Playing a tournament in absolutely perfect conditions is like that mythical annual vacation at the beach where everything goes perfect. But life is not a beach vacation, and neither is table tennis. You not only should be prepared for poor conditions, and as players, you should expect them. This doesn't mean you should just accept them; by all means work to make sure tournament and club directors have great conditions. But as players you have to adapt to the playing environment. Tactical players adapt; non-tactical players complain. Here's a short primer.

• Slippery floors. If your club has great floors, there's nothing more frustrating than showing up at a tournament primed to play like greased lightning, only to find you're playing on a skating rink. Most major tournaments are played on concrete or wood floors, and unless they are treated properly, they will be slippery. So what can you do?

  First, have a good pair of table tennis shoes. They are designed to give the best possible traction. Make sure to have a new pair as worn-out ones won't give as much traction. Many players who play at clubs with good floors get lazy on this, letting their shoes wear out, and don't realize this until they are stuck on slippery floors. I suggest getting news ones for such tournaments, and use them only when needed, until the ones you use in practice are falling apart.

  Second, step on a wet cloth between points. Watch the top players and you'll see this all the time if they aren't playing on good floors. It can be a wet paper towel or a cloth, it doesn't matter. You'll get much better traction after stepping on it for several points.

  Third, use it to your advantage. Players can't move as well on slippery floors, so move them around!

• Poor lighting or background. There's only one good answer here - adjust. You do this by practicing. One common mistake is that sometimes only one side has a bad background. So make sure to practice on both sides of the table, and on any tables you might play on that might have bad backgrounds.

  And once again, use it to your advantage. If the lighting or background is poor, it's harder for players to follow the ball. This favors attackers, since defenders are trying to pick up on a fast-moving ball. This doesn't mean wild attacks, but when it's harder to see, play a bit more aggressively, and expect shorter rallies.

• Bad tables, balls, or a breeze. This means the ball is going to take funny hops, or move about in the breeze. It's going to be difficult to play well, so accept that. Rallies will tend be short, and will favor the player who focuses on consistency. This doesn't mean completely changing your game, but focus on keeping the ball in play and letting the opponent make mistakes off the erratic movement of the ball. (Note - there are generally two types of "bad" tables - ones with slippery surfaces, where the ball slides, and ones where the ball dies when it hits near the side-lines or end-lines. Good tables have tops that are thick enough - usually one inch - so the ball bounces consistently all over the surface.)
   
• Humidity. There's nothing more frustrating than doing that perfect loop you've done ten thousand times before, and the ball slides off your racket into the net. When it's humid, both the ball and racket can get damp, and it'll change the characteristics of how the ball comes off your racket. How do you combat this?

  First, make sure to have a dry towel to dry your racket and the ball off with. If you sweat a lot, you should bring two towels, one for you, one for the racket and ball. Then use the towel(s) a lot, making sure the racket, ball, and your hands are dry. (A wet non-playing hand means the ball gets wet; a wet playing hand means you can't grip the racket very well.)

  Second, adapt tactically. You won't be able to overpower an opponent with spin, so loopers have to either go to more drive loops (sinking the ball into the sponge, and so less spin, more speed, not as consistent), or steady loops where you mostly keep the rally going. Hitters and blockers have the advantage here, so you might do more of that - but often they too have problems with the humidity as it changes the friction on their racket, and so they block loops into the net. One of the most successful ways to play in humid conditions against a looper is to simply dead block over and over, and watch the poor looper try to loop with any effectiveness.

• Cold. I've seen many players in the winter struggle in their early matches because their racket is cold - and they often don't even notice it. Or they aren't warmed up because their racket was cold when they were warming up, and now that the racket is warmer, it's playing different than it was when they were warming up. A cold racket plays deader. So if you are driving to a tournament and it's cold outside, keep your racket inside the car with you, not in the trunk where it'll get cold.

Finally, a reminder - when faced with bad conditions, you can either surrender to them and lose, or take advantage of them and win. Save the complaining for when you aren't playing, which usually means after the tournament is done. 

All players need good put-away shots, whether it be forehand or backhand loops or smashes. But when should you use them? Here are four theories on this.

