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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote AndySmith Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 03/25/2015 at 4:48pm
Originally posted by AgentHEX AgentHEX wrote:

This whole situation is akin to say switching the morning coffee at work to bit different brand/blend. If it just happens some people might notice, but sometimes there's an announcement/email-to-all and riots ensue.

Those who've witnessed & considered enough of these situations in life come to realize the reaction generally has almost nothing to do with the quantities of the change and everything with the circumstances and people involved.


I have witnessed and considered enough of your input on the forum to realise that your reaction generally has almost nothing to do with the issues at hand and everything with your narrative of "AgentHEX knows best, you're all liars and/or idiots".

Well, of course that's something of an exaggeration. No doubt your disparaging approach to topics is sometimes close to the mark (although I find your lack of faith in your fellow man disturbing), but regarding the 40+ seamed ball you are wrong. Simply dead wrong. With this one there's hardly any wriggle room either. The frequency of breakage and inexplicable bounces are clear as day to anyone who spends a reasonable length of time with the seamed 40+. They must improve or make way for a better technology.
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote AgentHEX Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 03/25/2015 at 4:57pm
If it's as frickin' obvious as some people claim then it should be frickin' obvious watching the best guys with smallest marginal tolerances play. That german open (and many plastic ball tourneys before it) thread is several hundred comments; how many pick out any terribly discernible diff in play? I didn't read it but I'm going to guess ~0% same as those before it. Omniscient, no?

Sometimes the issue at hand isn't what's in the popular front page news. Hopefully those paying attention should've figured that out by now.
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote wturber Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 03/25/2015 at 5:15pm
Originally posted by AndySmith AndySmith wrote:



I have witnessed and considered enough of your input on the forum to realise that your reaction generally has almost nothing to do with the issues at hand and everything with your narrative of "AgentHEX knows best, you're all liars and/or idiots".

Well, of course that's something of an exaggeration. No doubt your disparaging approach to topics is sometimes close to the mark (although I find your lack of faith in your fellow man disturbing), but regarding the 40+ seamed ball you are wrong. Simply dead wrong. With this one there's hardly any wriggle room either. The frequency of breakage and inexplicable bounces are clear as day to anyone who spends a reasonable length of time with the seamed 40+. They must improve or make way for a better technology.

 Yes.  I'm anything but a ball snob.  I sought out inexpensive alternatives to the quite good Nittaku Premium celluloid ball because spending over $2/ball seemed a bit much to me.  

And I am very much aware of how people can be biased by their preconceptions of things.  There are great examples of carefully controlled double-blind or ABX comparison tests that have showthat differences in wine, CD player and audio amplifier sound quality either become much harder to detect, or disappear entirely.

So I agree that preconceived notions can be at work with the perception of the Chinese 40+ seamed balls.  But they aren't the core of the issue.  At most, such notions are working to amplify the importance of the real issues. Two of those issues are objectively demonstrable - specifically, lower bounce (compounding issues that all 40+ balls have marginally slower flight and slower spin) and higher breakage. The third issue - sometimes erratic bounces - is harder to demonstrate due to its random nature.  But as I learned after spending years as a test desk technician at the phone company - just because random failures can be difficult to duplicate or track down doesn't mean that they don't exist. 

I haven't played with Chinese seamed balls enough to have an opinion on the bad bounces, but I've seen enough reports from enough different people - some of the reports quite independent from this forum - that I would not dismiss the possibility.  If I had to bet, I'd bet that there is something to it.
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote AgentHEX Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 03/25/2015 at 5:18pm
Originally posted by NextLevel NextLevel wrote:

So, Agent Troll, how many seamed plastic balls have you broken again?


