Tournaments and Omnipong

I've run over 120 USATT tournaments, ranging from monthly tournaments at MDTTC all through the 1990s to the 1998 Eastern Open which received 411 entries, still the record for a four-star tournament. (Richard Lee was tournament president for that one, his first big tournament, and he's been running them all over the country ever since with North American Table Tennis.) Running a large one is a massive undertaking, and even the smaller ones take far more time and work than most realize.

I sometimes think all tournament players should be required to run a USATT tournament just one time, to see what really goes on. Observant players have a good idea of what tournament directors do during a tournament; really observant ones who think it through have a good idea of all the work that went on before the tournament. Before the tournament, directors (sometimes working with a referee) receive the entries, enter them onto the computer (unless, heaven forbid in this day and age, they are running it by hand, on paper!), check all the memberships, create draws (including checking for geographical separation and other complexities), finalize the scheduling, and print everything out so it's ready. They get all the tables, nets, and barriers in place, put up the table numbers, and make sure everything is clean. And then there are those thousand small details that, if I listed them all, it'd take up about a year's worth of blogs.

There's also the more advance work - scheduling the tournaments, creating the entry forms, circulating them, publicizing the tournament, and so on. I change my mind; even running a small one is a massive undertaking!!! There's a reason why "tournament" is just an anagram for "one tantrum."

There are various types of software out there you can use to run tournaments. One that I can strongly recommend, and that's spreading all over the country, is Omnipong. I ran two tournaments with it last year, and it worked really well. (Because of conflicts with my weekend coaching, Charlene Liu took over as MDTTC tournament director - and she also uses Omnipong.) It's easy to learn, easy to use, and perhaps best of all, it puts all the results online, so anyone can see all of the results immediately afterwards - even the preliminary round robins.

Go to Omnipong, click on "Tournaments," and note just how widespread the software has become. Then pick out a tournament, any tournament, and click on "Results." Have fun exploring!

I emailed Craig Krum, the creator of the software, and asked if he could tell us about it. Below is his response. (Tournament directors should read and study every word, but the eyes of players will likely glaze over, and they should probably skip ahead to the next segment. Or perhaps read "Top Ten Ways to Play Your Best in a Tournament," or "Should You Play Tournaments When Working on Something New?," or perhaps "Tournament Toughness.")

The Short Version:

• Started development in the mid-90s as a personal tool to help run tournaments, which I had been doing by hand with Harold Kopper for the Rialto Table Tennis Club. Being a programmer I was able to keep adding the features that I needed to make my job easier.
• I developed the internet version of OmniPong in 2011, so players would be able to sign up online, and to make the system available to other TDs. To date this version of OmniPong has been used by over 25 Directors to run over 200 tournaments. The tournaments range from unsanctioned events with 20 players, to the National Senior Games, with over 400 players. This total also includes 23 four-star events.
• Nearly 2500 players have registered with OmniPong, so they can enter tournaments online.

Online Registration System Highlights:

• Online entry.
• Online payment using credit cards or PayPal. Connects directly to Tournament Director's account.
• Payment tracking and verification.
• Weekly updates from USATT, to keep ratings and membership information current.
• Automatically verifies which events a player can enter, based on their rating, age, gender, time conflict, etc.
• Electronic submission of results file to NATT for processing.
• Electronic submission of the reports that need to be sent to USATT for processing (Tournament Report, Player Listing, Membership Applications).
• Ability to send custom emails to all players for various reasons (welcome message, entry verification, balance due, link to results, etc.)
• Immediate publication of results online.
• Family members can link OmniPong accounts together, for easy entry and payment for tournaments.
• Many reports available.

Control Desk Highlights:

• Easy to use visual interface.
• Tracks table usage, including who is on the table, and how long a match has been playing.
• Handles Round Robin groups up to 12 players.
• Automatically breaks ties based on USATT/ITTF rules.
• Draws automatically try to avoid conflicts when players are from the same club,  have played each other before, or live close to each other.
• Time scheduling of all matches, which shows potential player conflicts.
• No internet connection is necessary during the tournament.

Future Plans:

• Finish Team format.
• Add League system.
• Add Club management system.
• A million other things!

2015 Pan Am, National Men and Women’s Team, and Men and Women’s World Team Selection Procedure

Here they are.

Forehand Loop of Tao Wenzhang

Here's video (39 sec) of the 2014 U.S. Open Men's Singles Champion that shows perfect looping form. You can learn a lot by watching this. I had a student watch it to see the contact point in relation to the body, since the student was contacting the ball too much in front (thereby losing power) instead of more to the side, as Tao and other world-class players do.

Reverse Pendulum Backspin Serve Swing and Contact Point

Here's the video (3:04). This is part 3 - you can find parts 1 & 2 here.

Interview with Tamara Boros

Here's the interview by Dora Kurimay with the former world #2 woman, on "The Key to Success: Positive Mental Attitude."

Training for a Purpose

Here's the new video (1:24) from the Zhou Xin TT Academy.

Ask the Coach

Here's episode #25. (12:10).

