Points to look for:
- The wrist is finishing its snap, and the playing elbow and shoulder are now moving to the player's right to allow the stroke to continue naturally.
- The bat has made contact slightly on top and to the left side of the ball, as viewed by the camera. The over the top motion will put topspin on the ball, while the right to left motion will put sidespin on the ball. This combination of spins is harder for an opponent to read than just pure topspin or pure sidespin.
- Since the receiver can clearly see the contact of the ball, deception is achieved by varying the angle at which the bat is held, which will change the proportion of sidespin to topspin. Further deceptions can be made by changing the amount of wrist snap used, or the speed with which the playing arm is moved. The amount of brush can also be varied to add to the deception of the serve.
- More deception can be obtained by making the serve look as similar as possible to the backhand backspin/sidespin serve. If the opponent is fooled by the serve motion, he is likely to put the ball high in the air, or even off the end of the table, since he will be expecting backspin to be on the serve, not topspin.
- The ball has been brushed heavily to give good spin, with only a little bit of solid contact. This is designed to give a slow, spinny serve, that will bounce twice on the opponent's side of the table if left untouched.
