Tip of the Week

Backhand and Forehand Playing Distance.

Malware and Spammers and Hall of Fame Program, Oh My!
(And update on "Table Tennis Tactics for Thinkers")

I was really hoping to finish the page layouts before Thanksgiving for my new book, "Table Tennis Tactics for Thinkers" (previously titled "Table Tennis Tactics: A Thinker's Guide.") However, I'm in an ongoing battle with false malware warnings and spammers, plus I'm doing the USATT Hall of Fame Program booklet for the upcoming inductions at the USA Nationals. Plus, of course, the usual coaching duties, this blog, and little things like eating and sleeping and seeing the dentist this afternoon. (Pause for dramatic cringing.) So it's probably not going to happen. There's still a small chance it'll be done in time so I'll have copies for the Nationals, but probably not. (It's looking like it'll be about 240 pages and right about 100,000 words.)

Regarding the malware problem, the site has been scanned over and Over and OVER, and no spam has been found. You can scan it yourself in seconds at Sucuri Securities, and it comes up clean. (It's the removal that takes time, not the scanning.) The problem, as noted previously, is that there seems to be ongoing vestigial remnants of past malware warnings from a malware problem from over a month ago. The problem comes from Google, and it mostly affects the 40% of viewers who use Google Chrome as their browser. Some Chrome users have said they aren't having problems, and there have been some reports of warnings from Firefox, but none from those using Explorer. You should be able to just ignore the warnings.

I've emailed with Sucuri, and they've assured me they can stop the malware warnings, but it's going to cost $189.99/year for their coverage, on top of a couple hundred I've already spent trying to solve this problem on this mostly volunteer site.

Regarding spammers, the problem there is the malware warnings have somehow effected email notifications to me of spam postings, and so recently I've had to hunt them down manually. Normally, with the email notifications, I can delete them, and block and report the spammers within seconds. If you happen to see a spam posting either as a comment to a blog entry or on the forum, let me know so I can send a nuclear device at whoever created it.

Brian Pace's Serve & Return Videos

Brian Pace of Dynamic Table Tennis has produced two videos on serve and serve return. They are Serve and Server Return Training for Table Tennis, Part 1 (2hr 21min) and Part 2 (1hr 58min). Here's the promo video (1:19).

USATT Coaching Newsletter

The latest USATT Coaching Newsletter, Issue Number 6, just came out. (You can see the previous five here.) Here's the Table of Contents:

• Last Call for "Coach of the Year Nominations"
• USATT Holds First Ever ITTF Level 2 Course
• First USATT Coaches Certified as ITTF Level 2 and Level 3 Course Conductors
• USATT Coaching Reaches an Historic Milestone – 100 ITTF Coaches
• USATT Coaching is Looking for Clubs to Host Regional ITTF Courses
• Towards the Future!

Merit Badges for Table Tennis

Here's a proposal from Diego Schaaf and Wei Wang on Merit Badges for Achieving Playing Class (i.e. reaching specific ratings). I'll probably blog about this later on, but for now, what are your thoughts? It seems like a good idea. Similar suggestions have come up in the past, but three things always stopped it: 1) What should be awarded for these achievements - belts, like in martial arts? Pins? Badges? Certificates? etc.; 2) Few ever put together an actual proposal such as this eon, and 3) No one ever follows up on it.

Ray Chen

I am sad to report that Ray Chen, 79, a longtime Maryland player and lifetime member of USATT, passed away last Wednesday, on Nov. 14.

Athlete Isn't "Extraordinary" in Visa Bid

Here's an article in the New York Times about the U.S. turning down the visa bid for Afshin Noroozi, Iran's first table tennis Olympian and world #284.

TopSpin's Fourth Annual Ping-Pong tournament

Here's an article about this annual New York City event, which included guest appearances by present and former NBA players Gerald Wallace, Jerry Stackhouse, and Allan Houston, as well as radio host Angie Martinez, the "Voice of New York." The tournament raises money for three charities, A Better Chance, Change For Kids, and Horizons.

For People Who Don't Really Know Table Tennis

Here's a great new highlights video that just went up yesterday (7:31), and one of the best I've ever seen. I'm nominating for point of the year the one between Germany's Timo Boll and Croatia's Andrej Gacina that starts at 1:25 and continues all the way to 1:51. Amazingly, as so often it seems to happen, the point was at 10-8 match point in the fifth, and this was no exhibition point.

Crazy Rabbit

If I ever find the creator of the malware that caused so many problems on this site, I will do to them what this bunny rabbit does to this ping-pong paddle (1:43).

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We're undergoing problems with malware attacks. Three or four weeks ago the site was infected, but it was cleaned out, as verified by our server and Google itself. However, since then there were vestigial false reports of the malware problem somewhere in Google that caused Chrome to falsely list this site as malware infected. (If it had been infected, then other browsers would have picked up on it as well. The site was clean last night, and the problems with Google and Chrome a thing of the past (we thought), but this morning it's getting more malware reports. I'm not sure if it's actual malware or just more false reports. Until this is fixed, I'm going to skip the blog and work to resolve this problem. Have a good weekend; I have a feeling I won't. 

