Tip of the Week
Top Twelve Tactical Rallying Mistakes.

Table Tennis North America Submits Letter of Interest To Host 2020 ITTF World Team Table Tennis Championships
Here’s the article. “Table Tennis North America, a partnership which includes USA Table Tennis (USATT) and Table Tennis Canada (TTCAN), today announced that the group has submitted a Letter of Interest to host the 2020 ITTF World Team Table Tennis Championships in San Jose, CA.”

So, when was the last time the World Championships were held in U.S., or North America, or even South America? Answer: NEVER!!! So this would be a first. USATT has been doing a lot of that in recent times – last year we held the first World Women’s Cup in the U.S., and next year we’ll have the first World Veterans Championships in the U.S. since 1990. (As the article says, other than the 1939 Worlds in Cairo, Egypt – practically a suburb of Europe! – the Worlds has always been held in Europe or Asia.

To quote USATT CEO Gordon Kaye from the article above, “With table tennis exploding across North America, we felt strongly that now was the time to bring a World Championship event to our continent. With the success of last year’s Seamaster Women’s World Cup in Philadelphia and the much-anticipated Uncle Pop’s Women’s World Cup presented by Polar Naturals in Toronto later this month, there is absolutely a strong interest in North America for world-class table tennis.”

Nasty Cold Virus Playing Pong and Making USATT Great
To whoever gave me the cold virus at the MDTTC October Open this past weekend for safe keeping – you can come and pick it up at any time. I know you meant well, but this virus you gave me has multiplied beyond its original numbers, and it has annoying taken up residence in various locations in my throat and lungs, where it is now studying to become a doctor, lawyer, or pneumonia. While I applaud its attempts to better itself, and I may help it out financially if it chooses to go to medical or law school, I’d prefer it not go the pneumonia route, and in fact I’m leaning toward kicking it out at any time as it is no longer welcome. So please come and pick it up at any time.

Here’s a picture of the nasty critter playing pong and crusading to make USATT great again.

Because of the cold, and the struggle to get some timely work done, I need to skip the blog again today. Assuming I'm still alive tomorrow, nothing in the universe can possibly stop me from blogging again. 

No Blog Today
There should be a rule that if you run a 2-day, 3-star tournament over the weekend, you should get Monday off. (Plus it looks like someone there gave me a cold...) However, there is no such rule, and so I was going to do the blog this morning. Unfortunately, I’m involved in three major time-consuming projects – one USATT, one MDTTC, one involving Tim Boggan’s History of U.S. Table Tennis (preparing the 28 chapters for online publication for USATT), plus my ongoing battle with Amazon (see my Thursday blog), and a dozen other smaller items, such as doing the tournament write-up and photo work. So I need to work on these today. But to tide you over, here’s a question to you: Who would win between these dizzying table-circling speedsters?

• Speedy Gonzales
• Snoopy
• Energizer Battery
• A Pair of Swedes

Upcoming Table Tennis Events to Sign Up For
There are a lot of table tennis events coming up, and it’s time to make plans and sign up for them! We’ll start with tournaments. (I’m referring to USA events. Others should look to their own country’s table tennis association for their schedule.)

You can find upcoming tournaments at the USATT Tournament Schedule. If you are free this weekend (and haven’t missed the deadline), there are exactly ten USATT tournaments scheduled this weekend. There is one 3-star event – the Butterfly MDTTC October Open, which I’m running this weekend. (Deadline to enter is 7PM tonight.) There are also eight 2-star events, and a 1-star. Events this weekend include tournaments in Austin, TX; Erie, PA; Franklin, TN; New Albany, IN; Gaithersburg, MD; Clearwater, FL; Rosemead, CA; New Orleans, LA; Westfield, NJ; and Manville, RI.

Looking for something bigger? Like a 4-star tournament? At the USATT Tournament Schedule, click on “4 star” events, and seven events come up this fall. They include these six – and note that there’s one next weekend, and also give a great thanks to the Westchester Club in NY which runs monthly 4-star events!

I Am at War with Amazon
Today’s blog is only partly table tennis related. In fact, the main connection is that I’m doing a lot less table tennis stuff temporarily as I’m spending more time in my battle with Amazon, plus of course I sell table tennis books on Amazon. Here’s the situation.

I’ve used Amazon for years, both as a buyer and seller. I have an author page there with 13 books – eight table tennis, six science fiction. (“The Spirit of Pong” counts as both, so yes, 8+6=13.) I make a pretty decent living selling my books there (along with coaching).

On October 31, my new science fiction novel is coming out, “When Parallel Lines Meet.” I co-wrote it with Mike Resnick (a legendary SF writer) and Lezli Robyn. We even had a launch party for it at the Capclave Science Fiction Convention this past weekend. I have ten preliminary copies, though it doesn’t officially come out until Halloween. (That’s a coincidence.)

Here’s the problem. On the kindle and audio versions, it correctly has all three of us as authors. But on the print version, it only has Mike Resnick.

I pointed this out to our publisher months ago when the novel first showed up for pre-orders, and he contacted Amazon. When you have an author or publisher page, as we do, there’s a “contact us” link at the bottom of the page, so contacting them is easy. Three weeks went by, and nothing happened, so I contacted the publisher again. He was irritated, saying that he’d been getting bureaucratic problems at Amazon, and hadn’t been able to get them to make the correction.

