New equipment for Poly balls?

Tommy16 wrote: Nice tips, so thank you! I´m wondering about how these new balls effects to the durability of the rubbers. I have only had a few serious sessions with new plastic ball and to me it seems that it´s "eating" the rubbers surface much faster than celluloid balls. Have you had similar experiences?

Yes, I have this impression also, and it is based on about three months now of playing mostly with plastic balls.  One thing, though, is I have been testing lots of different kinds of balls -- new ones -- so I end up getting more than usual amounts of that "new ball" dust on the rubber.  But I think there may be more to it than that. 

Tommy16 wrote: Nice tips, so thank you! I´m wondering about how these new balls effects to the durability of the rubbers. I have only had a few serious sessions with new plastic ball and to me it seems that it´s "eating" the rubbers surface much faster than celluloid balls. Have you had similar experiences?

"Eating" into the rubber?  You mean the ball sinks into the rubber more?  Absolutely.  In general, if you apply the same stroke, the plastic ball seems to sink into the rubber more than the celluloid ball (even though the claim the weights are the same).  Here are some facts about these two balls, Click here => http://www.ittf.com/stories/pictures/Plastic_Balls_Q_A.pdf

As I mentioned, we just wait and see what kind of rubbers and blades that manufacturers produce next.  One thing that I can see (this is strictly my opinion without any experiments), the best blades and rubbers for plastic balls are the ones with the catapult effect.  In short, if they have the "kick", then the are good for plastic balls.  Again, this is my opinion without any experiments.

One thing must have escaped me - has anyone commented yet on the suitability of the new plastic balls (various kinds specifically) for ROBOT play? Do they fit and work without problem?

I have just spoken with a friend who can get hold of pro Tenergies and plays with them himself, 05 mainly.

According to him, the most recent sheets that he got are made for the poly ball and they are impossibly fast and are a huge upgrade from the celluloid version in terms of speed. He was dumbfound by the speed when he first had a hit with them actually.

Update from tonight's / this dawn's session: my Maze blade feels quite okay with the XSF ball - it feels plenty fast with the celluloid. A friends ALL+ all-wood blade was painfully slow with the plastic seamless. My BF JP02's were reasonable too.

I gave the XSF ball to players who had not tried it before and they all agreed the spin and speed is remarkably less. Everybody now will have to adopt a "be quick or be dead" approach.

Many many rubbers have come out "plastic ball ready", in fact the pros have switched to P-ball a year ago and they still using Tenergies.

Those new 40+ rubbers are only marketing. 

The pro's choice is a good indication of what works best with the new ball and I agree that this made for the polyball type of rubbish is just an empty phrase at the moment. Maybe it will be more meaningful in the coming years but my wish is for those knuckleheads to realise that increasing the size is the wrong way. The material and the feel of the new balls, I really like it.

As for these new Chinese rubbers that claim to be made for  the new ball, I have an idea what that means. I had the opportunity to try a friend's 40 degree Big Dipper and I have a LKT Green Dragon that I bought some time ago. They are visible the same concept and the same sponge, but their topsheet is surely different. The Dipper does not work with the celluloid ball for the majority who tried it and it was pointed out by a lot of them in the relevant thread. Neither does the LKT work. It was spinless and very slow when I tested it with the cellu ball.

But then I took an XSF (it is the black labelled one prior to the "sports" version)  ball to yesterday's session to try it out and BD had some clear advantages over the BF JP02s that I am currently using. Namely, the ball did not slip off it, acutally it held the ball better and gave a better feel and sense of precision on loops than did my BF's. Every practice partner that I looped at observed that the spin was less than from the BF but my loops were clearly faster.

So my theory is that with these cheap new-type Chinese rubbers, they wanted to make rubbers that are just spinny enough to land the ball on the other side in exchange for a very good feel and speed capability. In this aspect, the BD surpassed the JP02's. I will try it with the LKT and the Tinarc V but I bet it will be the same: less spin but more speed. It may be the reason why reviews of the Airoc mention the lack of spin.