PingPod #38 – Table Tennis Scoring Systems

9 years ago

Table Tennis Thoughts

Transcript

Jeff: Welcome to the Pingpod, the ping pong podcastby PingSkills. I’m Jeff Plumb and I’ve got Alois with me. Welcome Alois.

Alois: Thanks Jeff.

Jeff: Today we are going to be talking about games up to 21 versus games up to 11 and which is better. Now before I ask Alois, I just want to say, I prefer games up to 21. Anyway, lets get on with it. Alois what do you think?

Alois: Well Jeff, I really like the new format of scoring since games are played up to 11. I think at any stage in the match now, each game is interesting because even if it’s 8 – 2, the game is still alive. However if the score is 17 – 3 or 15 – 5, the game is dead and the rest of the game is just boring.

Jeff: But if the game is 17 – 3, it’s kind of like being 3 – 0 and 8 -2 in which case you are also not very interested. It’s the same but you’ve kind of shortened each game and made each game not so valuable.

Alois: Yeah but then each game it’s a new start, it’s fresh and even if I’m losing this game easily or I’m 2 – 0 down, I’ve still got a chance of winning a game and that become exciting for me.

Jeff: Yeah but, you don’t get these really titanic battles where some guy might be down 19 – 11 and make a comeback and win and it’s a really big comeback whereas if it’s 7 – 3 and you come back and win, it doesn’t seem as important.

Alois: Yeah that can be true but I still think there’s a lot of value in the shorter highlights of the game.

Jeff: So you like the shorter, instant gratification.

Alois: Yeah that’s common in our generation isn’t it?

Jeff: Maybe. Also if the games are shorter, doesn’t that mean they are over quicker generally? Now you only have to win 44 points, before you had to win 63 points to win a match.

Alois: That’s right. They can be. But you’ll find that the top games are still going for 45 minutes to an hour so you are still getting value. In a close match the games have still got their time value. And maybe in the case of a really one side match it’s over quicker so they do move on quicker.

Jeff: Yeah the quicker matches do move on quicker. :) But then if we look at a sport like tennis, they have extremely long matches and tennis is extremely popular around the World.

Alois: But why are those games more exciting? Because every game is up to 4 points.

Jeff: Hmmmm.

Alois: And every game has a little crescendo so it’s deuce and suddenly there’s a little crescendo and you’ve got something exciting.

Jeff: So do we need to just extend it out and use the tennis scoring system? Would that be better?

Alois: Well there is an option. I think it has been trialled. It would be worth having a look at?

Jeff: Do you think that would be better than games up to 11?

Alois: It might be, I don’t know. I haven’t seen enough of it. I’m always willing to explore and change.

Jeff: OK. So there you go. We want to know your thoughts. Let us know if you prefer games up to 11 or games up to 21.

Alois: Or would you like the tennis scoring system?


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