You've come to a throwaway leaflet on table tennis (TT) the sport, which took me the longest to write of all in this blog. And which is an unusual post because it's ironically meant for both serious theorists and "ping-pong" enthusiasts alike. Some terminology to clarify: "near-the-table" play refers to anything happening when players are less than 1 metre away from the edge of the table. "Anti" in the title is of common usage, preceding a symbol representing time.
Seven main strokes, but only 3 really crucial for near-the-table
The 7 main TT strokes are the Drive, Smash, Block, Flick, Loop, Lift and Chop. I'll combine drives and smashes into "Forward Drive" for a nice acronym and the fact that it's just a difference in flying distances forwardly. What is the frequency they each appear in competitive matches of the very best? I argue that only the top 3 are crucial to master and proficiency in the rest suffices. Let's first clear some assumptions: 1) the world's best rackets are used 2) tables used pass the ITTF bounce test 3) competitors are proficient in all 7 strokes, including varied chopping techniques, and possess basic spin sensibility.
Blocking, Forward Drive and Flick (BFF) are the only 3 strokes you really need to focus on. Doing so would maximize your chances of winning any tournament from the position of an underdog (not skill-wise but perhaps in terms of inadequate amounts of training time or subpar tables and coaches). How? In the end, it's all about understanding the frequency of winning stroke usage and training smarter than your opponents. Compared to loops and lifts, BFF (alongside chops obviously) will always be more important if you play near the table and have enough natural finesse to stay that way. Another assumption here.
Modern game - high table and racket elasticity - as optimized for the 3-strokes system
Three strokes (BFF), used maybe 50 % of the time, plus chopping for basic point construction, are the predominant techniques for near-the-table styled players. Mid-distance play is beyond the scope of this post but still expect loops and lifts to hover around 20% of overall stroke frequency in the final analysis. In the graph below, I theorize that current ITTF-standardized tables favor the 3 strokes up to an overwhelming 86% as compared to 14% for Loops and Lifts. Chops excluded. Using less than 76% elastic tables would skew one's strokes towards looping because more inelastic bounces lower the percentage of allowable BFFs. Realistic near-the-table training should thus employ elastically standardized tables, with proportionate focus on the 3 most used strokes.
In conclusion
Combine high-tension, high-powered rackets with 76.7% elastic tables - which is almost the limit of what human reflexes can deal with - and what an intelligent player develops is a playing system where looping does not - cannot - win points. Looping merely acts as a bridge. And so they are used only about 15% of the time. Direct, side-spin dominant drives and flicking (or "flick-blocks") are simply more logical and reasonable winning strokes in a high-bounce, high-speed game, until of course looping mid-distance, which arrives ever so rarely, enters the room.
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