Table Tennis Robots

It's that time of year again - time to buy table tennis player table tennis stuff for Christmas! And what better table tennis present than a table tennis robot? Below are some videos describing the various robots that are out there. (You can also buy Butterfly and Newgy robots from Maryland Table Tennis Center - contact Wen Hsu.)

There are basically two types of robots - programmable and non-programmable. Programmable ones cost a lot more, but are a lot more valuable. They allow you set the robot to go side to side, for example, putting the ball alternately in two spots. Or perhaps two to one spot, then one to another. Or just about any other combination. Some can even give backspin and then topspin. With these robots, you can do just about anything.

Non-programmable robots are fun, and good for basic training. They generally can only hit the ball to either one spot, or randomly. I think some may be able to go to two spots - if so, get that one, so you can do side-to-side drills. But you can also do footwork drills with the ball going to one spot. For example, put the ball to your backhand, and alternate backhands and forehands.

You can also have a non-programmable robot hit the ball randomly all over the table by having it oscillate. However, I don't value that too much. In table tennis, you react to the ball coming off the opponent's paddle. Here you have to react to the ball coming out of the robot, which is quite different - and so you could actually develop the habit of hesitating in a real game, where instead of reacting quickly to the direction of an opponent's stroke, you hold back and don't react until you actually see the ball coming at you. So I find robots best when doing more rote drills, where you practice the strokes and footwork, and do the random and more game-type drills with a practice partner or coach.

Full-Time Clubs

The biggest change in the game over the past six years or so is the rise of the full-time table tennis club. There were about ten in December 2006 when I did a presentation to USA Table Tennis, trying to convince them to get into the business of recruiting and training of coaches and directors to set up such centers and junior training programs. (Nothing came of that - two board members literally laughed at the idea. I blogged about this on January 4, 2012 while writing about "USA Cadet Depth.") Anyway, since then the number of full-time clubs has skyrocketed as coaches see how others doing them so successfully. Here's my current list of 56 full-time table tennis clubs in the USA.

The biggest stumbling block for those who are setting up these centers is that there is no manual on how to do it. Each time they have to re-invent the wheel. It's not quite that bad - they can see others doing it successfully, and so know it can be done, and they have others to ask advice on how to do it. I don't have time to put one together. (I do way too many volunteer activities already.)

Tip of the Week

The Backhand Loop and Hit One-Two Punch.

Time-Wasting Stuff

This last month I've had so many things to do, and so many didn't get done because of too much time-wasting stuff. This has had a detrimental effect on finalizing my new book Table Tennis Tactics for Thinkers (which should be done before the Nationals, but I probably won't have copies there), doing some video coaching and analysis, and various MDTTC and other table tennis activities. Here are some of the things that have wasted my time the past few weeks.

1400 Articles!!!

I just realized that the Tip of the Week I published this past Monday was the 1400th article I've had published. (Cue the confetti.) There's a bit of ambiguity in there, as what constitutes a published article? I don't count blog entries (over 500 here since I started two years ago), but I do count the Tips of the Week. (For one thing, they are also published at Paddle Palace.) Included among these 1400 in 138 different publications are 1258 on table tennis. Here's a complete listing.

Pages I Maintain

I maintain a number of webpages. This seems like a good time to post them. (For one thing, I'm battling a cold, and this will be an easy blog to write so I can get back to bed.) Here are the main pages. Each of them includes many sub-pages.

TableTennisCoaching.com. If you are reading this, you are there. Here's your chance to explore some of the pages here. For example, have you gone over to the "Fun and Games" section? Lots of hilarious table tennis stuff - videos, pictures, and games.

CelebritiesPlayingTableTennis.com. This is where you can find 1440 pictures of 870 celebrities playing table tennis. This is the most important page on the Internet. (I used to update this monthly, but it's rather time-consuming so these days I do it sporadically.

Bruce Lee Playing with Nunchucks

Here's a great video that's been going around supposedly showing Bruce Lee playing with nunchucks and beating top players. (This is the full version, 2:38, as opposed to various shortened versions.) The footage for the video is apparently from the 1960s, and has been used recently in a Nokia commercial. The amazing thing is many people believe it is real!!! (Right about now you are either nodding your head, sitting in your chair stunned, or shaking your fist at me and declaring that it's real and Bruce Lee is God.)

When this first came out a Bruce Lee fan really got into it with me, arguing that the footage was real, and that I just didn't understand how Bruce Lee had surpassed normal human abilities with his mental and physical conditioning. He's obviously Superman, Spiderman, and Zhang Jike all in one, right?

Someone obviously took old footage of Bruce Lee working out with nunchucks, removed the background, put him into a table tennis scene (made to match the vintage footage of Bruce) where the opponents faked their shots (or perhaps footage of real players, with the ball removed), and then inserted the ball digitally. How difficult is this? Go watch Forrest Gump or many other modern movies. It's not hard. Nokia obviously hired a special effects lab to create this. (The opponents, however, are obviously real players, since they have good stroking technique.)

How is it obviously not real? Let me count the ways.

Serving to Backhand

I am always amazed at how many players do the same type of serve over and Over and OVER - a serve from the backhand side crosscourt to the receiver's backhand. Watching this it also becomes obvious that receivers are so used to this type of serve that they have little trouble returning it. Why don't servers challenge the receiver with more variations?