ADDENDUM - I'm still getting malware warnings on Chrome, but according to the Sucuri scanner, the site is malware free. See for yourself:

http://sitecheck.sucuri.net/scanner/

Incentive Table Tennis

Yesterday I made use of the infamous snickers bar incentive to help kids achieve specific goals. (Fun-size only.) 

The first was a 7-year-old girl, Linda. She's hit hundreds of forehands and backhands in a row, and can loop from both sides, but yesterday I challenged her to do something seemingly simple: hit 50 forehands in a row while moving side to side, covering about half the table. (That's a lot of table when you're seven.) She's done this before with multiball, but now we were going to do it live, where the ball doesn't come out exactly the same every time, and at a pretty good pace.

She struggled at first, kept missing in the 20s. (She does like to go fast!) Seeing her frustration, I told her I had a snickers bar in my playing bag that was hers if she could get 50. (I also made it clear it was a one-time offer.) Her eyes lit up, and she went at it again. Unfortunately, twice she made it to the 40s - once to 48 - and missed! Now she was too frustrated to concentrate. So I went to my bag and brought out the snickers bar, and put it on the table by the net. Her eyes went wide as she stared at the prize.

I said, "At the end of this session, one of us is going to eat that snickers bar right in front of the other. Which one of us is going to do that?" Having the candy bar right in front of her had a way of focusing her attention. She got 54 on her very next try. (Would have gotten more but the instant she reached 50 she was too excited to keep going much longer.)

Immediately following that session I had another with an 11-year-old boy, Thomas. He'd been picking up balls and cheering for her, and now it was his turn. (She was now picking up balls and cheering for him. They're not related, but they are both in a junior class I teach on weekends.) However, being older, I challenged him to do 100 forehands, moving side to side. He tried and tried, and kept getting into the 40s without getting to 50 (including 49 once). He wanted to know if he could have a snickers bar if he got to 50. I made a judgment call; I was certain he could do more than 50. So I stuck by the challenge to get to 100. He broke 40 several more times, but something always went wrong. I believe he did 40 to 49 at least eight times without breaking 50, so hadn't even made it halfway to 100. I finally said, "Two more tries, and then we'll have to give up on it for now." Then, just as before, I went to my bag and brought out the candy bar and put it on the table by the net. Once again, this really helped focus the attention - and on the very next try he did 124 in a row!

A key for both of them was I kept reminding them not to guide the shot, not to aim or think about it. The key was to blank the mind out, watch the ball, and just let the shots happen.

Pongcast TV Episode 20

Here's the latest Pongcast Episode (14:42). "In this episode: A Jan-Ove Waldner TV commercial, more TT robots, ping-pong for a good cause, and the German team goes GQ. Highlights and results from the 2012 Polish Open, including a screaming match. Has the ITTF been watching? Is there a new fan favorite to watch?"

Aerobic Table Tennis

Here's the Facebook Page for Aerobic Table Tennis. They are about "Aerobic Table Tennis. A new workout experience. Burn calories. Have fun keeping fit." Their mission? "To help women keep fit, and take up the game of table tennis. There is a shortage of women playing table tennis. The sessions will be fun, include aerobic exercises, and will help you burn those calories. No table tennis experience is required. Why not have fun, burn calories, and learn the game of table tennis?"

Here's a video (4:48) of an actual aerobic table tennis class taught at a school (St. Joseph Sliema), with 100 girls. It's sort of a mixture of table tennis, dancing, regular aerobics, and singing, all done to music. (If you look at the links listed to the right in youtube, there are a number of other examples of aerobic table tennis in schools.)

Stina Kallberg of Sweden

Here's video footage (6:09) of the latest junior phenom, 10-year-old Stina Kallberg from Sweden. (What, you thought all junior phenoms came from China?) What really jumps out is how well she moves about the court as she loops nearly everything. Far too many kids at that age just stand at the table, moving only side to side and hitting.

Table Tennis Wine Bottle

Here's a picture of a table tennis wine bottle that was presented to the Chinese National team.

Celebrities Playing Table Tennis

I did a recent update of the Celebrities Playing Table Tennis Page, which now has 1440 photos of 870 different celebrities. This month's update includes 51 new pictures of 33 new celebrities. New ones are:

Actors & Directors 
Oliver Stone, movie director
Wallace Ford, actor
Terrence Howard, actor
Trevor Jackson, actor
Richard Narita, actor
Actresses
Kim Kardashian, actress 
Khloe Kardashian, actress (6 pictures)
Jessica Alban, actress (new picture)
Susan Sarandon, actress (new picture)
Kate Upton, actress & model (4 pictures)
Lynn Bari, actress
Shay Mitchell, actress
Shirley Temple, actress & UN Ambassador (new picture)
Singers
Justin Bieber, singer (new picture)
Lady Gaga, singer
Michael Jackson, singer/dancer (new picture)
Nick Jonas, singer (3 pictures)
Booboo Stewart, singer, dancer & actor
Dinah Shore, singer & actress
Adam Yauch, Singer for the Band "Beastie Boys"
Yelawolf, rapper
Athletes
Roger Federer, tennis star (new picture)
Rory McIlroy, golfer
Manny Pacquiao, boxer
Ramil Akhadov, boxer
Ken Norton, boxer
Jesse Owens, Olympic sprinter & long jumper
Ronald Belisario, baseball player (2 pictures)
Justin Sellers, baseball player (2 pictures)
Wayne Rooney, English soccer star (3 new pictures)
Rio Ferdinand, English soccer star
Theo Walcott, English soccer star
Joe Hart, English soccer star
Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, English soccer star
John Heitinga, Dutch soccer star (2 pictures)
Nani, Portuguese soccer star
Miguel Veloso, Portuguese soccer star
Zoran Tošić, Serbian soccer star
Gojko Kačar, Serbian soccer star
Miscellaneous
Kate Middleton, wife of Prince William of England (3 pictures)
Ellen DeGeneres, talk show host (new picture)
Snoopy, cartoon dog (new picture)

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Looping or Handling the Loop?