Apparently general bounce differences in the few percent range (and ~<1% relative to swing height off the ground) means "don't bounce", etc when it's opportunistic to exaggerate the gap in the same direction as socialite opinion:

http://mytabletennis.net/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=70818&PID=863807&title=dhs-plastic-ball#863807

The place I play keeps the ball with the table for continuity and I don't sit there to track  how long it lasts but certainly longer than a few matches. Maybe you do and have something of substance to share.
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote AndySmith Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 03/25/2015 at 5:31pm
The German Open is a bad example for your case, and here's why.

At the elite level, I presume some effort still goes into selecting the best balls possible, instead of just picking random boxes from a retailer (I've seen this done behind the scenes at past World Cups with cell, and I can only imagine that it's done with more enthusiasm now). Despite this, there were numerous breakages, including a comical (but truly embarrassing to the sport) sequence of events in the Men's Doubles Final where a decent replacement ball couldn't be found for a while. Let's get a new ball out of the packet! Oh, it still plays terribly! Let's get another. Oh how the audience laughed! TT is now a comedy.

You should read that thread before guessing the contents of it.

Picking any elite event as an example for whatever your case is isn't ideal for many reasons. They get the very best of the balls on the market today, and don't pay for them when they break. If they feel the ball is losing consistency, they just ask for a fresh one, no cost to them. You can see examples of this in every tournament - more than with the cell ball IMO. They don't have the same pressures as amateurs. They have different pressures though - commercial pressures which could prevent them from speaking out against sponsors. Despite that, several pros have gone on record to state that the quality of the current balls should improve.

But I don't care about a "discernable difference in play" at the elite level. I think that there IS one, but it doesn't bother me, and it's a different subject. I care about the durability and consistency of the balls I, as a regular member of the public, can buy at the moment. And they are poor. Regardless of all of this, the plastic tournaments at all levels I have seen so far have shown a vastly increased rate of breakage for seamed 40+ balls. So what is your point?

In this, you are an outlier. An odd opinion at the fringes of reality, stretching the boundaries of belief to further your personal crusade.

(And spare me your usual passive/aggressive closing sentence. You show zero respect to anyone you interact with when you sign off with stuff like "Hopefully those paying attention should've figured that out by now". If you genuinely wanted to discuss or debate, you wouldn't finish most of your posts with sweeping "anyone who doesn't agree with me is obviously not paying attention" statements. This is where much of your troll rep comes from. Throwing this in does nothing to make your point, and is only designed to aggravate and inflame situations and people. Your historical contribution to this forum would be vastly improved by a simple script which removed the last sentence from all of your posts.)
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote AndySmith Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 03/25/2015 at 5:35pm
Originally posted by AgentHEX AgentHEX wrote:


The place I play keeps the ball with the table for continuity and I don't sit there to track  how long it lasts but certainly longer than a few matches. Maybe you do and have something of substance to share.


People have been sharing their increased breakage rate experiences for months. You just refuse to give personal experience any significant value. Are you saying that people are lying about the failure rate?
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote NextLevel Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 03/25/2015 at 5:38pm
Originally posted by AgentHEX AgentHEX wrote:

Originally posted by NextLevel NextLevel wrote:

So, Agent Troll, how many seamed plastic balls have you broken again?


Apparently general bounce differences in the few percent range (and ~<1% relative to swing height off the ground) means "don't bounce", etc when it's opportunistic to exaggerate the gap in the same direction as socialite opinion:

http://mytabletennis.net/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=70818&PID=863807&title=dhs-plastic-ball#863807

The place I play keeps the ball with the table for continuity and I don't sit there to track  how long it lasts but certainly longer than a few matches. Maybe you do and have something of substance to share.

The ignorance displayed by the answer speaks for itself.  Thank you.
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote wturber Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 03/25/2015 at 5:38pm
Originally posted by AndySmith AndySmith wrote:

 
People have been sharing their increased breakage rate experiences for months. You just refuse to give personal experience any significant value. Are you saying that people are lying about the failure rate?

Just check with the folks who played in or ran the North American Teams. Contrast that to the U.S. Nationals or any other previous tournament played with celluloid balls.

The past breakage issue really isn't debatable.  The only real question is if newly manufactured balls are doing better.

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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote roundrobin Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 03/25/2015 at 5:42pm
Originally posted by AgentHEX AgentHEX wrote:

If it's as frickin' obvious as some people claim then it should be frickin' obvious watching the best guys with smallest marginal tolerances play. That german open (and many plastic ball tourneys before it) thread is several hundred comments; how many pick out any terribly discernible diff in play? I didn't read it but I'm going to guess ~0% same as those before it. Omniscient, no?

Sometimes the issue at hand isn't what's in the popular front page news. Hopefully those paying attention should've figured that out by now.


I have watched plenty of matches with the DHS ball including the German Open and the NA Tour Finals.  There's one shot that happened with enough frequency that's peculiar to the DHS plastic ball that I could substantiate with my own experiences (I've already played hundreds of matches with DHS-made plastic balls):  When the ball comes at medium speed but loaded with extreme topspin, there were plenty of instances where an attempt at countering it resulted in a "WTF" trajectory as if the ball never contacted the paddle correctly...it's as if the ball deformed and flew away from the paddle sooner than usual, resulting in unforced errors.  This phenomenon did not happen whenever I used NP40+ or XSF balls (This is in addition to random strange low or high bounces observed by many, including Jimmy Butler at the NA Tour Finals and Dima Ovcharov against JSH at the Taipei Masters).
I think it could be attributed to possible weak/soft spots in the ball.  I recently received 144 brand-new 3-star DHS polyballs for our club.  I inspected each one of them carefully for roundness and hardness.  Only 52 balls passed my roundness test and out of those, 22 are actually softer than the other balls (I could easily press in with my fingers).


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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote NextLevel Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 03/25/2015 at 5:46pm
Originally posted by roundrobin roundrobin wrote:


I have watched plenty of matches with the DHS ball including the German Open and the NA Tour Finals.  There's one shot that happened with enough frequency that's peculiar to the DHS plastic ball that I could substantiate with my own experiences (I've already played hundreds of matches with DHS-made plastic balls):  When the ball comes at medium speed but loaded with extreme topspin, there were plenty of instances where an attempt at countering it resulted in a "WTF" trajectory as if the ball never contacted the paddle correctly...it's as if the ball deformed and flew away from the paddle sooner than usual, resulting in unforced errors.  This phenomenon did not happen whenever I used NP40+ or XSF balls (This is in addition to random strange low or high bounces observed by many, including Jimmy Butler at the NA Tour Finals and Dima Ovcharov against JSH at the Taipei Masters).
I think it could be attributed to possible weak/soft spots in the ball.  I recently received 144 brand-new 3-star DHS polyballs for our club.  I inspected each one of them carefully for roundness and hardness.  Only 52 balls passed my roundness test and out of those, 22 are actually softer than the other balls (I could easily press in with my fingers).



I was actually going to post a few examples of when this happened and the face of the player revealed annoyance but I figured that the only way to do it objectively was to contrast it with the old ball and that is hard.  It happens fairly often with the women because of how close they play to the table.
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote AgentHEX Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 03/25/2015 at 5:48pm
> Despite this, there were numerous breakages, including a comical (but truly embarrassing to the sport) sequence of events in the Men's Doubles Final where a decent replacement ball couldn't be found for a while. Let's get a new ball out of the packet! Oh, it still plays terribly! Let's get another.

Seems ball pre-selection isn't as careful as you assume.

> In this, you are an outlier. An odd opinion at the fringes of reality, stretching the boundaries of belief to further your personal crusade.

In this case, I've never doubted they might break somewhat more, though not at the every X minutes it's sometimes claimed to be. Of course that doesn't stop people from believing whatever the hell they want about I've said, mostly about performance differences.

> And spare me your usual passive/aggressive closing sentence.

