The title is a quote from the famous Danish chess champion Max Euwe (pronounced “oo-vay”). What does it mean and how does it apply to table tennis?

It comes down to knowing the difference between strategic and tactical thinking. The words “strategy” and “tactics” (and variations such as “strategic” and “tactical”) are colloquially used interchangeably, but really have different meaning when applied to sports and games. Strategic thinking is thinking long-term about developing your game. Tactical thinking is about using what you have to win now. You need both.

To get back to Euwe, suppose you have an effective loop (forehand, backhand, or both. You give it some thought and strategically decide you need a good short backspin serve to force pushes that you can loop, with other variations thrown in (such as short no-spin and occasional long ones). That’s strategic thinking. But when you observe that your opponent can receive and block in ways that make your loops lower-percentage shots (such as quick, angled, heavy pushes, short pushes, or flips, and effective blocks against your opening loop), then you use tactical thinking to come up with a better tactic, such as changing your serving patterns (such as serving more sidespin/topspin or more deep serves) or pushing more so you can find a better ball to loop rather than go after the first one.

And then you use strategic thinking to figure out how to develop your game so that next time you won’t have trouble with that opponent’s receiving and blocking!

1. Know the rules, or at least the more important ones.
2. Examine opponent’s racket at start of match. Don’t rub your fingers over the playing surface, which can get grease on it and anger your opponent. If he has pips, then perhaps rub your finger on one along the edge. If it’s antispin, some players rub a ball along the edge to test it.
3. Two-minute warmup. Usually players hit a minute of forehand to forehand and a minute of backhand to backhand. Players with combination rackets sometimes use their “normal” inverted side during this warmup, but that’s up to the player.
4. Hide the ball or flip a coin to see who has choice of serving first, receiving first, or choosing a side. If you choose to serve or receive, the opponent can choose the side to start on. If you choose the side to start on, the opponent can choose to serve or receive.
5. Remember that you only have one minute between games or in one time-out per match. Use it well, either talking to your coach, clearing your mind, or resting. You can also towel off every six points.  "You can also towel off every six points." 
6. A coach can talk to you during the match, but you can't stop what you are doing to listen or walk over to him except between games or in a timeout. It’s an advantage if you and your coach speak a language that your opponents do not since then he can yell tips that the opponent cannot understand. Signals sometimes help.
7. Know how to hit balls that come into your court back to their tables. Don’t just smack it at them. If they are a distance, hit with backspin so the ball floats right into their hands. New players should practice this.
8. Normally do not talk to an opponent except on match business. A common psychological ploy is for an opponent to praise your shots, thereby getting you to think about the shot and taking you out of the “zone” where your training takes over. Once a match has started, if an opponent talks to you in any way that’s not normal match business (such as, “Whose serve is it?” or “What’s the score?”), you should normally ignore him. (Perhaps smile and nod while focusing on the next point.)
9. You can only have one coach in a match, except in team competition. In team competition, anyone from your “bench” can coach during any match.
10. If there's a dispute, call for an umpire or referee. Umpires umpire matches. Referees rule on the rules but generally do not umpire unless they assign someone else as referee.
11. Win or lose, after the match shake hands, or bump fists or rackets, and fill out the scores (usually by the winner), and return the match slip to the desk.

This really could mean two things. Some players try to unsettle their opponents by staring at them between points or when about to serve. I’ve never been able to decide whether this is proper gamesmanship or poor sportsmanship. You decide.

But there’s a more important stare, and that’s the one that allows you to regain or keep focus. There are a lot of distractions in a match, both external and internal. External is all the things going on around you – spectators, the opponent, the umpire, noises, lights, the background, and so on. Internal is more important – that’s your internal emotions and thoughts. Nervousness or a lack of focus are two of your biggest enemies.

So, how does a stare help this? Some players, including me, make a habit of sometimes during a match just stopping and staring at something for 5-10 seconds. Pick out something in the distance or nearby, it doesn’t matter. Stare at it while clearing your mind of all thoughts. Breathe deeply. Then, after those 5-10 seconds, focus on the match.

You’ll be amazed at how this helps controlling nerves and focus. And at least one top player I know of combined all of this, sometimes staring at his opponent for those 5-10 seconds, especially when about to serve – and using it to clear his mind and focus while sometimes so disconcerting his opponent that the opponent lost his!

Have a problem with a stroke? Need to change the technique? Well, by golly, if you’re like most players, you’ll head out to the table and practice doing the stroke correctly.

No!!!

If you’re like most players, you’ll be struggling to both change the stroke and adjust to the new timing of the stroke, meaning you are trying to do two things at the same time. You’ll find it difficult to repeatedly stroke properly and time the ball, and you’ll likely make subconscious changes to your stroke to adjust to the ball, thereby developing a less-than-perfect stroke.

Instead, repeatedly shadow-practice the correct stroke first. Then, when you (and perhaps your coach) think you are ready and the new stroking technique is mostly ingrained, that’s when you head out to the table and practice with the new stroke. With the new stroke now ingrained from shadow-practice, instead of changing the stroke to adjust to the incoming ball, you’ll adjust your timing to the ball without changing the now-correct stroke.

Imagine trying to learn to hunt from horseback. Would you learn to shoot while on a horse, or would you first learn to shoot and to ride a horse, and then combine the two?

Giddy up!

You can ask three coaches this question and get three different answers. Some say guard against the deep serve and react to the short one. Some say the opposite. Some say guard against both equally.

Make that four different answers, because my answer is, “It depends.”

I once coached a top player who was having trouble moving in quickly to drop short serves back short. I told him to jam the table a bit more, and let his reflexes take over against deep serves. This worked, primarily because the opponent didn’t have great deep serves, and so my player was able to dominate against his short serves.

Recently I coached a player who kept missing against his opponent’s deep, breaking serves. I told him to assume he’d get that serve every time, and just rely on his reflexes against other serves. Even though he only faced that serve about one out of four serves, he went from struggling to dominating against that serve, the opponent’s best serve, and discovered he still had little trouble against the others.

And so, my answer to the question of which to guard against is, “It depends.”

I know of at least one coach and former top player who vehemently says you should always guard against the short serve so you can win the short game battle, and rely on your reflexes against the deep serve. And I know others who say the reverse – and I know that for me, I always had to guard against the long serve, since I always handled short ones better, and needed more time to react to long serves since I usually wanted to loop them with my forehand, since my backhand loop wasn’t so good.

So . . . It depends. It depends on your receiving strengths and weaknesses, and your playing style. It depends on the strength of the opponent’s short and long serves, and how well he follows them up.

You should go into any match prepared for all serves, but perhaps, just maybe, start to guard more against certain serves than others.

So yes, it depends.