Is your game centered around looping or handling the loop? At the intermediate and advanced levels, the game is dominated by looping. Most players center their games around looping. But some take the reverse approach, and center their game around handling the loop. This includes both defensive players (choppers, fisher/lobbers, and blockers) as well as hitters.

Often players who center their games around handling the opponent's loop (or simply not letting him loop, at least not effectively) make the mistake of going too far, and never developing their own loop. Even if looping will never be their strength, it's a great variation at minimum, forcing the opponent to deal with one more thing. It's almost always the best way to deal with a deep backspin ball. Even players with short pips and hardbat can loop against backspin, and if the opponent has to adjust to both your drive and loop against backspin, he's got a lot to deal with.

Players who do loop often make the mistake of also going too far, centering their game around looping but not learning to deal with the opponent's loop very well, both in terms of keeping him from doing it (or doing it effectively) and from dealing with it when the opponent does loop. It always amazes me how many players with strong loops will serve or push long over and over, letting the opponent loop rather than serve or push short to set up their own loop.

Some are so loop happy that they try to counterloop any incoming loop. This can lead to problems as it's not easy trying to counterloop an opponent's opening loop against backspin (often very spinny) if the opponent is mixing up the speed, spin, direction, and depth. That's way too many variables for any but the very best players. If you are one of the very best players (or if you aspire to be, and are training at least 4-5 days a week), then perhaps you can learn to do this. Otherwise, consider blocking against more aggressive loops, and perhaps jab-blocking (i.e. aggressively blocking) or even smashing against loops that land short. A loop that lands short is easy to jab-block or smash (if you don't hesitate), but it really rushes a looper, and unless you are able to jump all over that ball with a full swing in a split second, counterlooping it is not easy. (Remember that you also have to wait and see if the ball is going to your forehand or backhand, and then judge the depth, speed, and spin before you can properly react.)

On the other hand, some players learn to shorten their counterloop stroke against shorter balls and sort of soft-spin off the bounce. This can be effective but takes lots of practice to get the timing down. This is especially effective if you use some of the modern high-end looping sponges (i.e. expensive ones). If you use more of a hitter's sponge, then it's better to jab-block or smash.

The main advantage of counterlooping anything that goes long, including an opponent's loop? You don't have to hesitate since you know what you are going to do. You just have to decide forehand and backhand, and then let the shot go. (You do have to decide how hard and what direction you are looping, but that's relatively easy.) This works for many world-class players, but remember - it takes lots of practice and perhaps some physical training as well.

TopSpin's Charity Benefit

Here's an article in Forbes Magazine on the TopSpin Charity Benefit being held tonight, and here's the opening paragraph: "Over 1,000 members of the sports, entertainment and media communities will be hoisting ping-pong paddles in New York City tomorrow at TopSpin’s fourth annual Ping-Pong Tournament.  And they will be doing so in an effort to benefit three city programs for under-served students.  Among the confirmed guests are Hakeem Nicks, Prince Amukamara and Terrell Thomas of the New York Giants, and Gerald Wallace and Jerry Stackhouse of the Brooklyn Nets."

ITTF Video World Cup

Here are the twelve entries received so far for the ITTF Video World Cup. You can view them and vote for the winner! Of course, the best one is "TTism (in slow motion)," by Richard Heo. Why? Because I'm in it!!! (I show up for about three seconds at 1:29, cheering silently and motionlessly for Raghu Nadmichettu, who is celebrating a win silently and motionlessly. That segment was filmed at the Maryland Table Tennis Center.) Here's the info page for the contest. First and second places are $5000 and $2500. Deadline to enter is Nov. 30.

Sampson Dubina's Favorite Serving Videos

Former USA Men's Singles Finalist Samson Dubina posted links to his favorite videos of top players serving. (And here's his article "Perfecting Your Serve.") I've added names/descriptions. Here are the serving videos:

• Michael Maze (6:56)
• Tomahawk Serve of Kenta Matsudaira (1:09)
• Werner Schlager (9:23)
• Super-Fast Serve of Asuka Sakai (0:45)
• Jun Mizutani ghost serve (0:55)
• Ma Lin (6:08)
• Wang Hao (0:59)
• Haruna Fukuoka (0:21)
• Werner Schlager Serving to Jac Jenkins, Welsh #1 Cadet (1:22)
• Ma Lin's Crazy Breaking Serve (0:19)
• Par Gerell Serving to Werner Schlager (watch the last 45 seconds)

John Ping Pong

Here's a ping-pong song (2:44) I hadn't heard before. It's set to some old-time music.

