I Am at War with Amazon
Today’s blog is only partly table tennis related. In fact, the main connection is that I’m doing a lot less table tennis stuff temporarily as I’m spending more time in my battle with Amazon, plus of course I sell table tennis books on Amazon. Here’s the situation.

I’ve used Amazon for years, both as a buyer and seller. I have an author page there with 13 books – eight table tennis, six science fiction. (“The Spirit of Pong” counts as both, so yes, 8+6=13.) I make a pretty decent living selling my books there (along with coaching).

On October 31, my new science fiction novel is coming out, “When Parallel Lines Meet.” I co-wrote it with Mike Resnick (a legendary SF writer) and Lezli Robyn. We even had a launch party for it at the Capclave Science Fiction Convention this past weekend. I have ten preliminary copies, though it doesn’t officially come out until Halloween. (That’s a coincidence.)

Here’s the problem. On the kindle and audio versions, it correctly has all three of us as authors. But on the print version, it only has Mike Resnick.

I pointed this out to our publisher months ago when the novel first showed up for pre-orders, and he contacted Amazon. When you have an author or publisher page, as we do, there’s a “contact us” link at the bottom of the page, so contacting them is easy. Three weeks went by, and nothing happened, so I contacted the publisher again. He was irritated, saying that he’d been getting bureaucratic problems at Amazon, and hadn’t been able to get them to make the correction.

$4000 Ping-Pong Table Shaped like Easter Island on Family Guy
In the Sunday, Oct. 8 episode of Family Guy (Foxx in the Men House), Peter goes to an Anthropologie store and (completely randomly) asks for a “$4000 ping-pong table that’s shaped like Easter Island.” The cashier responds, “We’ve got one right over there.” We then see a picture of this item, with letters on the screen saying, “Actual Anthropologie item.” Here’s the video – it should take you directly to 2:29 in, and the table tennis only takes up the first eight seconds.

There really is an Anthropologie store – I’d never heard of it – but nothing showed up when I did a search there for “ping-pong” or “table tennis,” alas. Then I had a brainstorm and did an online search for “ping-pong table Easter Island,” and here it is! Except (at Pinterest) it cost $12,000! The text says, “Easter Island Ping Pong Table - Anthropologie.com Easter Island Ping Pong table anyone? Yes this is for real, and yours for only $12,000 (don't worry, it's signed by the artist).” But when you follow the link by clicking on the picture, it takes you to Anthropologie, but the items appears to no longer be there.

Then I checked my search list again, and realized that the table was listed on numerous pages. For example, here it is at Neatorama – and here it says:

Tip of the Week
Top Ten Tactical Receiving Mistakes.

Sunday Coaching and Monday USATT Teleconference
I spent Friday and Saturday at the Capclave Science Fiction Convention – see segment at end of blog. On Sunday had a 5.5 hours of coaching, mostly group sessions.

In private coaching with Todd, we focused quite a bit on serve and loop, especially backhand loop. He tends to be forehand oriented, but we’re adding more backhand attack to the mix. He’s picking up backhand loop pretty well, but sometimes tends to rush it against pushes. We also worked on moving to the wide forehand faster – but the key here wasn’t the movement itself but rather a faster recovery from the previous shot, a forehand from the backhand side. His backhand in rallies was on fire – he’s discovered he can hit winners by going after my wide forehand. Thanks a lot, age and bad knee, dang it! One problem – he needs a lot more serving practice, so I’m hoping he can increase that.

In the Beginning Junior Class we focused on footwork and serving. After an hour of practice we went to games. They divided into three groups. About half played up-down tables (i.e. real games). Several others took turns on the robot. I taught five of the younger ones the “Serving Game.” For this, one player serves ten times. The other four players stood on the other side (no rackets), with a plastic cup on the table in front of them. The server would serve and the other four would try to catch the serve. If they did, the server scored zero. If the server managed to serve so that it got past the four and hit the floor, the server got one. If the server hit one of the cups and the ball got past them and hit the floor, the server scored three. Then they’d rotate and the next player would serve.

Capclave and Columbus and teleConference, Oh My!
No blog on Friday and Monday. On Friday and Saturday I’ll be at the Capclave Science Fiction Convention, where I’m a panelist (three panels, moderating two of them – here’s my Capclave bio with a link to my schedule), doing a book launch for my new SF novel, “When Parallel Lines Meet” (co-written with Mike Resnick and Lezli Robyn), and doing two autograph sessions. So no table tennis for me those two days, though I have a full day of TT scheduled on Sunday. Monday is Columbus Day, so I’m taking the day off – except for a 7PM USATT Board of Directors Teleconference.

2018 World Veteran Championships in Las Vegas
It’s a once in a lifetime opportunity – or at least once every 27 years, the last time the U.S. held a World Veterans Table Tennis Championship, back in 1990. The 2018 World Veterans Championships will be held at the Las Vegas Convention Center, June 18-24, and if you are over the age of 40 (as of Dec. 31, 2018), you need to be there.

Let’s start with the basics – the events. There are eleven age categories, with singles and doubles in each.