First, there are good reasons to serve from the backhand side to the receiver's backhand. Here are a few:

1. By serving from the backhand side, it allows the server to follow-up against a weak return with his forehand.
2. Many players can't serve short effectively, and if they serve to the forehand, the serve will likely be looped. Most players loop better on the forehand than on the backhand.
3.  If they serve short to the forehand, they have to guard against a wide forehand angled receive, which leaves them open on the backhand side to a down-the-line receive.
4. Players have less reach on the backhand, and a breaking serve to the backhand can make them reach for the ball.

These are good reasons. However, they forget the most important goal of serving - to mess the opponent up. And you don't do that by giving him what he's used to over and over. Variation is key. You can serve crosscourt to the backhand with varying spin, but that's just one type of variation. Serving from and to different parts of the table are other ways of varying the serve to mess up an opponent.

Perhaps most important of all, most players have great difficulty returning short serves to the forehand effectively, and many have the same trouble with deep ones. Why not develop these serves and take advantage of this? Every opponent is different, so go in there armed with whatever might be needed.

Tip of the Week

Serving Short to Forehand and Long to Backhand.

JOOLA North American Teams

I spent the weekend mostly coaching at the Teams in Baltimore. Since my family lives on the west coast (Oregon and California), I spent my third straight Thanksgiving with Tong Tong Gong and his family - they served a vintage Thanksgiving meal with turkey, ham, mashed potatoes, green beans, cranberry juice, an incredibly good bread that's a family recipe, and a number of other items, including a few Chinese dishes. (They also had 17 relatives over.) I ate more at that meal than I have at any meal in years - and I mean this literally. Since they live only 20 minutes from the playing hall, I stayed at their house for the weekend, as I did the last two years. (I live an hour away.)

The number of teams was down a bit, from last year's 196 to 158. Part of this is because of the new Butterfly Teams in Columbus - see segment below. Some have written that that tournament had no effect on the Teams in Baltimore, but that's absurd - I know of at least 10-12 teams that regularly play in Baltimore that went to Columbus this year, and that's just the ones I know. I'd guess they lost at least 20 or more teams to Columbus. At $800/team, that's at least $16,000 in lost revenue.

While I'm never happy playing on cement, as most matches at the Teams (both Baltimore and Columbus), Open, and Nationals are played on, there's not a lot that can be done about that. However, I was happy to see (yes, that's a pun) that the lighting was greatly improved this year, as part of a renovation at the Baltimore Convention Center. The tournament ran on time, with two tables assigned to every team match we played. They also had much better prizes this year, giving out nice crystal prizes to the division winners that the players seemed happy with.

Teams Aftermath

It's official: I have a cold. I spent the last three days mostly coaching kids at the North American Teams, and somewhere along the way probably got exposed. I've been doing this blog for almost two years, and except for major holidays and when I'm out of town, I don't think I've missed a day. But since I normally take holidays off, and yet I did a blog on Thanksgiving, I'm taking today off both as a sick day and as my unofficial Thanksgiving holiday. I'll have turkey soup for lunch. (The Tip of the Week will also go up tomorrow.)

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Happy Thanksgiving!!!

See my Thanksgiving links at the end of this blog.

Malware warnings all gone

It took a while, and I had to hire Sucuri Securities, but all the problems are over with Google blacklisting the site for malware that was long gone. Our long national nightmare is over. Or at least mine is. (One complication - apparently you might get a false malware warning if you visited the site recently. If so, clear your cache - sorry! - and it'll go away. That's what happened to me.)

No Blog Friday

I'll be coaching (and playing part-time) Fri-Sun at the North American Team Championships. Here's a preview picture!

Crystal Wang Enters the Stratosphere

Crystal Wang, age 10, is now rated 2245. This is by far the highest rating ever achieved by a girl at that age, and the second highest for anyone that age, boys or girls. The highest rating ever achieved by a 10-year-old is Kanak Jha two years ago at 2265. (And Crystal still has three months to gain 20+ points before she turns 11.) No one else has even been close to breaking 2200 at that age. For perspective, Ariel Hsing's highest rating as a 10-year-old was 2066, and Lily Zhang's was 1887 - and these two are now both our best junior girls and our best women as well.

Quick Note on Malware

Most or all of the malware warning problems I blogged about previously seem to be gone, but there might still be some traces left of whatever got the site blacklisted on Google. If you are reading this, you arrived here successfully, so all's well with the world.

Merit Badges for Table Tennis?

As noted in my blog on Monday, there's a great proposal on the USATT web page (by Diego Schaaf and Wei Wang) to award "merit badges" for achieving various rating levels. Read it over and see what you think.

I've always argued that players take ratings way too seriously, and that they are, in general, a very bad thing for junior players. (Here's my article Juniors and Ratings.) Because of ratings players (especially juniors) tend to focus on immediate results instead of long-term improvement; it makes them nervous when they play as they worry about their rating (and this nervousness becomes a habit); and it often causes them not to play tournaments so they can protect their rating (thereby losing valuable tournament experience and so falling behind their peers).

I've always found the bridge system to be intriguing. In bridge, you cannot go down in rating; you only go up. This gives incentive to play more as you try to go up. It's not as accurate a system, but it incentive to compete. Given a choice between an inaccurate system with zillions of players (such as the American Contract Bridge League with 160,000 members), or a more accurate one with 8000 (USATT says hi), I have 152,000 reasons to go with the less accurate system. (This is a simplistic version of a more complex argument I won't go into here.)