Non-Table Tennis - "The Devil's Backbone"

The new anthology "After Death," which features fantasy stories about what happens after you die, includes my story "The Devil's Backbone." (Anthology comes out in March, but they just announced the table of contents.) It's the story of an ice cream man who is killed and pulled into the ground by an incredibly gigantic hand, which turns out to be the Devil's, who literally jams him down his throat and (from the inside) onto his equally gigantic backbone, where there is an entire city of lost souls. How can he escape?

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Tip of the Week

Complex or Simple Tactics?

Crystal Wang

This past weekend 10-year-old Crystal Wang (from MDTTC) had a great tournament at the Potomac Open. You don't know who she is? Last year Crystal achieved a rating of 2150, the highest rating ever for a 9-year-old, boys or girls. She also made both the USA Mini-Cadet Girls' National Team (Under 12) and the USA Cadet Girls' Team (Under 15) at age 9, competing against girls much older. Unfortunately, this year she played three tournaments in a row where she struggled (including the U.S. Open), complaining her wrist hurt. They finally had it x-rayed, and discovered she had been playing with a fractured wrist from a fall! Her rating had dropped from 2166 to 2099, and she couldn't play for a couple months.

But now she's BACK! At the Potomac Open, at age 10, she beat players rated 2334, 2240, 2205, and 2149, while making the final of Under 2300. She didn't lose to anyone lower than 2200. I'm pretty sure she'll be adjusted well over 2200, which could definitely be the highest rating ever for a 10-year-old girl, and possibly for boys as well. (I'm pretty sure Kanak Jha is the only 10-year-old boy to break 2200.)

It's no fluke. In the MDTTC Elite League last week she knocked off two players over 2300 without losing to anyone below 2300. Even at 2099, she was the top rated girl in the U.S. in Under 11, Under 12, and Under 13.

Crystal plays a very modern two-winged looping game, hitting and looping on both sides. I've watched as she's gradually gone from basically hitting to looping from both wings, and her off-the-bounce backhand loop can now be a terror. She and Amy Wang (a year younger, rated 2069, from NJ) are essentially Ariel & Lily, Part II, east coast version - the new Dynamic Duo.

Potomac Open

Here are results, photos, and videos from the Potomac Open in Maryland this past weekend. Wang Qing Liang came back from down 0-3 to win against Sean Lonergan in the final. Sean upset Chen Bo Wen in the semifinals, also in seven games. Sean's been in China the last few years - not playing table tennis much - but started training recently to get ready for the North American Teams and the USA Nationals. You can see all of the final in the video page above, and many other big matches.

"He's the One" - Starring Derek Nie

Here's a funny music video (4:02) by the band E.D. Sedgwick that features U.S. Open 11 & Under Boys' Singles Champion Derek Nie. (Derek is from my club, MDTTC - I coached him in all his U.S. Open matches.) They had been planning this video for some time, and were originally going to use a regular actor to play the kid, and put the ball in via computer afterwards, but then they saw this Washington Post video (3:26) in August on the Maryland Table Tennis Center, which featured our juniors, including Derek - and thought he'd be perfect for the role. All the action scenes where you see one player playing I'm feeding multiball to the player, both to Derek and to the members of the band. It was great fun helping them put this together. It also taught us what I already knew but hadn't really experienced - that much of film-making is waiting around. Derek and I filled the time with lots of smashing and lobbing and various trick shots.

World Cadet Challenge

Here's an article on the USATT web page on the recent World Cadet Challenge, which included several USA cadets.

USATT Minutes

Last week the minutes to the April 19, 2012 USATT Board meeting finally went up. Now there's been a flurry of activity, and the minutes to the July 16 and Sept. 22 meetings have also gone up. Here are the USATT minutes dating back to 1999, including the new entries.

2012 World Fair Play Awards

Here's info on the awards. "If you had a fair play act within your association’s activity in 2012 or you consider a person or organization worth to be nominated for the Trophies, please submit your your application on the attached form before 1st December 2012."

Dancing Table Tennis

Here's a dance video tribute to table tennis (2:10).

OK Go Ping Pong Tips

Here's a humorous "how to" video on table tennis (4:34). It's from 2006, but I don't think I'd seen it before.

Non-Table Tennis - Update on U.S. Presidential Election

As I noted last week, I called all 50 states and the exact electoral count (332-206) in my blog last Tuesday morning. Now we have the essentially final popular vote. I predicted Obama over Romney, 50.5% to 48.5%. Final count was 50.6% to 47.9%. Not bad, considering everyone over at Fox News thought Romney was going to win, many predicting a landslide. (It's tricky predicting the vote turnout for third-party candidates, since many who say they will vote for one change their mind at the last minute rather than "waste" their vote. In this case I thought they'd get about 1% of the vote, but they got 1.5%, which is why I over-estimated Romney's final numbers.)