• Question 1 - 2:22: How and when to move to ready position after you've made a pendulum serve from the backhand corner with your left leg in front of you. Should you move into position when you know where your opponent will place the return or as soon as you’ve served? Robin
• Question 2 - 4:41: Why Can't We Start With a Fast Bat? Why do we need different blades and rubber? Why we can't start with a higher topspin or power? Can I buy Pingskills Touch Vega Pro Bat for my second Bat? Kritpol
• Question 3 - 8:00: I recently purchased a small table tennis table and I was wondering what kind of training will I be able to do with a small table? Enoch Oppong
• Question 4 - 9:53: Is it a good move to chop smash and why none of the professional players use it? Petar

Now This is a Great Point!

Here's the video (39 sec) - and it's at match point!

Tribute to the Troops

Here's Mike Mezyan's table tennis tribute artwork to the Troops yesterday on Veteran's Day.

JOOLA Fun Games Finalists

Here's the video (48 sec) of the four finalists!

Recent Movies with Table Tennis

Here are some recent movies that were not about table tennis, but had table tennis scenes.

• Big Hero 6 - As I blogged yesterday, when the hero Hiro (pun intended!) visits the university where they are making robots there are two robots rallying in the background. A few minutes later they are seen again. Alas, I can't find video or pictures.
• Minions - the trailer features table tennis 80 seconds in. (Movie doesn't come out until July of next year.)
• Despicable Me 2 - There's a brief shot in the film in which Edith is playing ping pong with a minion, but uses a pair of nunchaku instead of a ping pong paddle. There's also a party scene where the minions are sitting about on the ping-pong table. Here's an online video (11 sec) of the minions playing table tennis that's not in the movie.
• X-Men: Days of Future Past - Here's an animated gif of the character Quicksilver playing table tennis, as Hank/Beast, a young Charles Xavier (in background), and Wolverine look on.
• About Time - here's a clip (53 sec) where father and son play.
• Gravity - When they get to the Chinese ship, about ten minutes from the end, twice you see a ping-pong paddle floating about. I wasn't able to find video or a picture.
• 22 Jump Street (okay, it was only beer pong, but close enough.)
• Monster University - Here's a gif image of the table tennis scene.

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Tip of the Week

Top Ten Ways to Play Your Best in a Tournament.

Fact or Fiction: The Life & Times of a Ping Pong Hustler

Here's where you can download the video (60 min) or see the trailer (2:12) about the late Marty Reisman (Feb. 1, 1930 - Dec. 7, 2012). "A chronicle of the final three years of Marty Reisman's life. A table tennis champion turned hustler. Pursuing notoriety and motivated by his love of fame and ping pong, he has to face his biggest fear: mortality."

Here's the IMDB entry on the film. Here's the full description:

Fact or Fiction: The Life and Times of a Ping Pong Hustler is a chronicle of the final three years of Marty Reisman's life, a former international table tennis champion-turned-money player. Pursuing notoriety through his idiosyncratic lifestyle and motivated by his love of fame and Ping Pong, he inadvertently has to face his biggest fear: mortality. Shot over three years, the film follows Marty - a complex mix of childlike excitement, eccentric narcissism and constant charm - as he negotiates between pride, the denial of old age, past defeats and the decline of his fame and fortune, as well as his devoted wife Yoshiko's health, all while clinging onto the hope that his own life and career are just beginning to blossom. The film's observational style, combined with rare archive footage and interviews with key New York and London society characters such Booker Prize winner Howard Jacobson and eminent psychotherapist George Weinberg, work to tell the story of one of America's greatest.

I recently watched the video on my computer, along with Tim Boggan. I knew Marty pretty well. In fact, he's how I got into table tennis! Here's the story.

The video uses both old and recent footage of Reisman, showcasing him from his early years (growing up in the depression, discovering "a different world" in table tennis, and developing as a player in the hardbat era) to his last days, and especially the last three years of his life. Parts of it are rather dark, with much of the video taking place in a hospital after his heart surgery and shortly before Marty died. There's also footage of him running Reisman's Table Tennis Club, which ran from 1958 to the late 1970s.

Marty was perhaps the most flamboyant and stylish table tennis player who ever lived. The video features his many outfits, hats, his tailor and dry cleaner, and even the cane he used - not because he needed it, but for style purposes. Marty quotes poetry, jokes with doctors, talks and sings about mortality, teaches his forehand, shows his microscopes (a hobby of his), demonstrates the cigarette trick, talks about Satoh (the man from Japan who introduced the sponge racket and won the 1952 Worlds, the year Reisman thought he should have won), and talks about how much he was looking forward to a challenge match he had planned with 2009 U.S. Men's Champion Michael Landers. "You'll be in a film with the great Marty Reisman," he explained to Landers. (The film mistakenly credits Landers as being on the U.S. Olympic team.) There's also segments about a planned "Marty's Bar" at Spin TTC in New York.

Yes, Marty was an egomaniac, but he didn't hide this fact - in fact, he wore it on his sleeve, with an almost in-your-face ego. And yet he could be incredibly nice if you played along with it and treated him well. He was a God to many, and enjoyed playing the role. Much of his Godhood came about from the stand he took against sponge rubber, insisting on sticking with hard rubber (and later sandpaper), which he considered a far superior game, where two players had a "dialog" when they rallied.