$4000 Ping-Pong Table Shaped like Easter Island on Family Guy
In the Sunday, Oct. 8 episode of Family Guy (Foxx in the Men House), Peter goes to an Anthropologie store and (completely randomly) asks for a “$4000 ping-pong table that’s shaped like Easter Island.” The cashier responds, “We’ve got one right over there.” We then see a picture of this item, with letters on the screen saying, “Actual Anthropologie item.” Here’s the video – it should take you directly to 2:29 in, and the table tennis only takes up the first eight seconds.

There really is an Anthropologie store – I’d never heard of it – but nothing showed up when I did a search there for “ping-pong” or “table tennis,” alas. Then I had a brainstorm and did an online search for “ping-pong table Easter Island,” and here it is! Except (at Pinterest) it cost $12,000! The text says, “Easter Island Ping Pong Table - Anthropologie.com Easter Island Ping Pong table anyone? Yes this is for real, and yours for only $12,000 (don't worry, it's signed by the artist).” But when you follow the link by clicking on the picture, it takes you to Anthropologie, but the items appears to no longer be there.

Then I checked my search list again, and realized that the table was listed on numerous pages. For example, here it is at Neatorama – and here it says:

Tip of the Week
Top Ten Tactical Receiving Mistakes.

Sunday Coaching and Monday USATT Teleconference
I spent Friday and Saturday at the Capclave Science Fiction Convention – see segment at end of blog. On Sunday had a 5.5 hours of coaching, mostly group sessions.

In private coaching with Todd, we focused quite a bit on serve and loop, especially backhand loop. He tends to be forehand oriented, but we’re adding more backhand attack to the mix. He’s picking up backhand loop pretty well, but sometimes tends to rush it against pushes. We also worked on moving to the wide forehand faster – but the key here wasn’t the movement itself but rather a faster recovery from the previous shot, a forehand from the backhand side. His backhand in rallies was on fire – he’s discovered he can hit winners by going after my wide forehand. Thanks a lot, age and bad knee, dang it! One problem – he needs a lot more serving practice, so I’m hoping he can increase that.

In the Beginning Junior Class we focused on footwork and serving. After an hour of practice we went to games. They divided into three groups. About half played up-down tables (i.e. real games). Several others took turns on the robot. I taught five of the younger ones the “Serving Game.” For this, one player serves ten times. The other four players stood on the other side (no rackets), with a plastic cup on the table in front of them. The server would serve and the other four would try to catch the serve. If they did, the server scored zero. If the server managed to serve so that it got past the four and hit the floor, the server got one. If the server hit one of the cups and the ball got past them and hit the floor, the server scored three. Then they’d rotate and the next player would serve.

Capclave and Columbus and teleConference, Oh My!
No blog on Friday and Monday. On Friday and Saturday I’ll be at the Capclave Science Fiction Convention, where I’m a panelist (three panels, moderating two of them – here’s my Capclave bio with a link to my schedule), doing a book launch for my new SF novel, “When Parallel Lines Meet” (co-written with Mike Resnick and Lezli Robyn), and doing two autograph sessions. So no table tennis for me those two days, though I have a full day of TT scheduled on Sunday. Monday is Columbus Day, so I’m taking the day off – except for a 7PM USATT Board of Directors Teleconference.

2018 World Veteran Championships in Las Vegas
It’s a once in a lifetime opportunity – or at least once every 27 years, the last time the U.S. held a World Veterans Table Tennis Championship, back in 1990. The 2018 World Veterans Championships will be held at the Las Vegas Convention Center, June 18-24, and if you are over the age of 40 (as of Dec. 31, 2018), you need to be there.

Let’s start with the basics – the events. There are eleven age categories, with singles and doubles in each.

Corresponding Correspondence
One of the things you learn when you volunteer for an organization like USATT is that when you schedule your time, you have to use what I call the 25% Rule. What does that mean? It means that you spend 25% of your time actually doing “productive” work, and 75% of your time corresponding and answering questions. Some of this is good and reasonable, some of it is not.

I’m on the USATT board of directors and chair the USATT coaching committee. (These are both unpaid volunteer positions.) I’ve spent much of the last week just emailing with people, mostly answering questions and discussing issues. It’s a huge but necessary time allotment. The problem is that not all the time spent on this is what I would call “necessary.” There is a famous saying that you spend something like 90% of your time on 10% of the people you are working for. In USATT, I’d say you spend 95% of your time on 1%. It’s been really true this past week.

Of course you also have to divide the 1% into those who deserve responses (many of them well-meaning, thoughtful individuals who really contribute to our sport), and those who are rude and/or irrational and only get cursory responses. We have plenty of those. (If I were a paid employee, I’d probably have to have a longer leash for these people, but as a volunteer, the leash is rather short for abusive and/or time-wasting people.)

Jun Mizutani vs. Interactive Robot
Here’s the video (66 sec). Suppose you entered this robot in a U.S. tournament, and ignore the fact that its serve is illegal. What rating would it achieve? It would be reminiscent of when they started entering computers in chess tournaments.

It mostly just keeps the ball in play, often high, and without spin. Alas, I don’t think it can adjust very well to spin – Mizutani (world #8 from Japan, #4 in February) is mostly just patting the ball back and forth without spin - so that right away would probably put it below 1000. On the other hand, 49 sec in Mizutani soft loops the ball, and the robot returns it with ease, though a bit high. How would it react to a heavy backspin serve, push, or chop? Or a fast serve to a corner? Or fast breaking sidespin serve? Or a heavy topspin lob?

As to its serve, it breaks two serving rules. (Go to 34 seconds in to see it serving.)

• 2.06.01: Service shall start with the ball resting freely on the open palm of the server's stationary free hand. 
• 2.06.04: From the start of service until it is struck, the ball shall be … behind the server's end line.

However, there’s also this rule: