Ball Placement and Stroke Difficulty

 No, that is fine I'm glad to add weight to your article. 

 https://dynamictabletennis.com/table-tennis-serves-serving-deep/

This is a bit advanced for me since I am still working towards always aiming the ball at the table.  But do you mean aiming to wide corners and middle, per larrytt, or something more?

Also NL, if you see that an opponent is hitting consistently into quadrant three and you are missing as a result, what's your response?  Move back?  Improve your shot quality to try to stop him from hitting deep to you?  In what way?

Great tip for robot/multiball practice, thanks.

BRS,

None of this is advanced for you at all given your current rating level and strokes.  The more I read some of the stories from people like you who work hard at your games without the presence of a coach or higher level player to guide your progress, the more I shake my head.

Keeping the ball on the table (in ALL practice drills) should always be done with an attention to aiming at targets, whether real or imagined.  It helps to see how much the shot you play deviated from the shot you intended to play and then try to reduce the gap.  The goal is not to be 100% accurate, but to build higher levels of control into your stroke so you can put the balls in good spots both when you have time and when you are under pressure.  If I do a third ball drill, I always try to go cross court and down the line.   Same with serves or just about any stroke. I can't radically improve my power with my bad knees so I try to make sure I slow my opponents down by keeping them guessing on my placement.  I also try to make the strokes look similar so I can withhold intentions until the last second.

Reading the game ahead of time is largely about anticipation and point construction.  The easiest way to anticipate is to watch your opponent play someone else before you play him.  Or you can remember some of the things he has done on previous points.  Or even his tendencies under pressure or on third ball (always cross court for example).  I remember someone pointing out that two of the deuce game winning points in ZJK-ML at the 2014 World Cup final ended with exactly the same play and a win for ZJK - a serve by ML to the short mid forehand and a Banana flick by ZJK to ML's wide forehand - and arguing that it showed that one player was paying attention to patterns and the other wasn't.  More generally, things like looking at the first bounce of the serve or watching your opponent's stance (whether he wants to play a backhand or forehand) can give you hints about what he is trying to do and let you know what kind of placement will cause him trouble.  Also realize that while a player might have a strong forehand, a strong forehand vs. topspin might be a pathetic forehand vs. backspin.  And a strong forehand vs. backspin and topspin might be pathetic at handling no spin.  At the level you play at, most players have strong tendencies of this kind so it helps to notice them, though it is probably easier for the right kind of coach to help you do so.

Point construction (as used here) is realizing that you don't have to go for a risky winner off many kinds of returns - you can strategically put the opponent into worse situations with lower risk shots and get weaker returns which you can put away more easily.  A common example is when an opponent, who is a blocker, pushes the ball to you long and deep - this is common below the 2000 rating as many players cannot counterloop slow spinny loops and only block them.  You can either smash the ball, loop drive the ball, spin the ball up or push the ball back.  Smashing the ball if successful would likely result in a winner or highly advantageous position.  However, it is highly risky with low margin for error.  Loop driving the ball is less risky than smashing the ball and if done well, is also likely to result in a winner.  However, the extra pace would likely require a greater commitment from you and you might be unable to recover if the ball is blocked back.  Spinning the ball up to a good spot on the table is probably the best play because your opponent is a blocker.  It gives you time to set up for the next shot which will likely come back higher and you can always reloop if it does not.  Pushing the ball back is too passive if you are looper though it might be a good option if your opponent is never going to attack backspin and doesn't have that good a push and you can push to a good location.  You might get a better ball to attack.

The main point is that you don't have to go for a power drive winner on the first shot against a low return or a return you are late to or sometimes any return for that matter.  You can place the ball in spots with kinds of spins that provoke weaker returns and then use that to your advantage.  As you get better, opponents may handle these safer shots that provoke weaker returns better so you may have to use riskier or higher quality shots to get weaker returns.  But the point is that you don't have to attack quality balls aggressively - you can build up advantages like a chess master and then strike a punishing blow.  Of course, being able to trust your consistency and placement in a rally helps with this process.

Quadrant 3 is better when the opponent is close to the table, Quadrant 2 can be better when the opponent has backed off as long as the quadrant 2 ball isn't peaking too high in Quadrant 3.  That's part of the point about reading the opponent's position.  Usually, I tend to block in Quadrant 2 with a bias for Quadrant 4 vs. U1800 loopers who back off the table because I know they do not have the weapons to hurt me from distance and that eventually, the ball gets shorter and shorter and wider and brings them in or leads to their missing because they have to generate power they don't have the technique for.  Hitting the ball back to them rewards them by giving them power to use.  The converse is true if they are closer to the table - then the depth bothers them as well as the pace so I hit/loop the ball harder. 

Hitting the corners is part of it (the middle is a bit different), but the reason why I wrote this was so that people could watch and appreciate TT better as well - this kind of stuff may explain why one player is out rallying another, or might help you explain why you are missing for third ball attack in drills or matches.  But when people don't realize it, they may think their stroke is bad, rather than realize that the ball placement is rushing them.  And when the opponent is attacking all their quality low balls, they may think their push is bad, not realizing that they are putting the push into the opponent's strike zones.  You may see your opponent missed this shot and not that one and think it was an accident, and it sometimes is, but more often is not.  I have played matches where it was worth popping up the ball just to avoid putting the ball into the opponent's sweet spot.  But to come to that conclusion, you have to trust your read of the situation.

 Don't track the ball when you have hit it, pick up your opponents bat in your vision before he hits the ball, ultimately if he is to make a return, the ball is going to come off his bat. So, where possible, track an incoming ball onto your bat, then don't watch the ball, look straight at your opponents bat then pick the ball up again as he strikes. You can still see the ball, but you are not focused on it as it goes away from you, only when it is coming towards you. The easiest part of the game to apply this is when you are serving, personally I am looking straight at my opponents bat as the ball crosses the net when I serve, giving me ample time to read his intentions.

And if most or all practice is with a robot, there is no way to work on anticipation. 

But recovery can always be practiced, that's true.

 Exactly, and if its coming back, its always going to be off the opponents bat.