The time when a player is most likely to miss easy shots is at the very start of the match. That’s when a player may not yet be fully warmed up or used to his opponent’s shots yet. So it’s often best to let the other guy serve first, let him mess up on his serve & attack at the start, and then get your chance to serve, when you are more into the match.

There’s another, more mathematical way of looking at this. Suppose in a given match, the server will score 60% of the points. (In reality, it not that high in competition matches—more like 55% or so.) So you figure every time you serve a point, you should score an average of 0.6 points. That means if you mess up on your serve and lose two in a row because you aren’t yet warmed up, you’ve mathematically lost 2 x 0.6 points, or 1.2 points. If you do so when receiving, you’ve only lost 2 x 0.4 points, or 0.8 points. In other words, you can more easily afford to lose a point on the other guy’s serve than on your own—so let him serve when he’s not warmed up, and put off your own serving until you are slightly more warmed up.

The exception, of course, is the player who needs to get a quick lead to build up confidence. If you lose confidence when you fall behind and don’t play as well, then by all means serve first. But in this case, you need to work on your mental game.

Addendum (not in the book): What about choice of sides? At the start of a match, whoever wins the coin flip (or the hiding of the ball under the table) gets choice of serving, receiving, or side to start on. (You change sides after each game, and as soon as someone scores five points in the last, deciding game if it goes that far.) What if on one side it's harder to see the ball (because of the background), or the floor is slippery on that side, or something like that? There are two ways of looking at this.

A close match will go into the final game. In that final game you'll switch sides as soon as someone reaches five points. But that means that you'll likely play more points after switching sides. If you switch sides at 5-4 and the game goes to 10-10, at that point you'd have played nine points on the bad side, eleven on the good side - plus you'll be on the good side for the points at deuce. (If you switch sides at 5-3 then it's twelve on the good side, eight on the bad side.) So if you choose the bad side at the start, you'll start the fifth game on the bad side, and end up playing more points on the good side.

However, some find it harder to get into a match if they start on the bad side. So that player may want to start on the good side, so that when he does move to the bad side he'll be more into the match, and less likely to be bothered by the bad side. 

There is nothing more infuriating than losing to a patient chopper who lets you beat yourself with your own errors. Losing to a chopper is like four-putting in golf; you may have made some good drives to get to the green, but all you remember are the misses at the end. Rather than four-putting forever, let’s learn how to beat the chopper.

A chopper is weakest in the middle, and that is where you should focus most of your attacks. However, you have more table (and so more margin for error) by going diagonally to a corner. Going for a winner down the line often catches the chopper by surprise. A chopper who is not particularly fast is vulnerable at the corners, especially if you aim one way and then go the other; a chopper with inverted on both sides is more vulnerable in the middle. Keep these “basics” in mind when playing any of the following styles.

There are four general ways of playing a chopper. Informally they are called European style, Asian style, Pick-hitting, and Chiseling. While you should favor one of these styles, feel free to combine them in developing your own style against choppers.

In all four cases, focus on attacking the middle, the weakest spot for nearly all choppers. This is imperative when playing choppers.

European Style. The goal here is to bring the chopper in close to the table, and then attack hard, especially at the chopper’s middle. The chopper is too close to the table to make the return, and so misses. When using this technique, you should mostly serve short to bring the chopper in, and try to follow with a strong attack. Sometimes, however, fake the attack, and push short instead – the chopper, in his haste to back up for the expected attack, will have trouble with this ball, and will often have to make a last-second lunge to return it. Even if he makes the return (often a weak one), he will be left jammed over the table and vulnerable to the next ball, which you can promptly loop for a winner. If the chopper stays closer to the table to guard against this drop shot, then you attack. The chopper has absolutely no way of answering this ... in theory.

During a rally, if the chopper makes a good return from away from the table, push short again, and start over. The object in a rally is to catch the chopper too far away from the table or moving backward so that you can drop the ball short, force him to rush in, and attack when he's jammed up against the table. Alternatively, you can push a few balls, keeping the chopper close to the table, and then attack when you think he’s not expecting it.