It's a direct reply to this: I have witnessed and considered enough of your input on the forum to realise that your reaction generally has almost nothing to do with the issues at hand and everything with your narrative of "AgentHEX knows best, you're all liars and/or idiots".

Which is interesting given if the issue is technical I've certainly given more than fair share of input there, and if not I have, too.

Not being me you perhaps don't realize just how many shitpost replies I get when the point isn't driven home.
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote AgentHEX Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 03/25/2015 at 5:53pm
Originally posted by AndySmith AndySmith wrote:

Originally posted by AgentHEX AgentHEX wrote:


The place I play keeps the ball with the table for continuity and I don't sit there to track  how long it lasts but certainly longer than a few matches. Maybe you do and have something of substance to share.


People have been sharing their increased breakage rate experiences for months. You just refuse to give personal experience any significant value. Are you saying that people are lying about the failure rate?


There've been claims they last X minutes or whatever, and no real credible numbers otherwise.

I've only said they seem to last much longer than that and long enough it doesn't seem to be a problem in play, but apparently that's interpreted in other ways by folks prone to such.
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote AgentHEX Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 03/25/2015 at 5:55pm
Originally posted by NextLevel NextLevel wrote:

Originally posted by AgentHEX AgentHEX wrote:

Originally posted by NextLevel NextLevel wrote:

So, Agent Troll, how many seamed plastic balls have you broken again?


Apparently general bounce differences in the few percent range (and ~<1% relative to swing height off the ground) means "don't bounce", etc when it's opportunistic to exaggerate the gap in the same direction as socialite opinion:

http://mytabletennis.net/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=70818&PID=863807&title=dhs-plastic-ball#863807

The place I play keeps the ball with the table for continuity and I don't sit there to track  how long it lasts but certainly longer than a few matches. Maybe you do and have something of substance to share.

The ignorance displayed by the answer speaks for itself.  Thank you.


I believe you've been the one making claims about specific longevity so the onus is on you to display a lack of ignorance.
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (1) Thanks(1)   Quote NextLevel Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 03/25/2015 at 5:57pm
So AgentHex has never broken a Chinese seamed ball within 5 minutes of hitting with it?  I have.  Definitely more than once.  And like I said on another thread, all my Chinese seamed balls eventually break.  If tournaments didn't use them, I wouldn't buy them.
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote NextLevel Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 03/25/2015 at 5:58pm
You know what, I am going to run the AgentHex experiment for MyTT.com.  I will buy a box of DHS balls from my club today and play exclusively with them.  Let's see how long they last.  I will tape every moment.

Edited by NextLevel - 03/25/2015 at 6:01pm
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote AndySmith Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 03/25/2015 at 5:58pm
Originally posted by wturber wturber wrote:

So I agree that preconceived notions can be at work with the perception of the Chinese 40+ seamed balls. But they aren't the core of the issue. At most, such notions are working to amplify the importance of the real issues. Two of those issues are objectively demonstrable - specifically, lower bounce (compounding issues that all 40+ balls have marginally slower flight and slower spin) and higher breakage. The third issue - sometimes erratic bounces - is harder to demonstrate due to its random nature.


I've seen a lot of different responses from players when they try plastic for the FIRST time. It depends all sorts of stuff - temperament, style of play, etc. I find it's best to form an opinion about them after a period of time to avoid any short-term shock factor skewing things.

I'm something of a rarity - I was really looking forward to the plastic ball. I even enjoyed using the Palio prototype seamless, which must put me in a small minority. Believe me when I say - I really want to like these balls. I'm not angry with the change in principle (although so many aspects of the switch could have been handled better by the ITTF, and we still have confusion and frustration at the club and league level because of it). And when I stumble across a good ball (seamed included), I like the way they play overall. I'm not bothered by change. The lower bounce and reduced spin are just a thing to get used to (although I don't like the variation between seamed and seamless, which will result in the need to constantly adapt week-by-week).

But the breakages and skids? No way. Unacceptable, and I can only hope that the product improves in the near future.

As a side note - I'm starting to wonder if the two issues of skiddy bounce and durability are linked in some way. When I see the odd occasion when a plastic ball lasts for several weeks, I don't see the erratic bounce problem. The ball I used on Monday was brand new, had a horrible bounce, and lasted 15 minutes before suffering a huge crack. Perhaps the skidding is a sign of an impending break, for whatever reason. I've also been idly messing around with the broken ball this week, and the ball material is surprisingly inelastic. If you deform it, it just doesn't want to spring back to its original shape. Maybe the material itself is less tolerant of any flaw in production. Just idle thoughts with no supporting evidence, of course.
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote NextLevel Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 03/25/2015 at 6:00pm
Andy,

Those are my thoughts as well, and I don't consider them idle speculation.
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote AgentHEX Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 03/25/2015 at 6:02pm
Originally posted by NextLevel NextLevel wrote:

So AgentHex has never broken a Chinese seamed ball within 5 minutes of hitting with it?  I have.  Definitely more than once. 


Cool story. In a previous thread somebody said they're prone to break when hit with side of the blade. I tend to cut my rubber bit large, or maybe I just don't miss by as much.

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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote AndySmith Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 03/25/2015 at 6:17pm
Originally posted by AgentHEX AgentHEX wrote:

Originally posted by AndySmith AndySmith wrote:

Originally posted by AgentHEX AgentHEX wrote:


The place I play keeps the ball with the table for continuity and I don't sit there to track  how long it lasts but certainly longer than a few matches. Maybe you do and have something of substance to share.


People have been sharing their increased breakage rate experiences for months. You just refuse to give personal experience any significant value. Are you saying that people are lying about the failure rate?


There've been claims they last X minutes or whatever, and no real credible numbers otherwise.

I've only said they seem to last much longer than that and long enough it doesn't seem to be a problem in play, but apparently that's interpreted in other ways by folks prone to such.


There are no credible numbers available. No studies done that I'm aware of. I doubt that DHS would even WANT a public study done during ITTF events - too embarrassing.

There is only personal experience as things stand. I absolutely guarantee that I had a new ball suffer a catastrophic crack at right angles across the seam within 15 minutes on Monday of this week, and those 15 minutes were of very low quality in play terms because the ball was unexpectedly skiddy at seemingly random moments. I replaced it with another one and it lasted another hour until I ran out of time, and it did seem to play better. I should give my balls names and run diary-style blogs really. I'm not jumping on a bandwagon - sometimes a lemon is just a lemon.

I also guarantee that high-level adopters at my club have a terrible failure rate. I will get some hard numbers for you next week if you want a slightly more numerical opinion. Our national players have bags of 144 balls for drilling and training. They have a ton of cell balls left in their old bag from a purchase 2 years ago. Their 3* Joola 40+ bag is half empty after approx. 3 months. I will get harder numbers for you though - I can count the remaining balls and ask about purchase dates. I can tell you this though - they find it quite a depressing period of time as a high-level player, and are hoping that it's just teething problems (as do many, I presume). This will give you a comparative failure rate, although still only from a group of 3 players.

Venturing more into the gossipy area of things - after the first plastic Grand Prix tournament here in the UK the talk was that the event nearly ran out of balls due to breakages. This was several months ago and I can't remember the exact numbers, but the event was down to their last 2 dozen balls and there was some talk of purchasing more from the supplier as an emergency measure during the tournament. Unheard of in cell times, and I believe each event now keeps a bigger stock on hand at the outset. Again - I will ask some questions and try to revisit this one. It's too vague to be of real value. Also, I'll be at a Grand Prix next month where we will be using Stiga's 40+, so I'll try to weasel as much information out of as many people as I can.