• Here are pictures of Obama playing table tennis:
  photo1 photo2 photo3 (Photos 2 and 3 are from a picture on the wall at the White House)
• Here are pictures of Obama and David Cameron, Prime Minister of England, playing table tennis:
  photo1 photo2 photo3 photo4 photo5 photo6 photo7 photo8 photo9
• Here are pictures of Michelle Obama, First Lady of the USA, playing table tennis:
  photo1 photo2

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It's Veteran's Day, and like millions of Americans, I'm going to take the day off . . . from my blog. Since I have no coaching scheduled on Mondays, I'm going to spend the day on the long procrastinated page layouts of my book "Table Tennis Tactics: A Thinker's Guide," in the hopes of getting them done this week. (I'm also leaning toward changing the title to simply "Table Tennis Tactics for Thinkers." I like the word "Thinkers" in the title.) My blog will continue tomorrow, along with this week's Tip of the Week, tentatively on the backhand smash. (NOTE - changed my mind, did one on Complex versus Simple Tactics instead. Will do the one on the Backhand Smash later.) 

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Random Drills

Recently I've been introducing a lot of our new juniors to random drills. Until you have the fundamentals down, it's important to focus on rote drills, where you do the same thing over and Over and OVER again until you can do them in your sleep - forehands, backhands, loops, blocks, pushes, etc. But once you have the stroke down pretty well, you have to be able to do them in match situations, where your opponent doesn't put the ball to the same place over and over - instead, you have to react to the shot. That's where random drills come in.

There are two basic types of random drills. The more basic one is where you have a choice between two spots. For example, the coach or practice partner (often using multiball) puts the ball either to the forehand or backhand, and you have to react to the shot with either your forehand or backhand. The key is that you don't anticipate; just react until this becomes second nature. Your first move should be the right move; you don't want to start to your forehand side and then have to recover to hit a backhand, or vice versa. Make sure to move to each ball (don't reach), and focus on balance - no leaning.

The other way is where the ball goes more randomly anywhere on the table or within a restricted area. For example, the coach or practice partner might put the ball randomly to the forehand side, and you have to move about driving these balls back with your forehand, moving to each one. Or, or in the ultimate random drill, the coach or practice partner puts the ball anywhere on the table, and you drive the ball back.

If you just do rote drills where you know where the ball is going, you are not matching what you will face in a game. So put some randomness into your drills, along with rote drills to hone your strokes. What you develop with random drills is called neuromuscular adaptation, where your brain learns to react properly and quickly to any shot. Not only is this the key to high-level play, but it's fun to say! (An expanded version of this might become a Tip of the Week.)

MDTTC Junior Team, Ratings, and Rankings

I thought I'd give a shout-out today to the juniors at the Maryland Table Tennis Center. (Some also play at other local clubs.) They're a great bunch of kids whose sole goal is to beat me, um, I mean to win Olympic Gold Medals. Here's a listing of those over 1600 with some of their ranking/best title(s).

SPiN for the Cause Charity

Here's the Facebook page for "Susan Sarandon presents: SPiN FOR THE CAUSE - Hurricane Sandy Relief Fundraiser," which is being held tonight at Spin NY.

TopSpin Charity

Here's an article in the Huffington Post that features TopSpin, the table tennis charity that has raised $750,000 for educational non-profits.

2013 USA Team Trials Bids

Want to run the 2013 USA Team Trials, Feb. 7-10, 2013? The deadline to bid is Nov. 15. Here's bidding info.

ITTF Level 2 Coaching Seminar

Here are two articles on the ITTF Level 2 Coaching Seminar held in Colorado Springs, Oct. 30 - Nov. 6. Here's the USATT article by Richard McAfee, and the ITTF article by Ian Marshall. Alas, I wasn't able to make the seminar - too busy coaching and writing in Maryland.

People's Ping Pong Party

Here's the Facebook page of this exhibition of table tennis and art (or something like that), starting Nov. 10 (tomorrow). One of the two running this is Rocky Wang, alias "LiL Big Wong," a 2300 (formerly 2400) player originally from Maryland (a junior star from the 1980s) but now living in New York. I'm having a hard time describing this, so I'll just cut & paste their first two paragraphs.

Present Company is delighted to announce the inauguration of the People’s Ping Pong Party (PPPP) and introduce their two leaders Madame WuWeiWoo and LiL Big Wong. WuWeiWoo, an unbeknownst time traveller, was born in Cuba from a union between a Buffalo Soldier and a young Martial Artist during the Spanish American War. LiL Big Wong’s lineage comes from an ex-Black Panther mother and a Chinese Ping Pong champion, but given his strict Chinese upbringing, he has no clue that he’s actually Black.

A collaboration between artists iona rozeal brown (WuWeiWoo) and Rocky Wang (LiL Big Wong), PPPP serves as an artistic and proto-political paradigm based on the Venn intersections of the radical politics of the Black Panther Party, Ping Pong Diplomacy of the 1970’s, the ethnic stereotypes of not only Chinese and African Americans, but a host of other offbeat characters and the B-movie antics of Kung Fu Saturday Matinee.

Wide-eyed with Happiness or Disbelief

This is what most people looked like after the presidential election. The only difference was whether the mouth was concave up or down.

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End-game Surprise Tactics

Last week, due to Hurricane Sandy and Halloween, I didn't coach or play table tennis for four days, and spent the entire time at my computer or reading while eating more junk food than I had in the previous two months combined. It was a great time.

