The serve is one of the most misunderstood techniques in table tennis. Many players serve just to get the ball in play, or to keep the opponent from attacking, or to try to score winners with every serve. So what is the purpose of the serve?

The primary purpose of the serve is to set up your attack. Unless the receiver does something to stop your attack, you should serve and attack essentially every time you serve. This doesn't mean your first attack has to be a winner, but it should be aggressive. 

In the modern game, attacking usually means looping, either forehand or backhand. Most favor the usually more powerful forehand, but others loop from either side, depending on where the receive is, and some may favor the backhand loop. Others use the serve to set up their smash, either with a serve and smash, or a serve to set up a loop, and the loop to set up the smash. (This is rare at the higher levels, where looping completely dominates, but is still common at the intermediate level.) 

This doesn't mean you don't sometimes serve for winners. In fact, players who do not have any "trick" serves that are designed to trick an opponent into an easy miss are lacking in their service game. (Trick serves usually only work a few times, however.) Most serves should be to set up the attack. Even if the serve is a trick serve where you hope the opponent will miss the serve outright, you should assume it's coming back, and be ready for the follow-up, which should be an attack unless the opponent does something to stop it. If anything, you should be so expecting your "trick" serves to come back that when an opponent misses it, you are surprised as you were so waiting to follow up with an attack.

Even defensive players should use the serve to set up an attack, even if it's an occasional one. For example, the defensive player may serve and look for a specific return (or just a generally weak one), and if he gets it, attack. If he doesn't, then he may go back on defense. 

Some players may use the serve to set up their best rallying shot. For example, a blocker might serve long, and then quick-block the next ball. Or a counter-hitter might serve short topspin, which brings the receiver in over the table while starting a topspin rally, and then the server can get right into aggressive counter-hitting, with the receiver perhaps jammed to the table and so unable to start the rally off well. 

Once you get into the mindset that the purpose of the serve is to set up your attack, then you can begin to gain experience on which serves set up which returns, and how and where to best to attack them. Once you have this serve and attack mind-set, you'll soon be dominating the points on your serve. We'll finish with an acronym that I just made up and that's a bit dated for the pre-looping years (when hitting dominated), but always remember to "Serve and Make A Strong Hit" - SMASH!

I've included links to some pertinent articles. 

1. Learn to serve with lots of spin by accelerating the racket through the ball and grazing it.
   (Here's the article Serving Short with Spin. Here's another, Five Steps to a Great Spin Serve.)
2. Learn to serve various spins, including backspin, side-backspin, sidespin, side-topspin, and topspin, and be able to serve with sidespin in either direction.
   (Here's the article Importance of Serve Variety.)
3. Learn to serve low.
   (Here's the article Serving Low.)
4. Learn to control the depth and direction of the serve.
   (Here's the article Depth Control of Serves.)
5. Learn to serve with spin using a semi-circular motion so you can create different spins with the same motion by varying where in the motion you contact the ball. 
   (Here's the article Semi-Circular Motion on Serves.)
6. Learn to minimize and do quickly this semi-circular motion so receiver has trouble picking up contact.
   (See same article linked in #5.) 
7. Learn to change the direction of your follow-through with your racket the split second after contact to mislead the receiver.
   (Here's the article Exaggerate the Opposite Motion on Serves.)
8. Learn to fake spin and serve no-spin by contacting the ball near the handle.
   (Here's the article Those Dizzying No-Spin Serves.)
9. Learn to serve fast & deep as a variation to your spin serves.
   (Here's the article Fifteen Important Deep Serves. Here's another, Turn Opponents into Puppets with Long Serves. Here's How to Ace an Opponent.)
10. Learn to follow up your serves.
    (Here's the article The Purpose of the Serve.)

What does it mean to move up a level in table tennis? I'd define two players to be on different levels if it would be a major upset if one defeated the other. Another way of looking at it would be to say that if the stronger player plays his normal level, he would win pretty much every time. Based on this, I'd say a level in table tennis ranges from about 300 points at the lower levels (under 1000 or so), to about 100 points at the higher levels (over 2500 or so). For most USATT members, a level would be about 200 rating points or so.

How can you move up a level in table tennis? It means improving all parts of your game, as one weak link in your game is like a weak link in a chain.

You could work hard, dramatically improve one aspect of your game, and hope to move up a level. But it's not that simple. Suppose you develop a really nice forehand loop. With this weapon, you would think that your level would go up dramatically. And sure enough, you will do better against players around your own level. But when you play players a level higher, their level is far enough ahead of yours that they'll simply do something to disarm your new weapon. They may serve short, push short, push very heavy, throw spinny or fast serves at you, use ball placement, block well, force backhand exchanges, play quick shots so you don't have time to loop, or simply attack first. In each case, they'll take your weapon away from you, and you still won't move up that coveted level. Often, a stronger player will seem to win on one of his strengths, when in fact he is winning by exploiting a weakness of yours that allows him to use his strength.

The lesson is that to move up a level, you need to improve your overall game, not just one aspect. A player who is a level stronger than you rarely defeats you on one aspect of his game (although many erroneously believe this to be true); he does so by improving the overall level of his game. (There are, of course, players who have improved all but one aspect of their game, and by improving that one final aspect, suddenly go up the coveted level!) A strength in your game can compensate for a weakness, but only to a certain extent.

