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Want to improve your table tennis game? Start here with the most important rules to learn, how to score and umpire matches, grip types, playing styles, how to choose your first racket, all about spin and how to play the basic strokes of ping-pong.

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Ping-Pong Blog

ITTF Unveils New itTV Channels Page

Tuesday March 16, 2010
Waiting to Watch...
itTV logo courtesy www.ittf.com
The ITTF have replaced their old itTV page with a new home page that has not one, not two, not three, but six (6!) online table tennis TV channels! Woo hoo!


According to the ITTF announcement, the six channels are as follows:

  • MAIN - for all the ITTF world events and the Pro Tour
  • JUNIORS - for a selection of events from the Global Junior Programme
  • EDUCATION & COACHING - to keep up with the news of the Programme (I think they mean the Global Junior Programme)
  • DEVELOPMENT - to watch videos from the Programme (ditto)
  • PRESIDENT INTERVIEWS - to stay tuned with the ITTF President opinions (although it could have been interesting if it had been the President interviewing other people, as I first thought...)
  • WORLD OF TABLE TENNIS - to watch the ITTF highlights show and much more...

Apparently 16:9 HD streaming will be available, with streaming beginning on 19th March at 9.30 GMT, and with live streaming starting on the 20th March at 16.00 GMT with the German Open Women's Singles Quarterfinals.

Although the streaming hasn't started quite yet, you can check out the announcement at the ITTF website, and view the new itTV page here.

Only a couple of days to go - and all of the channels will be available for free (yay!), so warm up your Internet connections and put some bandwidth aside for the best of the ITTF!

Table Tennis Talk in the Forum

Friday March 12, 2010
Waldner back on the winners list!
Photo by courtesy of the ITTF
It's been another busy week in our About.com Table Tennis forum, with a number of table tennis topics being discussed. Naturally enough, there has been a certain focus on the Hearing Panel's decision regarding the 2009 US Nationals Boycott, but there has still been plenty of other things to chat about. Here's a sample from the week that was:


2009 US Nationals Boycott

  • Boycott or player extortion? You might be surprised which respected sports people have been involved in similar circumstances.
  • Two of the boycotters managed to still compete in the Nationals trials - was this a Texas travesty?
  • The first thread referring to the Hearing Panel's decision.

Elsewhere on the forum:

2010 English National Championships Mini-site

Thursday March 11, 2010
Baggaley Bags His Third Title!
ETTA Logo courtesy www.englishtabletennis.org.uk
Andrew Baggaley bagged his third English National Championships, while Joanna Parker defended her title at the International Sports Centre in Sheffield, England.

While both of these players deserve congratulations, I thought I would also extend a special mention to those responsible for the special mini-site dedicated to the tournament. They have done a fine job in including the draws, results, photo galleries, live streaming (at the time!), and video highlights of the tournament.

Wouldn't it be nice to see more of these style of mini-sites for tournaments around the world?

Ping-Pong Playback Feature - Pros and Cons

Tuesday March 9, 2010
Play it again (and again), Sam!
© 2007 Greg Letts, licensed to About.com, Inc.
I was asked recently by a reader about the usefulness of the playback mode of certain ping-pong tables. He had been enjoying using this feature of his own table, but was wondering if there was any negatives involved with practicing in playback mode. He couldn't find anything on the site about it, so he was concerned that I must think that using the playback feature isn't even worth talking about. Time to fix that!

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