But all this aside - I've seen some good opinions given by reasonable people on this and other forums about breakage rates, and they have given reasonable information considering the circumstances. I see no real reason why I should doubt players' recounting of their experiences if they are prepared to put some effort into reporting them.
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote AndySmith Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 03/25/2015 at 6:31pm
Originally posted by AgentHEX AgentHEX wrote:


Not being me you perhaps don't realize just how many shitpost replies I get when the point isn't driven home.


True - I can't stand to follow a lot of the back-and-forth which swirls around you. There may come a time when you step back and consider why it keeps happening though. When I read many of your posts they have the following structure to my casual eye:

1. Hello.
2. Informative content, with effort to further some discussion.
3. Vague, hand-waving disparaging sign-off along the lines of "I would maybe expect better from people who can read" or some such.

Now, I'm not one for censorship or too much introspection, and you're not the only person who ends posts with a sly stabbing motion into the general surroundings, but you do it a lot. A lot. And it's hard to ignore for some people (me included), and contributes to the general air of antagonism on the forum these days.

If you genuinely believe that you are contributing valuable content, why not maximise the effect by reducing the confrontational aspects? Your message gets diluted for me by having to wade through the unhelpful noise. And it doesn't drive the point home - it just hardens opinions against you. Your point should stand or fall based on content alone.
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote wturber Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 03/25/2015 at 7:09pm
Originally posted by NextLevel NextLevel wrote:

You know what, I am going to run the AgentHex experiment for MyTT.com.  I will buy a box of DHS balls from my club today and play exclusively with them.  Let's see how long they last.  I will tape every moment.

I was thinking about running a test with DHS balls shot out of my robot and recorded on video to see if I could identify more erratic bounces from DHS 40+ ball in a test that more closely simulated a loop.  But then I asked myself why?  Why go to this kind of trouble to establish this for one person who has ignored so many good points made on this and other topics?  And beside that, until the balls are made more durable I'll avoid buying them anyway - good/consistent bounce or not.

As for longevity, I can give you a reasonable standard based on the tournaments I run.  Our tournaments use an average of about 3 dozen balls per tournament.  We've been getting that many new balls for each of the last dozen or so tournaments and I'm running neither a substantial surplus or deficit.  I always have about a two dozen new and used (mostly new) balls in reserve but never more than three dozen. 

I estimate that we play about 400 matches in each of our two tournaments with Giant Round Robins and probably about 300 in each of the other three.  That's 1700 matches and about 180 balls. That means that each ball lasts on average a bit less than 10 matches.  Of course some balls are lost to the pockets of players and bouncing behind the bleachers.  So real durability for the Nittaku 3* Premium balls that we've used is probably somewhere between 10-12 matches per ball.  

My single Nexy seamless ball just lasted well over 20 matches before breaking.  But the Xushaofa that I replaced it lasted about a game and a half when my opponent hit it solidly with the edge of his racket while attempting a very strong loop drive and shatter a chunk out of its side.  The third ball (Xushaofa) is now on its approximately tenth match and still seems fine.  So right now my limited experience is matching what has been reported here - greater durability than celluloid unless the ball suffers a strong table or blade edge strike.  And even then, possibly still delivering a bit better overall durability.  




Edited by wturber - 03/25/2015 at 7:11pm
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Baal Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 03/25/2015 at 7:15pm
Originally posted by AndySmith AndySmith wrote:


I'm something of a rarity - I was really looking forward to the plastic ball.


But not entirely alone.  In my case I expected to hate the seamless balls based on the prototype we had in 2013.  And yet, once they were approved by ITTF, I turned out to be their earliest and most vocal advocate for a long time here, to the point where the joke became that every time I wrote a post about them they raised the price 10%.  I don't claim insight, I just bought some early on and like them a lot.

In fact, I anticipated that  the seamed balls would be better.  The very first post I wrote on 40+ balls, when I had only used one for about five minutes, just some forehand counters and loop and block, was hey, not so bad.  This should be ok.

