Help With The Holes in My Game

It seems that you're not really matching their speed. It's not so easy to play against very speedy players especially those which play flatter unless you have excellent anticipation and footwork. I also hate playing against them especially the penholder versions as they don't have a middle weakness and thus it's very hard to push them away from the table. 

What I did notice was the hitter missed a lot of his Fh flat kills and attempted a lot less of his Bh flat kills.  Also the points seemed to be much shorter than in my match.  Points I won often involved me hitting 4-5 shots to get opponent out of position before hitting a winner  he could not get to.  In the other match the flat hitter just missed against the first or 2nd topspin that came to him.  He did not lose many points where the ball was hit past him.  Instead he lost making errors rather than having winners hit past him.  I will say that I would. consider them forced errors as the other player was hitting high quality topspin, but he was not hitting the really high quality Fh winners I know he can hit if not pressured..  

I would say his ball quality especially the Fh is a 2 levels above mine.  Also he does tend to step back off the table a step more than I do.  We usually play pretty close against each other (lots of 5 game matches) but he has a slight advantage in overall wins.  In those matches I am forced into more blocking than  I do against lower rated players.  By the way, he went on to win the U2000 event we were playing.

The above are my impressions of the matches and may be totally wrong.  I have not had a chance to talk with him about what he saw in my losing match vs his winning one.  Hope to do that at the club tonight.

Mark 

Not really sure of exact ratio, but I saw several of each , so guessing roughly equal.

I got to talk a little to the player who won the U2000.  He said he played the flat hitter many times and knows he is steady and opportunistic in his attacking.  Because of that he was very aggressive both in getting in the first topspin and making sure they were strong enough to deter the flat hitters attacks.  He said the flat hitter tended to get frustrated if he did not get opportunities to attack early in the match and start going for kills on balls he should be just returning.

So the key to me beating flat hitters is to make my TT game more like my personality: annoying and frustrating.

Mark - Who will try to be more frustrating and less frustrated.

Mima Ito's problem is not her BH but her FH. According to Chinese coach's philosophy, BH is used to create opportunities to be used by FH killers. Mima has indeed created enough opportunities through her BH but just misses those winners when using her FH. 

Hou Yingchao is poorer at attacking compared to Joo SK.

>We all know that players rated below 2000 have holes in their games.

Appreciated. I tried to delete my two responses to [He Who Shall Not Be Named], but for some reason no "delete" option is appearing when I go to edit. Am I missing something? Feel free to delete those two postings. Thanks,

-Larry Hodges

I lost to your flat hitter a few days ago in league. I believe I lost the previous encounter as well. I'm 150 points or so higher. This is a player I see once every few months or more so I never really thought about it much. I would have previously simply echoed that they are very steady and don't give away easy points, and that if you don't give any pace then they initiate with slower spinny control looping (also annoying) and can maintain that kind of rally for a long time. This last loss woke me up a little and it seems like they are most dangerous hitting or redirecting/shoving/countering flattish attacks that can be either outright winners or get you stuck in this quick back and forth low spin hitting mess that you don't want to be in because the ball is coming fast enough that it takes enough effort just to get it back let alone reapply quality spin over the top like you need to disrupt their continued hits. They want what they can hit/counter, which is generally any high ball, or any kind of comfortable rhythm, medium topspin pace (the latter which is.. most of my entire offense/game, ouch..). Often I will test myself with these players and see if I can break through the wall but my FH power/technique isn't great so sometimes I have to give up and (with my usual LP setup) just chop and push - super boring. I think this is a really common player archetype among adults around 2000 (expanding to counter-based players in general beyond just flat hitters) where the initiating power/technique isn't quite there to blow through each other and everyone has solid defense and reactions and counters to keep the rally going. Proper gatekeeper test where you have to bring a real quality FH kill and just break through it. Or beyond that (with a full offensive setup), I don't know, just keeping it as non-hittable as possible, so low and spinny, or maybe more short/touch play in general. Tricky..

Totally best simple answer.  Too many players think they are superior in their play toward 'higher levels' and tend to just train with them, compete with them.  They blindly forget there are QUIRKS they have worked past and have not been exposed to for a while.  

There is a lot to learn from lower levels than you.  Maybe they don't have as much to learn from, but they got something you can't leap frog over and forget.  And in this case it bit you.

These bots are getting smarter it seems. Looks like they provided an AI generated response, then later they edited their post to include links to unrelated websites. I've removed the account.

As we gain wisdom reaching a plateau, we find enlightenment understanding that when we rip a hole in a net, we end up with less holes than before: only one way for entropy and time.