These are rarely front-line serves as even intermediate players have little trouble attacking them if you use them too often. However, they are a great variation to spin serves, and if used a few times each game will often catch the opponent off guard. With experience, you'll get a feel for when and where to throw one of these fastballs at an opponent.

The keys to an effective fast serve are:

1. Speed
2. Depth
3. Placement
4. Spin (or lack of)
5. Consistency
6. Surprise

Let's look at how to execute the serve while doing all six.

Speed. This is the whole point. The problem is most players don't understand how to maximize this, or chicken out under pressure. To serve fast, you must:

1. Serve aggressively. You can't serve fast by patting the ball over the net.
2. First bounce near your own end-line. You want to maximize the amount of table between bounces so the ball has a chance to drop. To do this you need to contact the ball far enough behind the end-line to allow this.
3. Low contact point. Otherwise the ball will bounce higher and will take longer to drop and hit the other side, and so you won't be able to serve as fast.

Depth. You want to serve as deep on the table as possible in order to jam the opponent. Just as important is that if the fast serve isn't going deep on the table then you aren't maximizing the speed. A fast serve should, by its very nature, go very deep or you aren't serving it very fast. There's a simple way to increase the depth of the serve - serve faster!

Placement. All fast serves should go to one of three spots: wide forehand, wide backhand, or to the middle (the opponent's switchover point between forehand and backhand, usually the playing elbow). Fast serves that go to the middle forehand or middle backhand are just feeding the opponent. Make him move to the corners or make a decision and move to cover the middle. To practice this, put targets on the far side of the table and see if you can consistently hit them.

Spin. To maximize speed, put some topspin on the ball to pull it down. However, sometimes you want to vary this by serving with sidespin or a fast, dead (flat) serve, often at the middle. You can create topspin or sidespin by essentially slapping the ball with an upward (for topspin) or sideways (for sidespin) motion. You don't want to graze the ball too much with a fast serve as you won't get enough speed that way - that's how you create a spin serve. To serve a fast, dead serve, you need to contact the ball with a very slight downward motion, putting a very light backspin on the ball, sort of a downwards slap at contact, just as with topspin or sidespin. After two bounces on the table the ball will be dead.

Consistency. It's pointless having a fast serve if you often miss it. You need to get a feel for both the proper contact with the ball and where to contact it (both the height and how far behind your end-line), and practice it until it's second nature. Then make sure to practice the serve before tournaments and big matches so you can execute the serve under pressure. As noted above under Placement, one way of practicing the serve is to put targets near the opponent's end-line and see if you can consistently hit them. You might also put a target on your own end-line and see if you hit that when you serve, to make sure that your first bounce is near your own end-line. Also, while some develop the serve by gradually building up the speed that they can serve fast, you might consider the opposite - serve as fast as you can, and gradually slow it down to the point where you can get it to hit the table. Then work at controlling that pace.

Surprise. Your fast serve loses most of its effectiveness if the opponent sees it coming too soon. So set up as if you were serving your normal serves. Learn to do the fast serve from the same stance and starting with the same motion. The only difference might be that for a fast serve you might have to toss the ball back a little further so as to give yourself room to hit the ball so the first bounce is near your end-line, but if you do, that should be minimized. But your backswing should look the same whether you are serving fast or not. You don't want to telegraph to the opponent that the fast serve is coming. 

One of the most basic and yet misunderstood techniques at the intermediate level is the semi-circular motion used in serves for variation and deception. For beginners and beginning-intermediate players, the key is getting lots of spin, such as backspin, backspin-sidespin, sidespin, sidespin-topspin, and topspin.

While learning to do these spins there's little attempt to disguise the spin - the racket moves in one direction, the direction of the spin. But once you can do that it's time to learn to use semi-circular spin to disguise the spin. For example, for a forehand pendulum serve (with racket tip pointing down), you would start with the racket moving down, then down and sideways, then sideways, then sideways and up, and then up, like a pendulum. If I were to show you this motion and ask what spin it is, it's a trick question as you can't answer without knowing where in the serving motion contact was made.