Near the end there's about 3.5 minutes with USATT Historian Tim Boggan, who gives sort of a fact check to some of the items in the film. (Hence the "Fact or Fiction" part of the title.) He also shows a "Marty as Don Quixote" picture, symbolizing Marty fighting the windmills of sponge.

MDTTC Featured at WETA  and PBS

Here's the video (4 min), which features me, Crystal Wang, and Derek Nie.

First Ever ITTF Level Three Course in USA Staged

Here's the ITTF article on the course just completed in Colorado Springs, taught by Richard McAfee. 

Women's World Cup

In the all-Chinese final held Sunday, world #1 Ding Ning defeated world #4 Liu Xiaoxia. Here's a video of the match highlights (4:04). Here's the ITTF home page for the event with results, articles, photos, and video. Here's the ITTF Press Release on the Final. Here's the Daily Shot of the Day:

• Day One Shot of the Day (44 sec)
• Day Two Shot of the Day (35 sec)
• Day Three Shot of the Day (28 sec)

iPong Basic Series: Forehand Drive

Here's the video (1:19) of Richard McAfee teaching the stroke.

Kenta Matsudaira's Sidespin Block

Here's the new video (3:56) from PingSkills of the Japanese player (world #27, #16 in January). My students hate it when I throw sidespin or chop blocks at them!

Training at Zhou Xin TTA

Here's the list of videos.

Ask the Coach

Here are two more "Ask the Coach" episodes from PingSkills.

Episode #10 (13:26):

• Question 1: Usually players follow one style, attack or defense. If I want to change mine to All Around to add some defensive strokes, when is it efficient to start? When the attack style is completely confident or it’s better to study all the strokes at the same time? Olena.
• Question 2: I realize that in table tennis we use only one part of our hand (upper arm, lower arm, and wrist) so what is the time to use each part of it and can I combined them? Frendy.
• Question 3: How to reply to a player who simply sends every shot back with push & chop shots? I feel like I am playing the ball against a wall. I start to think that I have to do something to end the rally and then I make the mistake & lose the point. Len Buffey.
• Question 4: What advice can you give to changing the momentum in a match? I was recently up 2-0 in a match and lost all confidence after losing the 3rd set and continued to go downhill losing in 5.
• Question 5: Is there difference between a lob and a fish? If yes, what is it? Kaustubh Kulkarni.

Episode #11 (13:05):

• Question 1: Hi Alois! I have my first tournament of the season in a week and I want to practice my serves. One problem: I don't have any plastic balls. Is it bad to practice my serves with celluloid balls? Yoan Pelletier
• Question 2: Do you other professionals who play with shakehand, use a specific or specialized grip to serve and then quickly shift to the shakehand for the majority of the point? Do you stay with the special grip after the serve? Cole Mooney
• Question 3: I recently received advice to engage my thumb and apply pressure onto the rubber when backhand counterhitting. The advice improved my backhand but I don't know if should change especially if the rallies are transitioning BH to FH in a fast manner. Danny Ly
• Question 4: Due to studies I didn’t play table tennis for 1.5 months. I played today in an interschool tournament and I lost to a player whom I used to defeat every time. What is the reason of my defeat and how can I prepare for my state tournament. Shivam Goenka
• Question 5: As a penhold player, should I hit with the other side of my bat? I tend to find that I can't have as much control as if I simply move more and use the same side of my bat. Colin Young

Shonie Aki Scholarship Award

Here's the article and info for this annual $1250 scholarship - see last paragraph in particular. Deadline is Nov. 1, 2014. "The Shonie Aki Scholarship award, in the amount of $1250 for one year, will be offered to a young table tennis player who has aspirations to complete a college education, become a better player, and a productive individual who would reflect on Shonie's legacy. In order to be considered to receive this scholarship award, candidates must be expecting to attend college in 2015 (and have at least two years remaining to complete their degree) and have GPAs of at least B or better."

Top 5 Veteran Table Tennis Ladies You Don't Want to Mess With

Here's the article by Matt Hetherington.

Table Tennis Tournament to Benefit Homeless Portlanders

Here's the article.

The Making of Table Tennis Blades and Rubbers

Here's the video (13:08).

Nathan Hsu in China

Here's the latest episode - Hengdian World Studios! - China Day 48 Part 1 (5:49).

Jorgen Persson and Bill Clinton

Here are five pictures of the two playing golf in 2005. The other player is Brian Laudrup, a Danish soccer player.

Ma Long's Birthday Party

Here's the picture. He just turned 26.

Be So Bold

Here's the video (60 sec) - I think this is a jeans commercial, but I'm not sure. That's one cheap paddle the "star" is using.

Bruce Lee Ping Pong

Here's a new video (3:13) where two hackers flamboyantly play table tennis with various implements, from bottles and paper towel rolls to cheese graters. (Not really a lot to do with Bruce Lee, however, other than the title.)

Cooking Ping-Pong Balls for Breakfast

Here's the video (5 sec) - looks pretty tasty!

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