But then the next time I played with Joola 40+, I made the mistake of playing matches and that's when the truth seemed to hit home, and my next comment here was along the lines of, "wait a minute, might not be so easy to get used to as I thought".  For the next three weeks, I played with the Joola and Nittaku SHA faithfully, trying to adjust, and then out of desperation more or less, I bought a XSF and was amazed immediately.  That was when I started banging the drum for seamless.

Since then, I have played with about every brand made, and many many hours on two kinds of table against players of all levels and many styles.  I have given them to players of all levels and gauged their reactions.  I have done blind testing with clubmates including 2550 players and 1700 players.

The DHS/Joola/Nittaku SHA 40+ ball is not good -- not yet, anyway.  And the DF are not really better. 

The seamless is quite good. 

As things stand now,  the NP40+ is not even really an option since it is not sold, either due to supply chain or manufacturing problems (and they were fragile also). 

That's all I can say. 


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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Baal Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 03/25/2015 at 7:17pm
Most of what I have written about plastic balls for the last 9-months is supported by nearly every comment here when people start using these things seriously, certainly the overwhelming consensus from nearly everyone is that they are different from celluloid and different from seamless.  Smartguy/Mastermind has disappeared now that it is clear that some people in Europe are starting to play with these balls and they are not going to go away as he predicted. 

And, even with Smartguy/Mastermind now silent, every thread on 40+ balls currently ends up in a flame war.  Why? 
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote AgentHEX Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 03/25/2015 at 7:44pm
Originally posted by AndySmith AndySmith wrote:

Originally posted by AgentHEX AgentHEX wrote:


Not being me you perhaps don't realize just how many shitpost replies I get when the point isn't driven home.


True - I can't stand to follow a lot of the back-and-forth which swirls around you. There may come a time when you step back and consider why it keeps happening though. When I read many of your posts they have the following structure to my casual eye:

1. Hello.
2. Informative content, with effort to further some discussion.
3. Vague, hand-waving disparaging sign-off along the lines of "I would maybe expect better from people who can read" or some such.

Now, I'm not one for censorship or too much introspection, and you're not the only person who ends posts with a sly stabbing motion into the general surroundings, but you do it a lot. A lot. And it's hard to ignore for some people (me included), and contributes to the general air of antagonism on the forum these days.

If you genuinely believe that you are contributing valuable content, why not maximise the effect by reducing the confrontational aspects? Your message gets diluted for me by having to wade through the unhelpful noise. And it doesn't drive the point home - it just hardens opinions against you. Your point should stand or fall based on content alone.


Apologies for long post but it's as brief as possible for what it looks like from my pov. Frequently on this forum you see reviews & such of equipment that's surely more than few percent different in many diverse/nuanced ways than what the user had before. However their judgements are taken in an optimist light and what are surely only variations are seen as an improvements esp if faster/"better". Now you get a ball that's marginally slower/less spin/ some with less bounce, and it's interpreted as night and day distinguishable. If you've caught Debater's ball tests, he's no doubt noticed this to some degree and cleverly designed a test where he switches balls (to the DHS/Joola) while covering w/ casual mention of new rubber he's testing. Nobody noticed the different ball (and this is fairly early on w/ less instinctive familiarity and supposedly even worse ball), despite the many claims of night and day contrast.

This is more or less mirrors the degree of diff I've experience: enough that it's not the same but not really worse than someone else changing their equipment, nevermind my own. Sometimes there's still the odd bounce but those aren't nonexistent with cell on various tables either.  I don't believe this to be a contentious opinion nor terribly uncommon. However, it's certainly not the prevailing socialite opinion. Now I know I can be a stubborn person, so I'd imagine someone else less so with the same experience wouldn't bother with this lion's den which insists & enforce that these new balls are barely playable.