Corresponding Correspondence
One of the things you learn when you volunteer for an organization like USATT is that when you schedule your time, you have to use what I call the 25% Rule. What does that mean? It means that you spend 25% of your time actually doing “productive” work, and 75% of your time corresponding and answering questions. Some of this is good and reasonable, some of it is not.

I’m on the USATT board of directors and chair the USATT coaching committee. (These are both unpaid volunteer positions.) I’ve spent much of the last week just emailing with people, mostly answering questions and discussing issues. It’s a huge but necessary time allotment. The problem is that not all the time spent on this is what I would call “necessary.” There is a famous saying that you spend something like 90% of your time on 10% of the people you are working for. In USATT, I’d say you spend 95% of your time on 1%. It’s been really true this past week.

Of course you also have to divide the 1% into those who deserve responses (many of them well-meaning, thoughtful individuals who really contribute to our sport), and those who are rude and/or irrational and only get cursory responses. We have plenty of those. (If I were a paid employee, I’d probably have to have a longer leash for these people, but as a volunteer, the leash is rather short for abusive and/or time-wasting people.)

Jun Mizutani vs. Interactive Robot
Here’s the video (66 sec). Suppose you entered this robot in a U.S. tournament, and ignore the fact that its serve is illegal. What rating would it achieve? It would be reminiscent of when they started entering computers in chess tournaments.

It mostly just keeps the ball in play, often high, and without spin. Alas, I don’t think it can adjust very well to spin – Mizutani (world #8 from Japan, #4 in February) is mostly just patting the ball back and forth without spin - so that right away would probably put it below 1000. On the other hand, 49 sec in Mizutani soft loops the ball, and the robot returns it with ease, though a bit high. How would it react to a heavy backspin serve, push, or chop? Or a fast serve to a corner? Or fast breaking sidespin serve? Or a heavy topspin lob?

As to its serve, it breaks two serving rules. (Go to 34 seconds in to see it serving.)

• 2.06.01: Service shall start with the ball resting freely on the open palm of the server's stationary free hand. 
• 2.06.04: From the start of service until it is struck, the ball shall be … behind the server's end line.

However, there’s also this rule:

Tip of the Week
Top Ten Tactical Serving Mistakes.

US Open Entry Form and Hotel
They are out! Here’s the home page, entry form (pdf – online entry will be out later), and hotel info and for the U.S. Open, Las Vegas, NV, Dec. 17-22. (And yes, I’m aware of the irony of writing about going to Las Vegas right now while the news is all about the shooting in Las Vegas right now.)

This year there are 97 events to choose from. (Note to self: Let’s get them to add three events for a nice even 100!) They include:

Table Tennis Biographies
Why not spend a weekend curled up with a good table tennis biography or autobiography? Here are a few to choose from. (I have copies of each of these books in my table tennis book collection.) Or, of course, you could always buy one of my books!

Backhand-Forehand Towel Drill
Here’s a great drill I used yesterday while coaching Navin, one which you might want to try. Like many players, his crosscourt backhand doesn’t always go wide enough to the backhand, instead wandering out to the middle backhand, making things easier for the opponent as well as giving them an angle to attack into his forehand. It’s important to be able to hit accurate shots (forehand and backhand) almost always to the three main spots – wide corners and opponent’s playing elbow.

Once you do learn to play consistently wide angles into the backhand, an opponent may look to find ways to get out of this type of rally, often by going down the line to the forehand. This often happens to Navin, who can dominate the backhand diagonal but can be vulnerable to attacks to the forehand if he gives an easy opening.

So here’s the drill. I put my towel over much of the backhand side, leaving an opening about a foot wide from the corner. Then Navin and I played backhand to backhand where he had to avoid hitting the towel. A key to this was not aiming for the area between the corner and the towel, but aiming right for the corner or even slightly outside it. That way, even if you mishit slightly, the ball still stayed near the backhand corner. Then, randomly, I’d suddenly hit my backhand down the line, and Navin had to quick hit the ball to my wide forehand. If he’s keeping the ball to my wide backhand, then my down-the-line backhand not only can’t really angle him, but leaves me open to a wide angle to my forehand, and so he should be able to hit a winner nearly every time. For this drill, I didn’t bother playing out the point, just grabbing another ball to get the next rally started, but you can do it that way or play out the point.

Table Tennis People Who Owe Me Money
My trusting nature has cost me $450 plus interest. Maybe that’s not a huge amount over 41 years, but it’s an irritating $432 because of how they came about. (I’m probably owed other money over the years that I don’t recall offhand. These are the ones that stick out.)

Just last year I hired one of our local player/coaches to help run one of my beginning junior classes. He was short on money and asked if I could pay him $120 in advance. I did so. When the class started, he simply didn’t show, with no notice. The player still lives locally – about a mile from me, in fact - and coaches at a local rec center, but has never returned to MDTTC. I messaged him on Facebook (where he’s active and definitely got the message), texted him, emailed him, and called and left a message, but no response, not even an “I don’t have the money but will pay you later” note. (Not that that would have meant much after he didn’t show up to coach at the class as he’d been hired to do.) I’ve know the player since he was nine years old, practiced and coached him many hundreds of hours, used to coach him at tournaments, and gave him hundreds of rides. I later learned he did the same thing with another player, who he owes something like $300. What a disappointment.