I stopped by the table tennis club in Milpitas after work yesterday and noticed a phenomenal young Chinese player who was coaching some of his students. I didn’t get his name, but I am quite sure he is at least a 2500. One of his students was Lily Zhang, if that gives you any idea. Lily was there too–absolutely sick serve and attack.

Anyway, what caught my eye was the Chinese coach’s serves. It’s the first time I’d seen that quality of serve in person (as opposed to in video of Maze and Boll). His reverse pendulum serve was brilliant.

So when he was off the court in a room hanging out I approached and asked if he’d let me take lessons. It turned out he didn’t speak English, so he went and got a translator. He told the translator he would not only give me lessons later, but that he’d give me a free lesson on serving now.

So he proceeded to give me like 10 minutes of lessons on how to do the reverse pendulum serve–which is currently my favorite. It was excellent, and he actually gave me some serious praise for learning the concepts so quickly.

Most importantly, he taught me that there is a body component involved, which I never knew. I incorporated that instantly and launched a few 1900 level serves (my estimation), which earned some kudos from him. He didn’t even stop the lesson; I stopped it myself after just a few minutes out of respect, and he stopped teaching to say goodbye to me when I left.

Good times at Milpitas Table Tennis club. The main coach is very nice, the club is top-notch, and I’ll definitely be going back. Hell, just watching Lily and her coach practice improves my game. ::

My childhood friend Chad was knighted this past Saturday and I was there to capture it as best I could with my new camera and lacking photography skills.

It was a great ceremony, and I am glad to have captured some of it for him.

::

In this study we explore the relationship between attractiveness and aggressiveness in chess. We examine whether people use more aggressive (i.e. riskier) strategies when playing with attractive opponents, whether this affects performance, and whether there are gender differences in the reaction to an attractive opponent. We also investigate if attractive people are more aggressive and thus more risk taking and if they perform better than less attractive people.

[ Paper. ]

Intriguing.

So my #1 issue in Table Tennis right now is getting angry, which results in a tightness that precludes the possibility for power.

We see this in many sports where there is a primary swinging motion: If you are tense, you can’t get a full range of motion and can’t generate speed.

The other issue with being tense (for me anyway) is that I tend to miss a lot when in that state. I feel like I’m all locked up and trying too hard–and I miss a lot of shots. Not like the shot not going in–but actually missing the ball altogether.

So, clearly, one ingredient is complete relaxation. This is not just obvious when attempting heavy topspin shots, but also especially when serving. My serves while tense get eaten up; it’s evidently very easy to tell when I’ve not put much spin on the ball (due to being tense).

But there’s another part of my game that’s suffering as well, and that is a quick type of aggression. When I get in a flow with being both loose and aggressive, I just dominate people. But what’s more likely to happen is for one of those two things to be off.

My interest here comes with how to combine the two. How do you get oriented toward aggression and power, but stay loose? That’s the key for me right now–finding a way to maintain both at the same time. And, most importantly, finding a way to get back to that frame of mind when I stray from it. ::