Afterwards, however, I paid the price. When I showed up at the club as a practice partner for our elite junior session, I was stiff, tight, slow, and could barely play. After getting shellacked in a couple matches that I'd normally win, and losing the first game against one of our top juniors (who'd I'd been beating over and over), I switched to chopping. I'm almost as good chopping (inverted both sides) as attacking, but it's usually as a last resort.

I won the second game. Coach Cheng Yinghua was watching and said something to the junior in Chinese. I said, "Cheng, coach him." So the rest of the match Cheng coached the kid between games. In the third, playing much smarter, the kid took the lead, but I tied it up at 9-all, with my serve coming up. I'd been serving all backspin until now, but now I went back to my attack game, served a pair of short side-top serves, ripped two winners against a surprised opponent, and won the game. In the fifth game, again at 9-all, I did it again to win the match.

A chopper attacking at the very end of a close game is a classic example of an end-game surprise tactic. It's hard to guard against it since, in this example, you never know for sure when it's coming, and so can neither prepare for it nor can you get used to it. The difficulty, of course, is that the chopper hasn't been attacking and so has to do something he might not have grooved. But it's a common way for choppers, blockers, and other players who play defensive (or any style centered around steadiness) to win at the end of a close game.

But this type of tactic isn't just for choppers. Some players have a knack for playing multiple styles, and can switch styles under pressure to mess an opponent up. Cheng Yinghua, before he became just a coach, was the best player in the U.S. for ten years. He could play three styles of play equally well - two-winged looping, all-out forehand looping, and a blocking game. Against U.S. players, rather than let them get used to his two-winged looping game, he'd often just push and block, mixing in forehand loops for winners, unless (rarely) it got close. And then he'd bring out the backhand loop, one of the steadiest and spinniest in the world (circa 1980s and 1990s), and dominate the end of any close game.

Another similar case would be someone like Jim McQueen of North Carolina, whose rating seems to bounce back and forth between 2000 and 2150, mostly because he dominates against players who aren't used to him while losing to those who play him more often. He plays a somewhat simple-seeming push and block game. His serves are somewhat simple, usually backspin so he can get into his push and block game. But when it's close, watch out! That's when he pulls out this devastatingly effective backhand sidespin serve that looks like backspin. Few can handle the serve the first few times they see it, and so Jim wins lots of close games by pulling this serve out as an end-game tactic. Others have similar go-to serves at the end of a match - I have a number of them - but the difference is most players use these serves throughout the match, not mostly just at the end of a close game.

It's important to figure out during a match what your "go-to" tactics will be when you badly need a point. Usually you'll use these tactics on and off throughout the match, and go to them when it's close. What are yours?

USATT Minutes

The minutes for the April 19, 2012 USATT board meeting finally went up. (USATT bylaws require they go up within 30 days, but alas.) Here are the USATT minutes, dating back to 1999 when a certain USATT webmaster started putting them online. (Hey, that was me! 1997-2007.)

The New Plastic Ball

Here's a web page and online petition about the proposed introduction of plastic balls in place of celluloid.

Gideon's Ping-Pong Battle in Brooklyn

Here's a video (14:19) featuring Gideon Teitel taking on table tennis challengers. (Warning - starts with some bad language.) Gideon came to one of our training camps at MDTTC this past summer. Here's an early quote: "There are many unsolved crimes in this world. Bird flu, O.J. Simpson. One of them happens to be my backhand."

Robo-Boy Versus Robo-Friend in Robo-Pong

Here's an animated video (2:39) where a trash-talking Robo-Boy challenges his Robo-Friend to a Ping-Pong Showdown. Here's another video (2:53) starring Robo-Boy where he talks more about his Robo-Pong. (There's no actual table tennis in either video, but the dialogue is funny, especially in the first one.)

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Table Tennis Truisms That Are False

Here are some off the top of my head. These are primarily about the running of our sport. When you hear these, run for the hills!

"We'll build our junior program up gradually until it's a success."
A junior program that starts small and tries to build up loses players as fast as they attract them. A successful program does enough promotion to get a sufficient number on the first day, and then it's almost self-perpetuating.

"A full-time club can't survive without major sponsors."
Back when there were few full-time clubs (i.e. five or six years ago, when there were about ten), I heard this all the time. Now that there are 56 (see my listing), I still hear it. And yet nearly all of these clubs are self-financed (through memberships, coaching, leagues, tournaments, equipment & refreshment sales, etc.), with only minor sponsors. My full-time club, MDTTC, primarily gets training and tournament balls, equipment discounts, and tournament prize money from its sponsors. At the December, 2006 USATT board meeting I tried to convince the board to get involved in recruiting and training of coaches to set up such full-time training centers, but was basically told there weren't enough players to support such clubs without major sponsors.

"Why don't we get table tennis into the schools?"
No sport has gotten big by relying on middle or high schools, nor has table tennis gotten big around the world via schools. When a sport is already getting big, that's when schools are interested in that sport. So we need to develop our sport on our own, and then schools can take us to the next level. Often the thinking is that we can train PE teachers to teach table tennis, and so we send table tennis coaches to national or state meetings of these teachers. But while we might get a few teaches teaching it that way, little really comes of it. They simply are not interested in a small sport (in the U.S.) like ours.