So how do you go about improving the overall level of your game? To move up a level in table tennis, you have be able to match the players a level higher than you on five key things:

1. You have to return your opponents' serves as well as they return your serves.
2. You have to either rally as fast as your opponents can rally, or force your opponents to rally at your pace (by slowing the pace down with pushes, slow loops, controlled drives, etc.). Rallying at their pace means either hitting at their pace, or simply reacting to their pace (i.e. blocking or chopping). "Pace" means both speed and quickness.
3. You have to be able to react to your opponents' rallying spins (loops, pushes, chops, lobs, spins returned by long pips, etc.) as well as they react to yours.
4. You have to be able to end the point (i.e. smashing, loop kills) as well as your opponents do. This means either being able to end the point as well as your opponents, or being able to stop them from ending the point better than you can by not giving them shots where they can end the point. Ending the point does not always mean ending it with one shot - it can also mean a series of strong shots that win the point.
5. And finally, you have to have at least one strength that threatens your opponents as much as their strengths threaten you, and a way of getting your strength(s) into play.

You may have noted that tactics is not one of the five "keys." This is because tactics is part of all five keys. Stronger/weaker tactics simply make you stronger/weaker in each key.

Do some (but not all) of the above five keys, and your performance in a tournament will go up some, perhaps half a level, but not a full level. Developing a single "overpowering" strength won't raise your level as much as you'd think, as opponents a level higher will beat you on the less developed parts of your game. Even players at your "previous" level will still often beat you by exploiting these weaknesses. But ... if you improve all five things, even just a little bit, you'll go up dramatically.

What's stronger, a chain with four powerful links and one weak one, or a chain with five pretty strong ones?

Two of the most common reasons players don't play their best are overplaying and underplaying. Overplaying is when a player goes for shots that are beyond his level, such as trying to rip winners over and over rather than use more consistent opening attacks to set up easier winners (as well as winning a surprising number of points outright as opponents miss against your steady opening attack). Underplaying is the opposite - when a player plays too safe. Both of these often take place when a player is nervous. Under pressure, many players do one or the other, either getting wildly aggressive or too safe. The key is to find the right balance.

The way to develop a high-level attack isn't to rip every ball; it's to attack at the level you are consistent, and keep working to increase that level until you have a high-level attack. Way too many players want to rip that first ball when, if they'd take just a little off the shot, they'd be far more consistent and on the path to improvement. Top players may rip the ball harder on the first shot, but that's because they are farther along that road to improvement - they've put in the hours of developing that shot. So should you. So focus on making strong first attacks, and perhaps rip the next ball. A good general rule is this - until you have an easy pop-up, never attack at more than 80% speed.

The reverse are the players who have developed strong attacks, but are afraid to use them. If that's you, then the key is to simply learn to use those attack shots you've worked so hard to develop. If you can't do it in a tournament, perhaps work your way up to that. First use them in practice or league matches, especially against weaker players. Then against players your own level. When you can do that, then start using them in tournaments. If you have difficulty doing that, then the answer might be to play a series of tournaments in a row. That way you'll get used to playing tournament matches. You might only have to do this one time, i.e. find a series of weekends where you can play tournament after tournament, until you get used to it, and using the shots you do in practice becomes more natural to do in tournaments. Once you can do this one time, it's a habit you should be able to keep for a lifetime, at least as long as you practice enough to keep the shots in practice.

So a key to table tennis is that you not only have to develop your shots, you have to use them at the proper level, without over- or under-playing them, and keep developing your game so that this middle area gets better and better. 

There's a best-selling book called "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. The book lists these as the "7 Habits": 1) Be proactive; 2) Begin with the End in Mind; 3) Put First Things First; 4) Think Win/Win; 5) Seek First to Understand, Then to Be Understood; 6) Synergize; and 7) Sharpen the Saw. (There's also a best-selling sort of sequel from the same author, "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens.")

These books have had a major impact on many people's lives. And there's a correlation between some of these and the habits of "highly effective table tennis players." For example, you don't get to be a top player without being proactive, i.e. striving to do what it takes to improve. However, I'm not going to try to create a one-to-one correlation between the seven habits listed and ones used by top table tennis players. Instead, I'm going to list my own list of seven habits of "highly effective table tennis players." Follow these 7 habits, and see how it improves your game. Here's my list:

1. Loves to practice.
   It's not enough to just put in the motions. You have to want to improve, and want to so badly that you love practicing as it allows you to do what you want to do. Going through the motions with your mind blankly just going along is a waste of time. If you love to practice, you'll improve far faster than one who is just doing the motions.
2. Proactive in finding ways to improve, strategically and tactically.
   Strategic thinking is about developing your game for the future. Tactical thinking is about developing the habit of winning with what you have. You need to learn both, and you need to take the initiative in doing so. Don't leave this to your opponents, who will happily figure it out for you while beating you in competition. But when they do beat you, that's the feedback you need to analyze so you can find ways to improve.
3. Is working toward specific goals, both short-, intermediate-, and long-term.
   Mindless practice is just that - mindless. Decide what you need to work on, and focus on that like a laser.
4. A perfectionist in most or all aspects of the game.
   If you strive for perfection, you'll come a lot closer than one who strives for something less.
5. Never gives up, whether in tournaments or practice.
   Fighters do a lot better than those who don't have a burning desire to win every point.
6. Loves to compete and win.
   If winning isn't fun, then why are you practicing? Sure, you could be practicing just for the sake of having better shots or for exercise, but this isn't about the "seven habits of highly effective exercisers or having better shots without trying to become a better player."
7. Respects opponent's game while looking to dominate it.
   If you don't respect an opponent's game, it's hard to try your best against it.