Asian Style. The goal here is to control the spin and pace of the rally. This method is especially good against a long-pipped chopper, but takes regular practice against a chopper to learn to do effectively. Pips-out players are especially good at this style, but many good inverted players also play this way. This style doesn’t work well against an all-inverted chopper who chops very heavy. Let’s assume you are playing a long-pipped chopper.

Here the aim is to get the chopper off the table, and then attack relatively softly over and over, into the long pips side, but not with full spin. The chopper can only return whatever spin you give him because of the long pips, and so their returns are not particularly heavy, making your continuous soft attack easy. After topspinning a few balls, you find one you like and loop or smash a winner.

Depending on what you are more comfortable with, you can topspin many balls in a row before going for a winner, or only a few - be unpredictable. Mix in pushes. Some players just topspin over and over, not pushing or going for a winner unless they get a very easy one. You should try to vary your spin, sometimes looping very dead, sometimes spinny. However, beware of varying spin returns when you vary your own spin. For example, when you give heavy topspin, expect heavy chop, and so either lift the ball more on your next shot, or push and start over. Don’t fall into the trap of spinning heavily over and over – a chopper loves it, and all you’ll get are heavy chop returns, which can be very difficult to loop consistently.

You can mix in pushing, but too much pushing will throw your own timing off. By topspinning over and over to the long pips side (but not with full spin), you can build up a rhythm that a chopper will have difficulty breaking.

Try to get down to almost eye level with the ball by bending your knees. This will help your consistency by making the lifting easier and will get your eyes closer to the ball so you see it better.

Pick-hitting Style. The goal here is to pick your shots against the chopper's push, and if you can't easily put away the return, push and patiently look for another ball to attack. Unless you have a put-away shot, you rarely attack two balls in a row. Instead it's push a few balls, attack, push a few balls, attack, push a few balls, attack, etc., until you get a putaway shot or the chopper misses. Most of the attacks should go to the chopper's weakest spot, usually the middle, sometimes the forehand. (The backhand chop, often with long pips, is usually a chopper's most consistent shot, but not always.) Most players attack by forehand looping, but you can also drive or smash, forehand or backhand.

You need to vary your pushes to find a ball to attack. For example, a quick, off-the-bounce push to a chopper's long pips often forces a weak return, and any push with long pips has little spin, which you may be able to attack. A sudden push to the forehand can set up your own forehand attack. After a series of heavier pushes, a sudden no-spin or light backspin push can set up a higher return to attack.

The advantage of this style is you don't have to deal with varying chop returns, which are where attackers make most of their mistakes. The disadvantage - besides the obvious patience needed and long rallies that you'll sometimes play - is that the chopper may start attacking. You have to find a balance. The more the chopper attacks effectively, the more you'll need to attack to stop that. 

Chiseling Style. I am not fond of this style. This basically means pushing with the chopper until the chopper either misses, pops up an easy one, or gets impatient and attacks too much. At the higher levels, chiseling is rare, but at the lower and medium levels, it is more common. Since I’m a strong believer that the game has to be FUN (it is a game!), I don’t like this way of winning. Unless you’re a chopper yourself (in which case SOMEONE’s got to push, and it might as well be you), I’d rather see a player lose by attacking in some way. You may lose now, but you’ll learn how to play a chopper better in future matches.

One of the so-called axioms of table tennis is this: Against balls to your middle, if you are close to the table or rushed, favor your backhand; if you are not close to the table or have time, favor the forehand. It's a useful guideline for most players. (Note - a ball to the middle is a ball hit at the transition point between your forehand and backhand, usually the playing elbow.) However, if you have a strong forehand, you might want to cover the middle with it, even when rushed or close to the table. How do you do this? You have two options.

Historically, the standard way was to step off the table to give yourself time to get into position for a forehand, and hit a late but strong forehand. This especially worked for loopers, who can use both spin and speed in powering a forehand loop from a few feet further back than usual. Hitters, however, had a problem with this as hitting the ball late made their shots a lot less effective than their usual hitting at the top of the bounce or earlier. So many hitters, especially pips-out penholders, developed techniques where they'd take the rushed forehand from the middle closer to the table by shortening their stroke, leaning to their left (for a righty), and rotating their upper torso backwards. They would also use this technique when stepping around their backhand to play a rushed forehand.