1. When the ball is high. Patiently work until you get that high ball, and don't get impatient and go for a crazy shot.  
2. When the ball lands toward the middle of the table, depth-wise. These are often easy to put away or at least attack strongly. It's why coaches stress keeping the ball mostly short at the start of a point (by serving or pushing short) and mostly deep once the rally begins. Most soft topspin and backspin shots that don't go deep but don't die over the table (i.e. backspin balls that would bounce twice given the chance) should at least be attacked pretty hard, and by the advanced intermediate level they should be consistently put away.
3. The 51% Ogimura Doctrine - if you have a 51% chance of making your put-away (assuming your opponent can't return it), you go for it. If he may return it, you need a higher percentage.
4. Flashbulb Theory of Larry (FTL). With experience, there'll come times when a little flashbulb goes off in your head that tells you that you have read the ball perfectly and are in perfect position. The ball might be low and deep, and ripping it might be seemingly difficult, but if that flash bulb goes off, then you should probably take the shot. In fact, not taking the shot could throw you off due to indecision. Of course, the key here is having an accurate flash bulb that only goes off when you really have read the ball and are set to take the shot - and that takes experience. And even when that flashbulb goes off, you don't have to hit the ball Faster Than Light, just hard enough to win the point. 

Table tennis is a game of technique, timing, and adjustment. When you miss a shot, that means something went wrong with your technique or timing. That means something went wrong with your muscle memory, which includes both the technique and timing. So what should you do to get back and reinforce that muscle memory?

You shadow practice the shot. Immediately after missing, before whatever went wrong has a chance to become part of your muscle memory, do it the right way. Imagine the same incoming ball you just missed against, including its speed, spin, and location. Then shadow practice the shot the way you should have done it, and visualize the ball doing what it was supposed to do, i.e. the perfect shot. This is how you reinforce the correct muscle memory. Put the feel of the miss out of your memory; thinking about it only reinforces in your muscle memory something you don't want reinforced.

This is especially important for beginning and intermediate players, whose muscle memory is not as developed, but advanced players should do this as well to re-enforce the proper muscle memory. Ultimately, this is the goal of the constant practice needed to become a top player - the primary purpose is to develop and reinforce those muscle memories so they'll remember to come out when needed in a match. 

Some players like to step off the table and just topspin away, turning many opponents into blockers who are jammed at the table, unable to do anything other than struggle to keep the ball in play. These topspinners can seemingly go on forever, and eventually either outlast or wear out the blocker, or find an easy ball to loop away. At higher levels, such players are often overpowered, as it's the very nature of their game that the opponent can take the attack - but it takes a certain level of strokes and footwork to do this consistently. And often this is exactly what the off-table topspinner wants his opponent to do, to try to overpower him, and thereby make mistakes.

So how does one beat such a player? Here are some standard tactics.

1. Bring him in and then attack. Do this with short serves and short receives, and then catch him too close to the table with your first attack, before he can get into his comfortable off-table pocket. Since these players hang off the table, attacking their serve often plays right into their game. You don't have to win the point on the first attack after bringing them in; it's sufficient to force a weak return that you can follow up with a winner.
2. Get your forehand into play. Because he plays off the table, you have more time to get your forehand into position, rather than just block. You might have to take a half step off the table to give yourself time. (Many players get stuck blocking because they are too jammed at the table, and so don't have time to do more than block.) It's important that you punish the opponent for his soft play by attacking, and especially being ready to attack when you get a weak return, in particular balls that land short. When the ball does land short, blast a winner to a wide angle or right at the opponent's playing elbow (midway between forehand and backhand). (If your forehand is so weak that you cannot attack these soft topspins when you are in position, then you need to work on your forehand attack.)
3. Mostly attack the middle and wide backhand. Generally avoid the forehand, where most off-table topspinnners have more range, get more spin, and have better counter-attacks. (So generally, when going after the middle, perhaps aim it slightly toward the backhand side.) But it depends on the player. Some off-table topspinners are more vulnerable on the forehand side. Unless he's simply a much better player, he's unlikely to beat you in a duel between his off-table backhand, where he has to cover both his wide backhand and middle, against your forehand looping or smashing, assuming you don't try to overpower him on one shot. Players like this often seem open to the wide the corners, but in reality they usually cover that area pretty well. So make sure to go to both the wide backhand and middle, and perhaps the wide forehand, depending on the player. (This was one of the reasons Ilija Lupulesku was so successful for years despite backing off the table so much - players relentlessly went after his wide backhand and didn't go after his middle nearly enough.)
4. Change the pace. Do this with either soft loops or soft blocks. Find out early which side he's more vulnerable to a change of pace, but it's usually on the forehand side. This is where a chop or sidespin block can be valuable. He'll likely make a weak return that you can attack, often catching him too close to the table or throwing off his time. If an opponent gets into a rhythm where he's getting everything back, it's imperative that you change the pace to throw off that rhythm.
5. Be patient. Your goal isn't to blast a winner every shot; your goal is to play for an easy ball to blast for a winner, usually a ball that lands short that you can blast to a wide corner or right at his middle. 

While I always urge players to compete to win events, let's face it - one of the great thrills of table tennis is pulling off a great upset. So let's look at how to maximize your chances of doing so.