"If the USA Men's and Women's Team trained together regularly, they could compete with the best in the world."
Not really, unless you mean only the junior members. By the time they make the U.S. Team a non-junior player is generally already too far behind his/her peers in stronger countries. If you got our best cadets and juniors together, along with top-level coaches and practice partners, then it might be different. We are stronger now at the cadet level (roughly age 15 and under) than ever before, so the next generaton of USA team members might be strong enough so that training together might allow them to compete with the best in the world. 

"USATT's goal is to win a medal at the Olympics by the year [choose your year]."
Is the goal to win a medal or to develop a medalist? If the former, then there should be no training at all of our players; we should be importing top Chinese players. If the latter, then USATT should recognize that future medallists come from juniors training at full-time centers with high-level coaches, and focus on recruiting and training coaches and directors to set up and run such centers.

"It's better than nothing."
This is the response I often hear when someone does a program that sounds nice, but doesn't really accomplish anything. Often it's worst than nothing, because precious resources (money, time) were used for something that did only a little better than nothing, rather than invest it in something that might accomplish something. I hate hearing this response. 

"There should be more prize money at the U.S. Nationals and U.S. Open."
That money has to come from a limited USATT budget, and that money should be used mostly to develop the sport, not in one-shot deals that leave us no better than before. As the sport develops, more revenue would come in, and then prize money can go up. Or we can get sponsors. Or we can find a way to use the extra prize money to bring in more revenue, such as paying spectators or TV.

USATT At-Large Position

Want to run for the USA Table Tennis Board of Directors? There's an election for one spot coming up. Here's complete info. Deadline to apply is Dec. 10. I keep toying with running, but reality tells me that USATT and I have different visions for our sport, and leave it at that. (Also, between my coaching and writing careers, I don't have much free time.)

105-Year-Old Table Tennis Champion

Here's the article in the Warwick News.

Robot Playing Table Tennis

I blogged recently about a robot that actually plays table tennis. Here's a video of it rallying with a person at the China International Industry Fair (45 seconds, though only the first 26 are of the table tennis robot). I think it's using a plain wood blade. Notice it can react with either forehand or backhand. Pongcast (see below) includes a robot playing as well.

Pongcast Episode 19

Here's the newest Pongcast (14:56). In this episode, "Adam Bobrow's dancing goes viral again, F1 driver tests his reactions on the table, TT robots are the future, Zhang Jike makes them laugh, Kevin Garnett plays Wang Hao(!?!?) and the 2012 German Open!" The robot play begins at 3:02 and includes a video showing how the robot was "taught" to play.

Maze vs. Kamal

Here's a video of Michael Maze (world #18 from Denmark) vs. Achanta Sharath Kamal (world #79 from India) at the recent Europe-Asia All-Star Series (5:14, with the time between points taken out).

Astronaut Playing Table Tennis?

Uberpong runs a weekly table tennis caption contest. This week's picture to caption is of an astronaut playing table tennis. What's your caption?

Non-Table Tennis: The Election

Yesterday in my blog I gave my election predictions. The last unannounced state, Florida, unofficially just finished their counting, with Obama winning by 6/10 of a percentage point. (And that was the state I said was the toughest to call.) So I was 50 for 50 in my state predictions, which meant I also called the final electoral count exactly, 332-206. (Four years ago I was 49 for 50, missing only Ohio, and eight years ago I was 48 for 50.) As to the popular vote, I predicted "approximately 50.5% to 48.5%." The current numbers (with some counting around the country still going on) are 50.3% to 48.3%, so I got Obama's margin for victory exactly, and was only off by 0.2% overall. I wonder how quickly people will forget all the predictions of a Romney landslide? But those who predicted that lived inside an ideological bubble, much of it caused by a network that shall not be named.

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Teaching the Loop

Recently I've taught a lot of new kids how to loop. It always amazes me that some coaches will not teach the loop for the first year, and by that time hitting has been ingrained, and looping will never be as natural. I generally teach kids to loop against backspin as soon as the player can hit 100 forehands and 100 backhands in a row. I usually teach the forehand loop against backspin first, and once that is done properly and consistently (usually a few weeks), the backhand loop against backspin. Both are taught with multiball, with serve and loop against push drills when they are ready.

However, there are two caveats to this. First, I always stress with the player that I will pickier about getting the loop right than with any other technique. It's probably easier to learn a messed-up loop stroke than any other stroke. Once ingrained, poor looping technique is harder to fix than just about any other technique since every aspect of the stroke relies so heavily on every other aspect. If you get one thing wrong, a lot of it will be wrong, and fixing one problem means fixing up all the other problems at the same time, not an easy task.

What often happens is that coaches who teach the loop early to a relative beginner have bad experiences with the player learning bad technique. This is because they weren't picky enough with the student in making sure they get it perfect from day one.

And second, there's the problem that a drive and a loop are rather different strokes, and trying to perfect both at the same time can be tricky. With drives, you are mostly hitting top of the bounce (earlier for most backhands), with the shoulders even, and driving mostly forward with the ball going almost straight into the sponge. With a loop you are taking the ball a little later, dropping the back shoulder, lifting more, and grazing the ball for spin. How do you handle this?