Here's a video (7:24) showing this type of semi-circular motion serve by top players in slow motion. Note that it's almost impossible to really study a top player's serve except in slow motion - at full speed everything happens too fast to see what they are really doing. In the videos one thing to look for is the amount of motion the racket does in directions different from the direction it goes at contact. Often the actual contact happens so quickly that even in slow motion it's difficult to pick up as the racket is rapidly changing direction at that point to confuse the opponent. The direction the racket is moving at contact is usually only for a split second, while the rest of the service motion exaggerates the racket moving in other directions. (Also note how after contact the racket often goes off in a different direction, sometimes away from the semi-circular motion, as an additional attempt to disguise the spin and confuse the opponent.)

At the higher levels, at full speed, the serves often don't look like semi-circular motions because the motion is done so quickly with a much shorter motion. But in slow motion you can see the racket go through this circular motion. It's not always a complete semicircle as parts of the motion are shortened for disguise.

This one of the three important ways of disguising the spin on your serve. The other two are sheer amount of spin (making it hard to precisely read it), and spin/no-spin combinations (see my article Those Dizzying No-Spin Serves). 

The serve is one of the most misunderstood techniques in table tennis. Many players serve just to get the ball in play, or to keep the opponent from attacking, or to try to score winners with every serve. So what is the purpose of the serve?

The primary purpose of the serve is to set up your attack. Unless the receiver does something to stop your attack, you should serve and attack essentially every time you serve. This doesn't mean your first attack has to be a winner, but it should be aggressive. 

In the modern game, attacking usually means looping, either forehand or backhand. Most favor the usually more powerful forehand, but others loop from either side, depending on where the receive is, and some may favor the backhand loop. Others use the serve to set up their smash, either with a serve and smash, or a serve to set up a loop, and the loop to set up the smash. (This is rare at the higher levels, where looping completely dominates, but is still common at the intermediate level.) 

This doesn't mean you don't sometimes serve for winners. In fact, players who do not have any "trick" serves that are designed to trick an opponent into an easy miss are lacking in their service game. (Trick serves usually only work a few times, however.) Most serves should be to set up the attack. Even if the serve is a trick serve where you hope the opponent will miss the serve outright, you should assume it's coming back, and be ready for the follow-up, which should be an attack unless the opponent does something to stop it. If anything, you should be so expecting your "trick" serves to come back that when an opponent misses it, you are surprised as you were so waiting to follow up with an attack.

Even defensive players should use the serve to set up an attack, even if it's an occasional one. For example, the defensive player may serve and look for a specific return (or just a generally weak one), and if he gets it, attack. If he doesn't, then he may go back on defense. 

Some players may use the serve to set up their best rallying shot. For example, a blocker might serve long, and then quick-block the next ball. Or a counter-hitter might serve short topspin, which brings the receiver in over the table while starting a topspin rally, and then the server can get right into aggressive counter-hitting, with the receiver perhaps jammed to the table and so unable to start the rally off well. 

Once you get into the mindset that the purpose of the serve is to set up your attack, then you can begin to gain experience on which serves set up which returns, and how and where to best to attack them. Once you have this serve and attack mind-set, you'll soon be dominating the points on your serve. We'll finish with an acronym that I just made up and that's a bit dated for the pre-looping years (when hitting dominated), but always remember to "Serve and Make A Strong Hit" - SMASH!

I've included links to some pertinent articles. 