First, let's define "great upset" as beating someone who really is much better than you. If you've improved a lot and beat someone rated a lot higher only because you are underrated, that's not really a "great upset"; that just means you've gotten better. And that, of course, is better than pulling off a one-time great upset!

But whatever your current level is, you still want to maximize your chances of pulling off an occasional big upset. How do you do this? There are three main reasons why big upsets take place. They are: 1) the weaker player plays great; 2) the stronger player plays poorly; and 3) the weaker player wins because of a style advantage.

Note that tactical play comes into play in all three. The weaker player may play "well" because of smart tactics, the stronger player may play "poorly" because of poor tactics, and the weaker player may have a style advantage only because he plays smart tactics to make use of that style advantage, or because the stronger player plays poor tactics.

The reality is that most major upsets involve at least a little of all three. You have control over only how well you play, and so a key to pulling off upsets is to simply play well, so that opportunistically you are ready to win if the stronger player opens the door by playing poorly, or if it turns out you have some sort of style advantage.

Let's look at all three of these aspects.

1) Weaker Player Playing Well

Some would argue that the key to beating stronger players is to play super-aggressive and hope you get hot. This rarely works, and usually just makes things easier for the stronger player. What does work is to simply do whatever you do best, but do it as well as you can - while at the same time having at least one shot that consistently wins points against the stronger player. You don't need to force the winning shot over and over; if you do, you'll just start missing. But it needs to be there when you need it, and you should maximize how often you can use it. It might not be a one-shot putaway; it might be a series of shots, such as an aggressive backhand, quick blocking, or steady looping.

Psychologically, you need to go into the match really believing you can win. You really should do this in all matches, no matter how good the opponent is. Even if you can't beat someone, you'll do a lot better if you play believing you can, and play accordingly. This puts you in a perfect mental condition to win - you won't start thinking about the big upset you are about to pull off (and thereby fall apart) because you'll be expecting to win.

You also need to get into "the zone," that mental place where you are playing almost unconsciously, where everything happens naturally. Most players have had this experience sometime; they key is to reproduce it while playing. Once in the "the zone," you can maximize your level and your chances of winning.

It doesn't matter whether you are about to pull off a big upset because the opponent is playing poorly, you are playing well, or if you have a style advantage; in all three cases if you start to think about the upset you are about to pull off, you will likely be pulled out of the "zone" you were in, and your level of play will drop.

2) Stronger Player Playing Poorly

You can maximize the chances of the stronger player not playing well by throwing variation at him. If you give him the same serves, receives, and rallying shots over and over, he'll get used to them, get into a rhythm, and mostly likely play his level. So perhaps throw more variations than normal against him, especially with your serves, and keep him off balance. It's a common way to blow a match, where a player finds something that works, but so overuses it that it stops working. You want to stick with what works, but you also want to stretch it out so it lasts the entire match. At the same time, once you find something that works, you want to maximize its usage without overusing it so that he gets used to it. It's a fine balance.

If you do find something that gives the stronger player trouble, here's a simple way to maximize its usage without wearing it out: use it early in a game, again in the middle, and then come back to it at the end. Often I've seen players hold back on a tricky serve, a heavy push, or something else until it's close, when if they used this earlier, the game might never be close.

3) Style Advantage

If you have a style advantage, you also maximize your chances of winning if you go in truly believing you can win. Psychologically, when you are about to beat a stronger player it's very easy to start thinking about it and thereby fall apart. Instead, if you really have a style that gives the stronger player problems, convince yourself of the truth: he is not a "stronger" player, except perhaps against other players - and he's not playing other players, he's playing you!

However, one of the things about stronger players is that they often adjust. This means you also need to make adjustments as the match goes on to keep that style advantage. If there's something you do that gives the stronger player problems, he'll likely look for ways to avoid that, even if it means playing his "B" game. Your job is to either find ways to keep using whatever gives him trouble, or to find ways to beat his "B" game. In the latter case, your style advantage has already done its job, forcing the stronger player to play this "B" game, and suddenly he might not necessarily be the "stronger player."

A key aspect of having a style advantage is knowing what gives the stronger player trouble, so you can use that part of your style that does give him trouble, i.e. the style advantage. Sometimes this will happen automatically, if your styles just happens to be one that gives him fits. More often it helps to do a little scouting, and find out what gives that player problems. Watch him play, ask around, experiment early in the match, and learn all you can. Information is power, and often leads to victory. 

There are few more tactical matches then a clash that occurs when a stronger player faces a weaker player with a style advantage. Can he tactically adjust? Can the weaker player tactically keep using whatever it is in his style that works, or force the stronger player into his "B" game? Matches like this is where you need to put on your tactical cap and win the tactical battle. At the same time, remember that tactics should be simple. Don't overthink; find a few simple tactics that work, adjust them as needed as the match goes on, and focus on playing your best.