issue.)

The above used the example of a player who favors his forehand (like me). However, all of this applies equally to a player who favors the backhand. I’ve seen and played players with dominating backhands – and some of them will even backhand loop from the forehand side!

One final thing to remember – if you go out of position to favor your stronger side, recover quickly back into position! (See Positioning Part 4: Recovery, which will come up in three weeks.)

What’s the biggest threat from your opponent? One of the best ways to consistently beat weaker players (i.e., avoid upsets) as well as knock off stronger players is to neutralize whatever his biggest threat is. It’s hard for an opponent to win if he can’t use his biggest strength!

You don’t want to overdo this. Ideally, you dominate with your strengths. But if you and your opponent both have strengths, then whoever takes away or handles the opponent’s strengths best is the likely winner.

So, how do you do this? That would require an entire book! (Yes, Table Tennis Tactics for Thinkers comes to mind.) But more simply, it comes down to three things:

1. Identify their strengths that threaten you.
2. Find ways to stop them from using the strength.
3. Find ways to handle that strength.

I’m going to use the example of a player I played a year ago in a tournament. He was rated much lower, and shouldn’t have been a threat. But that type of thinking is the quickest way to lose to such a weaker player. So, what did I do?

1. I identified his biggest threat, which was his tricky long serves. So, while he played a match, I nonchalantly stood on the far side, watching his serve as if I were the receiver. By the time we played our match, I was used to that serve, and the strength was mostly gone.
2. How did I stop him from using that strength? Once I had seen the serve enough, I felt confident I could loop them. When I did that, he was forced to serve shorter, simpler serves, which made his serve less effective.
3. Once he began serving shorter, the threat of the long, tricky serves was gone, and I won easily.

Result? The player was not a threat. But if I hadn’t gone through the above, then there was a chance that at least the first game would have been iffy. And giving up the first game is the first step toward a bad upset. Worse, once you lose that first game, it’s easy to lose confidence in your shots, and it’s all downhill from there.

Here's another example. suppose your opponent has a nice backhand loop against push. How do you prepare?

1. You've already identified the strength that threatens you.
2. How do you stop it? Suppose he serves short backspin. Most players would probably just push it back to his backhand, giving him his strength. Instead, you can: push aggressively to the backhand (quick, fast, heavy, low, wide), and see if he can handle that; push aggressively to forehand; push aggressively to middle (his playing elbow); push short; flip; sidespin push. That's a lot of options!
3. How do you handle his backhand loop? Go watch him play from the far side. When he backhand loops, imagine yourself blocking it. Use your racket and actually make the motion, perhaps matching his opponent's blocks when they are effective. Then visualize doing so in your head, over and over. By the time you actually play, you'll be used to it. Perhaps start by pushing aggressively to the backhand, and establish that you are now comfortable blocking it - more than once, if necessary. (But if you still have trouble with it, perhaps use more of #2 above.)

So, why risk losing? PREPARE!

The short answer is . . . whenever you want to. But that ignores a problem players face when both competing and trying to improve.

Let’s supposed you’ve spent a lot of time working new techniques, but haven’t quite perfected them yet. If you play in a tournament, you will be strongly tempted to fall back on what worked for you before . . . thereby setting your training back who knows how much. Think about it – you’ve spent all this time developing new, more advanced skills, and then you re-enforce the old bad habits by falling back into them in the tournament! You’ve literally told your subconscious to forget all that training, let’s go back to the old ways. How much training will it take to undo that?

So, if you think you will fall back into bad habits, then generally avoid tournaments until you are more ready. A very general guideline is it takes perhaps six months to incorporate into practice a new skill. So, perhaps take those six months to do so, and then play tournaments again.

HOWEVER . . . if you are the type who can use these new advanced skills and not worry about winning or losing, or (gasp!) losing rating points, then by all means play tournaments, and use those new skills. You can still play smart tactics, but do so while using the techniques and playing style you are striving for. It’s just a matter of time before you’ll break through, and these new skills will be ingrained.

But here’s an even tougher question. Suppose you play the tournament, and perhaps make the final of an event, using your new skills and the style you want to play. Suppose, in the final, you play someone who you know you can beat with your old game, but are not so sure with your new game.

What do you do?

My hesitant answer is to play to win, while still trying to use as much of your “new” and more advanced style as you can. If you are trying to be a looper, but your opponent struggles with your heavy push . . . then perhaps use both . . . and at key times, throw that heavy push at him. Playing a more advanced style doesn’t mean you forget what you could do before or that you should play stupid – so use that as needed, while perhaps focusing on your new-found skills and playing the style you are striving for.

Unless it’s a put-away shot, you should approach every shot as if you are setting yourself up for the next shot, and sometimes the next two. I'm always amazed at how many players play it one shot at a time – it’s like playing chess where you just push pieces without any thought to the next move. There are no certainties, and you will not always get the shot you were hoping to set yourself up for – but you should be using shots that maximize the probability of getting the shot you want to get. Here are some examples. And always remember – table tennis is just chess at lightspeed!

• Opponent serves short. Rather than just push it back long all the time and letting the server attack first, push it back low and short. This will often result in the server pushing it back long, and then you get to attack first. Or you could push it back aggressively – quick, fast, heavy, deep, and well angled – and get either a push return you can attack, or a weak, erratic first attack that you can hammer.
• Opponent serves long. The most important thing in receive is often just consistency – but if you can loop those long serves deep on the table to the server’s weakest spot, that’ll often set you up for the next shot.
• Opponent pushes long effectively. Rather than go for a wild point-ending loop against a good push, instead loop it medium or slow, with lots of spin, and deep on the table to their weakest side, or their middle. This will often set you up for the next shot. It’ll also increase your chances of making the first shot, while still getting you a lot of points when the opponent misses against your first loop.
• Opponent attacks your backhand. Rather than just return it crosscourt, perhaps try blocking or countering aggressively at the opponent’s weakest spot, which is most likely his middle (roughly the playing elbow, halfway between the forehand and backhand). This will often result in a weaker return you can attack, as well as many outright mistakes. If the opponent is looking for a forehand and seems ready to go after shots to the middle with the forehand, then perhaps go aggressively at the wide corners – the wide forehand is often open – often forcing a weak or erratic return.

The statement, "Whoever works hardest becomes the best" is often true, but the reality is that it sometimes is not. To give an obvious example, suppose there's a ten-year-old and a sixty-year-old of about the same level. Suppose they both train hard for five years, but the older player trains a little harder. Do you think he'll end up better? Probably not.

And like it or now, often a lazy player with seeming talent improves faster than his harder-working peers – at the start. In the long run, assuming similar physical attributes, the harder-working player almost always comes out ahead if he trains intelligently.

And hard work often doesn't pay off if the work isn't done intelligently. That's a reason to work with a coach, so he can guide you into intelligent practice. (Here’s my tip, Deliberate Practice in Table Tennis. Or Google "Deliberate Practice" for more many articles on this. Hard Work + Deliberate Practice = Reaching Your Potential.)

But here's the key thing for players. If you aren’t sure your hard work will pay off, it’s hard to really put your heart into it, and you likely won’t improve as fast as you could. But if you truly convince yourself that the hardest-working player will come out ahead, then you are halfway toward becoming the hardest-working player, and thereby maximizing your own improvement. And THAT is key to maximizing your success.