Some loopers experimented with this, such as 1993 World Men's Singles Champion Jean-Phillipe Gatien, who was famous for looping from close to the table. Since then generations of world-class players have copied that, and many high-level matches become battles over who can loop from closer to the table. The first one that backs up gives the other player time to wind up as well as having more ground to cover. So these days many world-class players (including most of the best ones, pretty much all of them loopers) favor the same technique pioneered by hitters and then adopted by loopers such as Gatien, which is to simply shorten their swing and lean to the left (for righties) and rotate their upper torso to cover the middle with their forehand while staying close to the table. Like hitters, they also adopted this for when stepping around their backhand to play a rushed forehand.

Here's a classic example of this technique, with Gatien himself. Go to the point starting 33 seconds in, and see Gatien's third shot, the forehand 36 seconds in. (Gatien's the lefty on the far side.) Most players, of course, will not do this with as much power as Gatien.

This is also an example of where an old dog can learn new tricks - both older players reading this, and this coach as well. I don't know if I qualify as an "old dog" yet at 53, but it wasn't long ago that I was still coaching most players to take these middle balls farther off the table with their forehands. Now I teach both ways, but favor taking the ball quicker with a shorter stroke. Who did I learn this from? Another "old dog," 1971 World Champion Stellan Bengtsson, now a top U.S. coach. 

One of the axioms of coaching is that you can't fix technique in the middle of a match. Whether coaching someone in a match, or trying to make adjustments yourself in a match, technique is something that needs to be honed in practice so it becomes automatic (i.e. subconscious) in an actual game. The reason for this is that the game is mostly played subconsciously. You don't consciously do technique very well in a game situation, or even choose the proper racket angle - your subconscious does all this after you've honed it in practice. There are just too many things to remember to do for one to do so consciously; the minute you take conscious control all that training is out the window. To fix something in mid-match means to consciously take control, and that rarely goes well.

This is why the conscious mind's task during a match is mostly tactical - choosing what serves to use, how to receive, how to rally, etc. (And even there, much of it becomes subconscious - for example, when your conscious mind decides to attack deep serves, for this to work the subconscious has to get the message so it does so automatically.) The conscious mind should also focus on sports psychology - but that's basically techniques to get the conscious mind out of the way so the subconscious can take control.

There are a few times when you can make basic fixes to stroking problems, though not necessarily technique problems. (I will write this as if I was coaching a player in a match, but you can do this yourself, i.e. coaching yourself in the same way.)

Suppose your player lifts way too much when looping or smashing, and keeps going off the end. (There could be a dozen technical reasons for this; he might be standing up too straight, or using too much arm, or not transferring his weight forward, etc.) Trying to fix his technique directly probably won't work - that's something you'll have to do after the match, when you can zero in on the specific problem and drill the player to do it properly. So what can you do? Instead of trying to fix the technique, understand that the poor technique is putting the ball off the end when it aims for the table. So change the target; tell the player to aim for the top of the net. If the player makes a conscious decision to aim for this, and then lets the subconscious do this, it'll probably get the message and aim for the top of the net - and will likely do just what it was doing before, i.e. aiming too high, and so it'll instead go over the net and hit the table.

Suppose your player has, say, a wristy forehand that causes him to lose control. Telling him to change his technique isn't going to help in that match; it'll just put him in the position of trying to learn a brand new technique, i.e. a wristless forehand he hasn't used before. His subconscious doesn't know what to do, and so you essentially turn the player into a beginner, at least with this one aspect. You could, of course, think of the match as just practice and have the player focus on the technique. Then it's not really a "match" so much as a practice session. But it's a highly inefficient practice session as the player will only haphazardly get to use the shot in question, and when it comes up, guess what? He'll reflexively do what his subconscious is used to doing, i.e. the poor technique. That's why to fix technique you have to practice it in a drill situation, where you do it over and Over and OVER until it is so honed that the subconscious can do it in a match. If it can't, then it'll fall back on old habits during the match, and re-enforce the bad habit.

Suppose your player is standing up too straight, which leads to all sorts of technique problems, such as lifting too much when looping. If he's used to standing up straight all the time, there's not a lot you can do in the middle of a match. On the other hand, if the player sometimes stays low but other times (perhaps in the pressure of a match) stands up too straight, reminding him to stay low is a simple message that the subconscious can get since it's used to staying low, and it solves the technique problems.

