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Table Tennis Basic Concepts

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.

Ping-Pong Fundamentals

Ping-Pong Blog

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!

Table Tennis Tactics - A Simple Framework

Friday March 5, 2010
Are tactics as simple as tic-tac-toe?
© 2007 Greg Letts, licensed to About.com, Inc.
Every so often in table tennis, something happens that leaves me scratching my head and wondering if I have been looking at things the wrong way around all this time.

Case in point: table tennis tactics.

When analyzing tactics, we often look at a point on video, watch the result, then go back and work out what happened, treating it as if a player planned it along the lines of - I'll serve here, so he'll probably do that, then I'll do this, and he'll probably do that, and then I can hit a winner.

But is that the way things actually happen?

Table Tennis in the News

Friday March 5, 2010
I'd Pay To See That!
ITTF logo courtesy www.ittf.com
The March edition of Butterfly News is now out, and while most of it still reads like a giant Butterfly advertisement, there are still some nuggets of great information in there - such as the high speed photographic step by step analysis of Timo Boll's forehand topspin down the line, and the different possibilities for positioning yourself before serving and the reasons why you might choose one over the other.

Also on the ITTF website is an intriguing article about a new and different type of table tennis competition to be held in China - the Spectacular Pairs Tournament. I'll leave it to you to read the details, but with a line up including Guo Yuehua & Chen Xinhua, Koji Matsushita & Hiroshi Shibutani, Ulf Carlsson & Jörgen Persson, the Saive brothers, and even a female pairing of Krisztina Toth & Renata Strbikova, and with the winners being the ones to produce the most exciting table tennis, it sounds like it has the potential to be a real crowd pleaser.

Nationals Boycott: Decision Reached by Hearing Panel

Wednesday March 3, 2010
Hear Hear!
USATT logo courtesy www.usatt.org
The hearing panel appointed to decide on the complaint by the USATT against the 6 defaulters/boycotters at the 2009 National Championships, has listened to testimony, considered the evidence and come to a decision on the fate of the 6 players involved. You can view the full decision on the USATT website.

Naturally enough, the decision has also sparked off a round of discussion in our own About.com Table Tennis forum, with members commenting on the decision and making a few points of their own, such as:

  • What exactly were the various demands for hospitality?
  • If Michael Landers was a signatory on the original demand document, but later changed his mind and agreed to play, should he be punished for being part of the original threat/extortion attempt against the USATT?
  • If the demand document was an extortion attempt, should the USATT have negotiated with the players? (The USATT did agree to consider a proposal to double the prize money for the Men's and Women's Singles in 2010)
  • Why didn't any of the other players involved bother to give testimony or a written response, other than Han Xiao?
  • What exactly does the phrase "USATT activities or events" cover?

And a couple of thoughts of my own come to mind:

  • Is the USATT still going to consider doubling the prize money for the Men's and Women's Singles in 2010? And if they do actually double it, would that be a tacit admission that the defaulters were correct, and that the prize money should have been higher?
  • Who started the original rumor that prize money could be higher in the first place?
  • How do the top USATT Women feel about being left out of the original demand document? I think there might be some strained friendships between the top men and women at the moment.
  • Will we see an appeal from any of the six players involved?

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