Pushblocker vs. Cho Yoon Je (KOR)

Icontek:  Actually I agree with you on this 100%.  I meant to say it's the "quickest" way for an average garage player to score against others who are still using $5 bats, not the "best" way... It's what I call the Bringing A Knife To A Fist Fight scenario... 

Well you know what happens if you bring a knife to fight some bare-fisted Shaolin monks, don't you?  

EJing is very good for you, as long as you learn something along the way, imho...

Disagreed... I have played too many matches against 2100+ opponents to know that a return made by a rubber, any rubber, is entirely predictable and repeatable.  Different rubbers produce different returns.  Unpredictable?  Absolutely not.  I have had my spinniest cork-screw serves returned by many of the "nastiest" long pips ever produced, legal or not legal, and the returns always come back the same way, time after time... The ball  may dance and wiggle in the air on its way back to me, but the key is it always dances and wiggles exactly the same way if I use the same serve.  99% of the time I simply smash the ball to either corner and win the point outright.

 

this is very well observed. material (and some funny stuff) users have advantage of being minority

 

all the LP players will say 'get used to it'. well, getting used to playing material needs not matches against it, but training against it. whether it is training matches or training sessions (in which material player actually performs shots he uses in match). sometimes it can be a problem just because these people are minority. and yet another problem can be that material players are not always willing to share their knowlege nor help you to learn how to play effectively against them. yet, they have no problem against majority, because of large base of training partners willing to train. this is their teritory

 

when they play against the minority, other material players, they have the same problem. only they are in little better situation: their opponent feels the same. so this is nobody's teritory. this is where overall skill prevails, whether it is ability to attack or to outpush

 

so, what can happen in lower levels: when LP player gets skill to play with LP well for his level, he goes up. automatically, no unskilled inverted player will have big chance against him in a match, as he will score easy victories. so, is he interested to play matches against those 'kids'? hell no  therefore, inverted player sometimes has to raise his level of play significantly, and show initial talent to at least partially get by against material players, to deserve chance to play frequent training matches against them. so, you must deserve this ticket

 

and they say, learn it...ok, but this should be mentioned also. not like you can buy 'material playing robot' and help yourself. you depend on people and circumstance

 

also one more thing must be mentioned. first bat we all get is double side inverted. sometimes it was double side SP hardbat (this was my first bat when I was a kid, chinese pioneer hardbat). so, neither of us begins with material. what was the reason someone switched to material anyway? was he doing great with double side inverted...or he was doing not that great, and then decided he should change something?

 

i know some players said that they had great BH's but they decided to switch to material because it was fun, but i would say such are rare. i would say most who switched were not satisfied with their level, and felt that they could do better in short time if they switched. and that's what happened

 

i think ability to smash the hell out of somebody is most exciting thing a player can personally experience in the game...problem is, not everybody can do it. because not everybody has skill for that. there comes the plan B

 

so, hate me if you like, but initial thought for deciding for being minority was: hell, i can do lot better and easier with material than without

 

of course, it would be interesting if 'minority' equaled with 'majority', but no point of talking about that until it starts to happen, and I don't see it happen

 

this is nice environment for learning. quite opposite here around me, unfortunately. i'm in croatia, we used to be almost neighbours  (you were born in austria, right?)

 

Check his results after the Team Tournament is processed and then claim again that he isn't a strong player

 

didn't know that. but still it's not the good enough. good LP player will mix shots in random and deceptive manner and you need to actually look and get used to recognise spin of returned ball

 

It's impossible to tell as I got converted to the "dark side" at a very early stage of my table tennis development.  During playing competitive table tennis for many years, I only used inverted on both sides for my very first year when I was at about 1200 level. I have used anti and later long pips ever since. It's pure speculation on how high I would've gotten with inverted.. I'm sure that it would've taken me LONGER to get stronger but I think that at one point, I would've had more success with inverted. Long Pips definetely helped me to move up quicker but I do believe that at one point it became more of a handicap as more and more people know how to play against that type of equipment the higher level you play. I thinkt that this point is about the 2100 level for me. I really had to work hard on new strategies to be able to get to that level. My game really has evolved a lot during the last 10 years to be able to compete at that level as you can't fool a 2200 player with "funny" equipment alone. I believe that I would probably be rated higher than I'm right now if I would've played with inverted from the beginning. The ceiling is definetely higher with regular equipment.  However, it's very difficult to tell as the type of skills needed is completely different than the skills needed for my current game. There is really no way to tell how my skills would've developed with inverted..  I'm a person who gets bored with something very quickly if I don't see results.. Long Pips gave me quick results back when I changed to them.  I never thought at that point that this equipment will limit me at one point..

 

I am built very much like you, I have only been playing for a year now, and I am learning strictly double inverted. choppinp, pips, etc just for fun. I realize that if I devoted my interest to long pips, I could probably compete on a slightly higher level due to the weakness of my inverted opponents to the lp blocking style. I myself am currently pretty much cold to it. I also know that because of my lack of very good athleticism, this limits my ability to perform as a double inverted looper, and even more so as a longer distance chopper. what is your experience with this subject?

I do think that athleticism is of course a requirement for any fast style.. I USED TO be in shape until about 3 years ago when I started gaining weight.. Went from 185 lbs to 230 lbs within 3 years..  The long pips style has the advantage that it is not as tiring as offensive styles and physical fitness is not as critical.