Except in this case I happen to understand the physical interactions well enough to know what's possible & not, and because I'm also a hardass I'd on the contrary insist those claiming substantial (*obvious*) differences to demonstrate them; which should be easy enough given just how many are repeating the same thing. This is the part that particular doesn't play well because objective claims based on subjective feel are a lot easier made than shown. Sweating bullets of indignation the msg is clear: how dare anyone question the hivemind. Well, if folks want to play the rhetoric game, I can do that, too, if not better.

Of course you're right being dismissive of this hand waving indignation & such can make people even angrier. However I've been taught adequate character and hold to enough of a personal standard than to capitulate to nothing of substance. OTOH I do appreciate the various stabs at estimating longevity down to something tangible.

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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Mastermind Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 03/25/2015 at 8:02pm
Originally posted by Baal Baal wrote:

Smartguy/Mastermind has disappeared now that it is clear that some people in Europe are starting to play with these balls and they are not going to go away as he predicted.


"Some people", I see.

Anyone can check it at click-tt and see, how extreme unpopular plastic balls are in Germany. Look at regional associations where the teams must report what kind of ball they use for the competition. Like  Württemberg-Hohenzollern (http://ttvwh.click-tt.de/). Go to Spielklassen TTVWH, then choose a league and click on the teams. 8 Teams out of 153 use plastic (like 7 others did not specified their ball though). At a lower level I randomly checked 2 leagues, did not find plastic at all.

Note that there are over 600,000 registered club members in Germany, it is a highly developed tt-country.

At a higher level Oberliga and Regionalliga fewer teams used plastic last time I checked (about a month ago) than in September 2014.
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Baal Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 03/25/2015 at 8:14pm
I have no reason to doubt your numbers for German leagues but 8/153 is >0.  I would bet a great deal that number will increase over time although that would be just conjecture on my part and I don't want to argue about it.  That is a flame war for a different day.  I certainly would not blame them for not using them. 

One thing you can ask at the moment is why the number is so low in Germany, especially outside of the highest level leagues.

The reason is that people have tried the 40+ balls from the most trusted brands that dominate that market -- Donic, Joola, Stiga, Nittaku SHA, etc. -- and people don't like them because they are very different in various way from what they are used to using -- bounce height, durability, weird behavior. 

That is my main point here, and it is a pretty non-controversial thing to say about seamed Chinese balls.
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote NextLevel Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 03/25/2015 at 8:20pm
I think AgentHex has finally won me over to his side. Those Germans are crazy!
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote roundrobin Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 03/25/2015 at 8:47pm
Originally posted by Baal Baal wrote:


The reason is that people have tried the 40+ balls from the most trusted brands that dominate that market -- Donic, Joola, Stiga, Nittaku SHA, etc. -- and people don't like them because they are very different in various way from what they are used to using -- bounce height, durability, weird behavior. 



I think this is definitely the case.  Since XSF seamless balls are not being re-branded by these companies that are very popular in Germany, very few people have actually tried them -specifically the ITTF-approved version of these XSF seamless balls.  The fact that ITTF is being sponsored by DHS does not help the matter either...

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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote wturber Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 03/25/2015 at 8:47pm
Originally posted by Baal Baal wrote:



As things stand now,  the NP40+ is not even really an option since it is not sold, either due to supply chain or manufacturing problems (and they were fragile also). 


My experienced training for and playing in the open says otherwise.  I also asked some of the folks running the tournament whether what the durability was like and the general response was that it was similar to what they had with celluloid.  Keep in mind that I played a lot of hardbat matches and even sandpaper with the NP40+ and these rackets tend to be more damaging to the balls.  

The only indication of a durability problem that I saw was with one hardbat player who has a particularly hard forehand drive. Of course, for all we know there may be variations in batches.



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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote AgentHEX Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 03/25/2015 at 8:58pm
Doesn't it seem a bit odd that so many months of posts about longevity only now produces some rough approx of how much upon the most demanding insistence possible? And some folks expect everyone to take a collective decision formed apparently long before the most basic measure existed seriously?
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