No Blog Today – Memorial Day

While you get the day off, I’m hard at work with Tim Boggan putting together Vol. 16 of his History of U.S. Table Tennis. (Plus three hours of private coaching.) We hope to finish by Friday, June 5. I do the page layouts and lots of photo work. Meanwhile, here are a few things to tide you over until tomorrow.

Tip of the Week

Performance vs. Results.

The Spirit of Pong

Here’s the ITTF news item on my new fantasy table tennis novel! Why oh why haven’t you bought one yet??? (Print and Kindle versions.)

Ice Pong

Here’s the video (1:54) as two players genuinely go at it while skating around to music!!!

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Top Ten Reasons to Attend the 2015 US Open

If you aren’t one of the 471 players entered so far in the US Open (Las Vegas, July 6-11), or a parent or coach attending, then consider this a warning. If you don’t go to this years’ US Open, you are going to miss it!!! Just what are you going to miss? (Deadline is Sunday, May 31, with entries accepted until Sunday, June 7, with a $75 late fee.)  So here are the Top Ten Reasons to Enter the US Open.

5:17AM

That’s what time it is as I write this. (I posted it at 5:22AM; it normally goes up between 9AM and 10AM.) No, I didn’t get up early; I’ve been up all night working on various projects. I’m going to go ahead and post this shortly before going to bed. So what have I been working on tonight?

• Samson Dubina’s new coaching book. Get ready to mark your calendars: it’s coming soon!
• This blog, a little shorter than usual as I’m a bit too tired to have deep thoughts right now.
• Regional Table Tennis Association Sample Bylaws. But I won’t be going public with much of my work on regional associations and related issues until this fall. (I’ll be pretty busy all summer due to our summer camps, which start in a few weeks.)
• US Open plans. Are you going? C’mon, you have to!!!
• Top secret discussions regarding the serving rule, which could lead to a better service rule where players don’t hide their serves, leading to peace on earth, the destruction of ISIS, and banana splits for all. I’d explain more but it’s TOP SECRET!!! Shhh.

Arm Problems Non-Problems

Yesterday I did my first private coaching in ten days, due to the arm problems. I blogged yesterday about the new arm brace; it's working great. I was able to do an entire hour without any serious problems. I still can't smash lobs at full power or backhand smash, and I have to go a bit easy on my loops and serves, but overall, it's a miracle. The arm is still injured, and yet I can coach with the arm brace protecting it from further injury. I wonder how many others are out there with arm problems that would be basically fixed by these braces?

Disabled Veterans Camp

We had nine players in the camp yesterday from 10AM-1PM. A big thank you goes to assistants Steve Hochman and Josh Friedlander, who volunteered to help out as coaches/practice partners. It was another great and highly enthusiastic group. We covered all the basics - grip and stance, forehand and backhand, pushing, and serving. We finished with the ten-cup challenge, where everyone had two chances to see how many cups they could knock over with Steve and I feeding multiball. 

The camp was made possible by a grant to USATT from the USOC. Not only is the entire camp paid for - the players don't pay a cent - but they sent a box of goodies for the players. Each of the players received a nice Stiga racket with sponge. It was an honor working with these servicemen. I'd like to thank them for all the hard work they put in, both in uniform and at the camp! I'd also like to thank those who made it possible - the USOC and USATT, the Department of Veteran Affairs, MDTTC officer Wen Hsu, and especially Jasna Reed, USATT's Director of Para Programs. 

Arm Problems Non-Problems

It's a miracle!!! Yesterday for the first time I tried out the new Bandit Therapeutic Forearm Band that I blogged about yesterday. (Paul Choudhury emailed me a month ago recommending this – I should have listened! But I did receive a LOT of recommendations.) I'd thought it would at most be a small help - after all, how much can something wrapped around the outside of the arm help an injury on the inside? Boy, did I get that wrong!

Another Eventful Day

Here’s a rundown of yesterday’s events.