Sometimes it's not a technique problem so much as adjusting to something the subconscious hasn't seen before, and so isn't able to react properly. For example, suppose my player keeps blocking an opponent's slow, spinny loops off the end. The player hasn't seen such spinny loops before (at least not enough for the subconscious to learn what to do automatically), and so nearly every block goes off. I could tell him to close his racket angle - but that probably wouldn't work. In a game situation the subconscious automatically chooses the racket angle, and trying to adjust this against these super-spinny loops in the middle of a match is slow and difficult. If you tell your player to close the racket more, and he tries to do so consciously, he will likely lose what little control he had as his conscious mind can't reflexively do the proper angle in the split second it has to do so, and will tend to fall back on the reflexive angle that wasn't working before. So consciously telling oneself to close the racket more isn't really that helpful - the subconscious can see that it's blocking off the end, and is already trying to make adjustments (often too slowly) if you let it. (The more you play the easier these adjustments become.)

However, if you tell the player to block more aggressively, then the spin won't take on the paddle as much, and the player won't be as susceptible to heavy topspin as before. It's a simple message to the subconscious - "block harder!" - and as long as it's not overdone ("harder" doesn't mean "smash"), it will often solve the problem.

Here's my recommendation: focus on developing proper technique in practice, not in matches. Work with a coach or top player if possible, or watch videos. Get the technique down before using it in serious matches. It's okay if you don't yet have the timing for the techniques as long as you are doing it mostly properly. Matches are a great way to learn, but they are not the place to develop technique. 

Everyone has a weakness in their game or a shot they'd like to perfect. How do players go about addressing these problems? Usually in haphazard fashion. They'll either try to work on it in actual matches, or they'll work on it some in practice, along with everything else. The result is usually a little improvement, which often convinces them they are on the right track. And so they progress very slowly. But it can be done much quicker with a little "saturation training."

What this means is that for a time you should focus almost entirely on whatever it is you are trying to improve. It means devoting both practice time and match play to the single-minded goal of improving a weakness or perfecting a strength. You can still practice other things, but during the time of saturation training this should be kept to a minimum, and mostly to maintain other aspects of your game. The saturation training should include lots of shadow practicing the new technique as you work to ingrain it. 

Let's say you want to develop a backhand loop against backspin. You could practice it for 5-10 minutes with a partner, and then look for chances to use it in a game against your usual practice partners. Or you could arrange to practice it for perhaps an hour a day for a time, and arrange practice matches specifically around developing this shot. Let's look at both of these methods of practice, using the backhand loop against backspin as an example.

How do you practice the backhand loop against backspin? Ideally, find a coach or player who can feed multiball to you and go at it. (Make sure to have a coach or top player help you out first so you do it right.) Or practice it against a robot, though don't do this exclusively - you want to learn to react to a ball coming off a racket as well. Or have someone just push your backspin serve back over and over so you can practice the shot. (But remember that you get many more shots per time with multiball or a robot.) Do the shot over and Over and OVER until it is so ingrained you can do it in your sleep. It has to become muscle memory, and that doesn't happen by practicing it haphazardly now and then. You have to practice it relentlessly until it becomes a part of you.

Once the shot is pretty much ingrained in this way, you need to use it in practice matches. And here is where many players make a major mistake - they look to use it against their peers, who may not give you the shot you want. Instead, seek out someone who will normally push your serve back right at your backhand, allowing you to use the shot over and over. Or someone who will serve and push, allowing you to backhand loop. This usually means playing a weaker player, where you can control the start of the rally and get the shot you want to practice. Get the shot ingrained in this way as something you can do regularly in a match.

It's only after this that you would focus on using it in matches against your peers. Now you might not get as many easy chances to do the shot, but when the chance comes, hopefully it's now so ingrained you'll do it automatically. And at this point, it is part of your regular repertoire.

Whatever shot you are trying to perfect, use the same type of thinking shown here to saturate your practice so you can develop the shot. And then keep developing it, while perhaps sometimes using a little saturation training to develop other parts of your game.