April 27, 2026

Tip of the Week
April 27: When Receiving, Emphasize Placement & Consistency

Even Yet Still More Table Tennis Tips – NOW AVAILABLE!!!

Even Yet Still More Table Tennis Tips, the fifth and likely final book in my Tips series, is now on sale at Amazon for just $14.95! It’s another 150 Tips of the Week, put together in logical fashion. There are, appropriately, eleven chapters:

  1. Serve (10)
  2. Receive (8)
  3. Strokes (22)
  4. Footwork and Positioning (14)
  5. Tactics (30)
  6. Training and Strategic Development (28)
  7. Sports Psychology (13)
  8. Coaching (8)
  9. Tournaments (10)
  10. Doubles (5)
  11. Equipment (2)

Here are all 27 of my books (or click on tab on left), including all five books in the Tips series:

Two other popular books are:

Weekend Coaching
A major focus this weekend in my groups was transition from looping against backspin, to looping or hitting against topspin, i.e., against a block. You want to know the quickest way to mess up players from the advanced beginner to intermediate level? Feed them lots and lots of multiball backspin where they loop over and Over and OVER until they do it perfectly . . . then send them out to play matches. They’ll put every ball that’s not backspin off the end. No, this didn’t happen – I made sure of it, always finishing any session with topspin rallies. The key (on the forehand side) is to drop the shoulder some when looping against backspin, but not against topspin (or at most only a little if you are off the table).

You want to know a quick way to bore younger kids to death? Nothing but multiball, multiball, multiball – unless you do the simple ploy of putting a target on the table and challenging them to hit it. (A simple water bottle will do, or perhaps a box or bowl that they can, after a series of shots, knock off the table.) Then their eyes light up, they’re focused, and they’re dying to do lots of multiball, Multiball, MULTIBALL!!! (I often use the opposite “ploy,” saying, “Don’t you dare hit my water bottle!”)

AI-powered Robot Beats Elite Table Tennis Players
Here’s the article from The Guardian. Here’s another video, Robot Sony AI (3:36), and see Steve Hopkins article below. However, there’s a key thing not mentioned – players train for years to react to human strokes, and the robot’s strokes are quite different. Because of this, top players, even pro’s, don’t react nearly as quickly or as well as they would against a human. But the robot is trained to play humans. So, it’s not really a fair contest. I think if top players training regularly with these robots, they’d adjust, and in their current state, top human players would win easily every time instead of most of the time. HOWEVER . . . that’s just for now. Now that they’ve figured out how to program a robot to read and adjust to spin, and to rally at top speeds, it’s inevitable they'll develop a robot that's simply unbeatable. (

Another issue - they use cameras all over the playing area to judge the spin. Humans don’t have that advantage. If the robot has to judge spin from just two eyes on the robot itself, it might have more problems. Also, while top players judge spin mostly from the opponent’s stroke and contact, and the flight of the ball, the robot mostly does so by zeroing in on the ball’s logo and reading the spin directly. While a human can read spin some from the label, at higher spins that’s not really possible. What if they played with a ball without a logo?

May 2026 Issue of Table Tennis History
Here it is, from Steve Grant! Why not read over the intro and the TOC and see which articles interest you? They even have an article on Marty Supreme, and lots of other interesting stuff.

Major League Table Tennis

Advice from 2003 Men’s Singles World Champion Werner Schlager
Here’s the video (60 sec) from the last European to win the Worlds.

New from Butterfly

Forehand Topspin Against Backspin
Here’s the video (4:51) with Milo de Boer, from Acceleraq.

Rate Your Serve … How Strong is Your Service Game?
Here’s the article from Tom Lodziak.

New from PingSunday/EmRatThich

New from the Table Tennis Teaching Channel

Liu Guoliang: The Man Who Built China’s Table Tennis Empire
Here’s the video (4:51) from Beyond the Podium.

Harvard’s Kelly Yenn Successfully Defends Singles Title and Adds Doubles
Here’s the article from NCTTA.

New from Steve Hopkins/Butterfly

New from ITTF

Viktor Barna, the Greatest Table Tennis Player the World Has Ever Known
Here’s the video (50 sec) of the five-time Men’s Singles World Champion (1930, 1932-35), from the ITTF. Of course, “greatness” can be defined in many ways.

Ping Pong Pang Feat
Here’s the table tennis music and dance video (19 sec) from Tenis de Mesa from Sevilla!

Six Incredible Shots in 36 Seconds
Here’s the video from Habib Insan!

This is Why People Don’t Want to Play With You
Here’s the video (12 sec) from Pingpongmaestros!

***
Send us your own coaching news!