1. Learn to serve with lots of spin by accelerating the racket through the ball and grazing it.
   (Here's the article Serving Short with Spin. Here's another, Five Steps to a Great Spin Serve.)
2. Learn to serve various spins, including backspin, side-backspin, sidespin, side-topspin, and topspin, and be able to serve with sidespin in either direction.
   (Here's the article Importance of Serve Variety.)
3. Learn to serve low.
   (Here's the article Serving Low.)
4. Learn to control the depth and direction of the serve.
   (Here's the article Depth Control of Serves.)
5. Learn to serve with spin using a semi-circular motion so you can create different spins with the same motion by varying where in the motion you contact the ball. 
   (Here's the article Semi-Circular Motion on Serves.)
6. Learn to minimize and do quickly this semi-circular motion so receiver has trouble picking up contact.
   (See same article linked in #5.) 
7. Learn to change the direction of your follow-through with your racket the split second after contact to mislead the receiver.
   (Here's the article Exaggerate the Opposite Motion on Serves.)
8. Learn to fake spin and serve no-spin by contacting the ball near the handle.
   (Here's the article Those Dizzying No-Spin Serves.)
9. Learn to serve fast & deep as a variation to your spin serves.
   (Here's the article Fifteen Important Deep Serves. Here's another, Turn Opponents into Puppets with Long Serves. Here's How to Ace an Opponent.)
10. Learn to follow up your serves.
    (Here's the article The Purpose of the Serve.)

What does it mean to move up a level in table tennis? I'd define two players to be on different levels if it would be a major upset if one defeated the other. Another way of looking at it would be to say that if the stronger player plays his normal level, he would win pretty much every time. Based on this, I'd say a level in table tennis ranges from about 300 points at the lower levels (under 1000 or so), to about 100 points at the higher levels (over 2500 or so). For most USATT members, a level would be about 200 rating points or so.

How can you move up a level in table tennis? It means improving all parts of your game, as one weak link in your game is like a weak link in a chain.

You could work hard, dramatically improve one aspect of your game, and hope to move up a level. But it's not that simple. Suppose you develop a really nice forehand loop. With this weapon, you would think that your level would go up dramatically. And sure enough, you will do better against players around your own level. But when you play players a level higher, their level is far enough ahead of yours that they'll simply do something to disarm your new weapon. They may serve short, push short, push very heavy, throw spinny or fast serves at you, use ball placement, block well, force backhand exchanges, play quick shots so you don't have time to loop, or simply attack first. In each case, they'll take your weapon away from you, and you still won't move up that coveted level. Often, a stronger player will seem to win on one of his strengths, when in fact he is winning by exploiting a weakness of yours that allows him to use his strength.

The lesson is that to move up a level, you need to improve your overall game, not just one aspect. A player who is a level stronger than you rarely defeats you on one aspect of his game (although many erroneously believe this to be true); he does so by improving the overall level of his game. (There are, of course, players who have improved all but one aspect of their game, and by improving that one final aspect, suddenly go up the coveted level!) A strength in your game can compensate for a weakness, but only to a certain extent.

So how do you go about improving the overall level of your game? To move up a level in table tennis, you have be able to match the players a level higher than you on five key things:

1. You have to return your opponents' serves as well as they return your serves.
2. You have to either rally as fast as your opponents can rally, or force your opponents to rally at your pace (by slowing the pace down with pushes, slow loops, controlled drives, etc.). Rallying at their pace means either hitting at their pace, or simply reacting to their pace (i.e. blocking or chopping). "Pace" means both speed and quickness.
3. You have to be able to react to your opponents' rallying spins (loops, pushes, chops, lobs, spins returned by long pips, etc.) as well as they react to yours.
4. You have to be able to end the point (i.e. smashing, loop kills) as well as your opponents do. This means either being able to end the point as well as your opponents, or being able to stop them from ending the point better than you can by not giving them shots where they can end the point. Ending the point does not always mean ending it with one shot - it can also mean a series of strong shots that win the point.
5. And finally, you have to have at least one strength that threatens your opponents as much as their strengths threaten you, and a way of getting your strength(s) into play.

You may have noted that tactics is not one of the five "keys." This is because tactics is part of all five keys. Stronger/weaker tactics simply make you stronger/weaker in each key.

Do some (but not all) of the above five keys, and your performance in a tournament will go up some, perhaps half a level, but not a full level. Developing a single "overpowering" strength won't raise your level as much as you'd think, as opponents a level higher will beat you on the less developed parts of your game. Even players at your "previous" level will still often beat you by exploiting these weaknesses. But ... if you improve all five things, even just a little bit, you'll go up dramatically.

What's stronger, a chain with four powerful links and one weak one, or a chain with five pretty strong ones?