Friday, July 24, 2009

Cream Your Competitor at Their Own Tactics with These Killer Ping-Pong Tactics

By Frank Froggatt

You should be prepared to play ping-pong just like you are mentally prepared for any other sport. Preparing early is a big step forward, and a good way to do this is to study how your opponent plays so you can understand where they are weak points are and what their strengths are. If he didn't have time to prepare like this, it doesn't really matter as you can find out what their weaknesses are by playing "The Explorer".

Your main tactic as the Explorer, is to get a feel for your opponent by sending them at many different types of shots. If you wish to be an effective explorer, you are going to have to use many different types of shots, such as loops, counter drives, drives, blocks, pushes, spins, and other types of shots.

If you do this and do this well, it won't take you long before you figure out exactly which shot is your opponents weak point. You should also hit the ball at various speeds and try out different kinds of serves.

As mentioned before, you will be able to find out what your opponent's strengths and weaknesses are with this method. When you figure out your opponent by using this method, you're going to be able to concentrate on sending your opponent also shots that they are weakest against.

As an example, if you find that the up opponent is weak against the soft lob, try to give him or her more of those. Another strategy is by forcing your game to your opponent right at the start of the game and adjust your plays or tactics as you go. This is known as the "dominator" trait.

What a dominator does is that they will use their best shots at the beginning of the game. You control the gameplay this way by forcing your opponent to make the adjustments to your style instead of the other way around. Although this can be advantageous for you, you have to remember that you also need to adjust to your opponent's shots as you play. If you aren't able to adjust to your opponent's shots, then this will probably mean the loss of the game for you.

My being in a dominator, you are going to need to bring your best shots out first and be able to make adjustments according to how your opponent responds to your shots.

You now need to make the decision on which type of player you are, either an explorer or a dominator. Really good ping-pong players are able to combine both methods and are able to make adjustments to their opponents shots very quickly.

So, whatever kind of player you are, make sure that you know how to adjust to your opponent in order to beat them at their own game. - 16887

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