• Disabled Veterans Camp. From 10AM-1PM I ran the first day of a two-day clinic for disabled veterans. (I did this last August as well, so perhaps it’ll be an annual thing.) It was supposed to be four days, but we didn’t get anyone signed up for Wed and Thur. We only had three signed up for the first day, but have about ten coming today.

  I went over the basics – grip, forehand, backhand, pushing, serve, receive, and looping. We used the robot a lot. There was a wheelchair player, so I spent some time with him going over the differences there. I also explained various organizations – USATT and Paralympics, MDTTC, and local leagues. The players were surprisingly good – probably close to 1000 level with a little practice.

  There was an interesting juxtaposition at the start – on three nearly adjacent tables we had two disabled military veterans (one in a wheelchair), two Buddhist monks in full robes who had come in for lessons, and two 2550 players (Wang Qing Liang and Han Xiao).

Tip of the Week

Become a Player of Routine.

Number of Hours and Hits in a Lifetime

Let’s do the calculation for myself.

The Spirit of Pong

It's here!!! This is my fantasy table tennis novel about an American who goes to China to learn the secrets of table tennis, and ends up training with and learning from the spirits of past greats. It's in two formats, Print and Kindle, both on sale from Amazon. I've kept the price low - only $6.99 for print, $5.99 for kindle. Buy now so I can afford to eat tonight!!!

I was up half the night working on the kindle version - lots of formatting.) The cover was created by Mike Mezyan, based on a previous table tennis artwork I picked out. It's a relatively short novel, exactly 100 pages. Here's the description from the back cover:

Andy “Shoes” Blue wants to be a table tennis champion, but he’s just another wannabe American. And so he goes to China to learn the secrets of table tennis. He is trained by the mysterious Coach Wang, and begins an odyssey where he learns the secrets of table tennis from the spirits of Ichiro Ogimura (who helped spawn China’s greatness) and Rong Guotuan (China’s first world champion in 1959, whose tragic story Andy must relive), and must face the mysterious “Dragon.” Can he overcome treachery and learn the final secret of table tennis in time to defeat his ultimate nemesis?

Is There a Mathematical Advantage in Winning a Game If You Serve First?

No.

I guess I should explain. Some believe that serving first is a mathematical advantage in winning a game, since it means you will sometimes serve more than an opponent in a game. For example, suppose you serve first, and win 11-7. At that point you will have served ten times, your opponent eight. So you won because you served first? No!!! Even if your opponent had the two missing serves, and even if he happened to win both points (the odds are against it), you still would have won 11-9. Mathematically, serving first means you have a better chance of winning by a larger margin (or keeping it closer when you lose), but it makes zero difference mathematically in who wins.

Here's another way of looking at it. A game to 11 is really a best of 20, where we go to deuce if it reaches 10-all. In the case of deuce, you alternate serves, and both players have served ten times before that, so there's no mathematical advantage there to serving first. If it doesn't go to deuce, it means that one of the players scored 11 points within the first 20 points - it just so happens that in our scoring system, we stop the game as soon as someone reaches 11, and so don't play out the entire 20 points. If we did, to use the example above, then both players would serve ten times, and it might change the final score, but no matter how you work it, the player who scored 11 points first is going to win that game, even if the other player were given his missing serves.

In the example above, if the loser were to win both points on his missing two serves, he'd still lose 11-9. If he split the two points, he'd lose 12-8. He might even lose both of them, and lose 13-7.

Miscellaneous Stuff

Dying Arts in Table Tennis

The game has really changed quite a bit in the 39 years since I started in 1976. Some of it has been for the better, but some has been for the worse. From a technique point of view, the biggest loss is the dying of so many techniques and styles that were so common in the past. The game is simply more interesting when there are more styles - modern players often have no clue that the game wasn't nearly always a match-up of looper vs. looper, that there used to be huge battles between styles. Here's a short listing of ten dying styles or techniques.