Again, by letting the student know in advance that while learning the loop, we'll be obsessing over the drive strokes as well, doing lots of basic stroking drills so as to ingrain both shots. Also, once the player can both drive and loop reasonably well, I introduce combination drills where they do both, to emphasize the differences in the strokes and the ability to use either one. For example, using multiball, I'll feed backspin to the middle of the table and then topspin to the forehand. The player forehand loops the first, and forehand smashes the second. (As they get better, they likely loop the second as well, but that comes a little later.)

There's another reason to teach the loop early - players will often experiment with the shot on their own, and often learn it poorly. It's a lot harder fixing poor technique than teaching it right the first time. Kids especially will try looping on their own if you don't teach it early enough, so it's better to teach it early and get it right.

To make sure they get it right, I've adopted a policy where I actually let the player know how picky I'm going to be with the shot, and make sure we have a good half hour at least to work on it the first time. I let them know that even if they do it pretty well, I'm going to keep on them to get it perfect on the first day. I also let them know that while working on the loop, most of our other drills will focus on basic forehand and backhand drives, since we don't want the player to mess up these strokes while learning to loop. If they don't feel ready for this, we postpone it until they feel ready.

One kid didn't feel ready for it even though he could hit 100 forehands and backhands. He kept worrying about the shot, thinking it was too advanced, and we ended up postponing it for about three months. Now he can loop against backspin both backhand and forehand, and he's gaining confidence that he's almost ready to learn to loop against block.

Others are the opposite. One kid really wanted to learn to loop after taking only three lessons. He's done about 50 forehands and backhands, and normally I'd postpone it a little longer. But he's already been experimenting with the shot, and I was worried he'd get it wrong. So last week I taught him to forehand loop against backspin. We did lots of multiball, and at first he struggled to get it just right. And then, after about ten minutes, it all fell into place. We did about ten more minutes of multiball to ingrain the stroke. Then, at the end of the session, we came back to it for another five minutes. And he's already dying to learn to backhand loop!

Celebrities Playing Table Tennis

I've updated the Celebrities Playing Table Tennis page with 51 new pictures of 33 new celebrities. Look at some of the famous names below! Better still, browse over the 1440 pictures of 870 celebrities now in the collection. (And special thanks goes to super contributors Steve Grant and Benjamin Ott.)

Actors & Directors 
Oliver Stone, movie director
Terrence Howard, actor
Wallace Ford, actor
Trevor Jackson, actor
Richard Narita, actor
Actresses
Kim Kardashian, actress 
Khloe Kardashian, actress (6 pictures)
Jessica Alban, actress (new picture)
Susan Sarandon, actress (new picture)
Kate Upton, actress & model (4 pictures)
Lynn Bari, actress
Shay Mitchell, actress
Shirley Temple, actress & UN Ambassador (new picture)
Singers
Justin Bieber, singer (new picture)
Lady Gaga, singer
Michael Jackson, singer/dancer (new picture)
Nick Jonas, singer (3 pictures)
Booboo Stewart, singer, dancer & actor
Dinah Shore, singer & actress
Adam Yauch, Singer for the Band "Beastie Boys"
Yelawolf, rapper
Athletes
Roger Federer, tennis star (new picture)
Rory McIlroy, golfer
Manny Pacquiao, boxer
Ramil Akhadov, boxer
Ken Norton, boxer
Jesse Owens, Olympic sprinter & long jumper
Ronald Belisario, baseball player (2 pictures)
Justin Sellers, baseball player (2 pictures)
Wayne Rooney, English soccer star (3 new pictures)
Rio Ferdinand, English soccer star
Theo Walcott, English soccer star
Joe Hart, English soccer star
Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, English soccer star
John Heitinga, Dutch soccer star (2 pictures)
Nani, Portuguese soccer star
Miguel Veloso, Portuguese soccer star
Zoran Tošić, Serbian soccer star
Gojko Kačar, Serbian soccer star
Miscellaneous
Kate Middleton, wife of Prince William of England (3 pictures)
Ellen DeGeneres, talk show host (new picture)
Snoopy, cartoon dog (new picture)

The Surprising Play of Jan-Ove Waldner

Here's a new highlights video of the great Jan-Ove Waldner (7:26).

$45,000 Black Rubber Table

The table is made of black rubber. Here's a picture of the table, here's a close-up, and here's an interview (1:46) with the creator.

Bush Versus Kerry & Gore

Here are two election cartoons I did in 2000 and 2004. Here's Bush and Gore battling over Florida in 2000 (gee, Gore's technique looks just like Chiang Peng-Lung, and Bush's resembles Wang Liqin!), and here's Bush and Kerry in 2004 - see if you get all the side jokes in this one!

Non-Table Tennis: Election Predictions

Obama wins the electoral college, 332-206, winning eight of the nine the battleground states (winning OH, VA, NH, FL, CO, WI, IA, NV, losing NC, with FL the toughest pick), and wins the popular vote approximately 50.5% to 48.5%, with 1% going to small party candidates. Yes, there's been a surge toward Obama the last few days, and all reports indicate a high voter turnout, which also favors him. Contrary to many news reports, he's been solidly favored in the electoral college for some time. 

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