I played three match­es yes­ter­day against three dif­fer­ent peo­ple and won all three. It felt pret­ty good, espe­cial­ly since I had nev­er played one of them before (he was a Canadian-born English teacher, work­ing in China). He also start­ed play­ing about a year before me, and was taught in what’s con­sid­ered the table ten­nis coun­try of the world. Knowing that he was using an anti-spin rub­ber gave me an advan­tage though; I did­n’t have to wor­ry about his spin, and since I focus on speed and place­ment, his rub­ber became point­less. I also have less respect for peo­ple who use the anti-spin rub­bers, because they gen­er­al­ly rely on the pad­dle to do the work for them, instead of prop­er­ly learn­ing how to counter spin. My habit­u­al ner­vous­ness when fac­ing a new oppo­nent was­n’t there.

I also won against one of the peo­ple I use to have great dif­fi­cul­ty beat­ing. He had a new pad­dle, with small ball-bear­ings imbed­ded along the rim. When one shakes it, the pad­dle sounds like a baby rat­tle. Apparently, it’s sup­posed to pre­vent rever­ber­a­tion, but I don’t under­stand the point. I count on feel­ing rever­ber­a­tion through my han­dle to give me feed­back on where I’m hit­ting.

I also beat one of my long time oppo­nents, although it’s more of an emp­ty vic­to­ry because I’ve learned his tricks and styles, so I know how to counter them. I won based on vital­li­ty over­com­ing his expe­ri­ence, not skill over­com­ing skill. It was inter­est­ing to find out that his pad­dle has a hol­low han­dle with a weight attached to a screw assem­bly in it. The weight can be shift­ed up and down through the han­dle to change the cen­tre of grav­i­ty of the blade.

Still, it’s good to know that I’m improv­ing. I can learn at the table now, in the mid­dle of a match instead of after­wards.