January 16, 2013

Rating Cutoffs at Nationals

There's been a lot of discussion recently about the ratings cutoffs at the USA Nationals. The problem is that at both the Nationals and the U.S. Open they use ratings from well before the tournament to determine eligibility, but up-to-date ratings from just before the tournament for seeding. There's a somewhat good reason for this. Players need to know in advance what events they are eligible for so they can schedule their travel and hotel. So they used to use these older ratings for both eligibility and seeding. But this led to players with very high ratings getting listed with much lower ratings, both for eligibility and seeding. So USATT decided to at least use the more recent ratings for seeding, even if it meant seeding a player with a rating that was over the cutoff. While this does make some sense, it leads to a lot of confusion and irritation when a player is listed with a rating that's over the cutoff.

How serious a problem is this? Below is a chart of the rating winners and runner-ups in rating events at the recent USA Nationals. (Here are the results.) Of the 15 Champions, 9 went in with ratings already over the cutoff. Of the 15 runner-ups, 4 went in with ratings over the cutoff.

Rating Event

Winner

Rating
Before

Eligible
with
Newer
Rating?

Runner-up

Rating
Before

Eligible
with
Newer
Rating?

U-2400 RR

Alto, Earl James

2365

Yes

Eider, Cory

2474

No

U-2300 RR

Cheng, Newman

2341

No

Chow, Brandon

2212

Yes

U-2200 RR

Seemiller Jr., Daniel R.

2258

No

Ruhlmann, Johannes

2059

Yes

U-2100 RR

Shen, Kevin

2018

Yes

Ruhlmann, Johannes

2059

Yes

U-2000 RR

Shen, Kevin

2018

No

Chan, Ming Yung

1930

Yes

U-1900 RR

Yang, Grace

1617

Yes

Kumar, Nikhil

1752

Yes

U-1800 RR

Wong, Jordan

1857

No

Kumar, Shivam

1845

No

U-1700 RR

Lam, Benjamin

1643

Yes

Ackerman, Estee

1578

Yes

U-1600 RR

Yung, Timothy

1348

Yes

Quant, Brandon

1736

No

U-1500 RR

Bai, William

1525

No

Yung, Timothy

1348

Yes

U-1400 RR

Bai, William

1525

No

Meredith, Aidan

1248

Yes

U-1300 RR

Bai, William

1525

No

Nagvekar, Sanam

816

Yes

U-1200 RR

Puri, Sahil

1107

Yes

Nagvekar, Sanam

816

Yes

U-1100 RR

Puri, Sahil

1107

No

Chandrashekaran, Shreyas

1072

Yes

U-1000 RR

Puri, Sahil

1107

No

Chandrashekaran, Shreyas

1072

No

How can they fix this problem? They could switch to using more recent ratings, but the problem with that (before) was there wasn't an easy way to notify players if they were no longer eligible for an event. But now USATT keeps player emails on their database, so they can easily notify players of changes. So they can email the player and ask if they want a refund or to play in the next higher event they hadn't entered in, and give them 24 hours to respond (after which they'd be automatically put in the next higher event). Or they could just put a checkbox on the entry form for players to check their preference. It shouldn't be that difficult to make such a change, other than the usual organizational inertia.

One suggestion I've heard is that players with ratings over the cutoff should simply be allowed to play, but not be allowed to advance out of their preliminary round robin group. But why would a player over the cutoff of a rating event want to play in the preliminary RR group if he can't advance?

One thing us older players have to accept is that rating events will tend to be dominated by junior players. Juniors both learn faster and are often training regularly with coaches. However, that doesn't mean they can't be beat - you just have to play well and play smart. (Remember the old saying - youth and skill can't beat age and treachery!) This might help - my article How to Play Wildly Attacking Junior Players.

Table Tennis Tactics for Thinkers

The covers are done, both back and front. (For the formatting I'm using, it's actually one big cover, connected in the middle with the rectangle that has the text on the binding.) The front cover features my fellow coach and former Chinese and USA national team member Cheng Yinghua serving, with the ball he's tossed up forming the "o" in the "for" in the title: "Table Tennis for Thinkers." Looking down over him is a head shot of Rodin's "The Thinker" looking down over him.

The back cover has three pictures of me coaching matches, including Todd Sweeris at the 1996 U.S. Olympic Trials (he made the team); coaching John and Nathan Hsu in doubles at the 2012 Junior Olympics; and coaching Derek Nie and Seyed Hesam Hamrahian in doubles at the 2012 USA Nationals. I didn't choose the latter two pictures because of the doubles, but because they were nice pictures. I was a little hesitant on the photo that included Seyed, since I don't normally coach him (he's from Ohio, the others pictured all are, or were, players from MDTTC), but he played the junior teams with Derek, and it was a nice picture. (There's still a chance I might change some of the pictures.) I'll post pictures later.

I have a few notes on some minor things to fix, mostly involving layouts. Then I print the whole thing out and do a very thorough line by line editing. If all goes well, it'll be on sale by the end of February, in "Print on Demand" (POP) and ebook formats.

After it goes on sale I'll get to work on getting my other books into POP and ebook formats, and then I'll do an advertising blitz everywhere, with a new web page devoted to selling those books.

Ask Timo Boll a Question

If you could ask Timo Boll one question, what would it be? You can submit it here, care of Adam Bobrow, and that question might get asked when Timo plays at Spin LA this Saturday from 6-10PM. Or you can "like" the questions already there that you like. The questions with the most "likes" will most likely be the ones asked. And since we're on the subject of Timo Boll, here's a video (10:00) of a great match of his against Ma Long at the 2009 Qatar Open.

Ma Long's Backhand Flip

Here's a video (3:25) that features the backhand flip of China's Ma Long, world #3, world #1 for all of 2010 and eight months of 2011. (Overseas they call this shot a flick instead of a flip, but it's a backhand attack of a short ball, usually against one with backspin.) It shows it in both regular and slow motion. There's also some commentary in Chinese. Ma Long was the primary player who revolutionized receive by favoring the backhand receive against short balls to the forehand instead of doing using a forehand flip, as most coaches would urge, arguing that it drew you into a backhand position. Ma often flips with his backhand against a short ball to his forehand, and covering the entire table on the next shot with his big forehand loop.

Swimming Pool Ping-Pong

It's raining outside, which inspired me to show you this picture of two players playing table tennis in a swimming pool. Then I realized that this means that somewhere, someone is actually selling these swimming pool ping-pong sets, and some of you might want to buy one. So I searched, and found you can get one for $49.99 ("was $99.99) at In the Swim. You can also get it at Amazon, but there the price is $76.47.

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Send us your own coaching news!

Larry,

A small correction about the suggestion that players over the limit not be allowed to advance out of the RR.  The suggestion was actually that players whose rating went over the limit before the event be given a choice of 1) Being moved up to higher events for which they were still qualified or 2) Playing in the events they originally entered, but not be allowed to advance out of the RR in any event in which their current rating was over the limit.   The 1st option was the preferred one, but the 2nd was added for the situtation where travel plans (which could not be changed) conflicted with the new event schedule.   The 2nd option is really not that bad for most players, since it most likely would only affect them in one of the five rating event and if they really are improved then they should stand a good chance of advancing out of the RR's in one or two of the remaining 4 rating events.

Mark