Beating someone using my own style

If you want to break the pushing game, try pushing with no spin or sidespin

Johas B 

That`s a smart idea. Never tried sidespin push. Just flicks, underspin pushes and no spin push.

I do not want to break it Johan. That's the tactic to beat my.opponent

Well, the variation can cause him to mess up his push. Either miss completely or pop it up high enough that you can kill it.

For all of us, our natural style will beat some players easily and not be very effective against others. In our case, blockers welcome the natural attacking game. If we mindlessly play short serves and loop the deep return, we actually are playing along the plan of our blocker opponent: they are waiting for the fast loop, control it easily close to the table and send back our own power into a place where we aren't because we're still recovering from the attack.

Resolving to a pushing game can work but we're not getting any advantage from having developed our own game. Often the blocker is a relatively good pusher as well.

Here are my tactics against blockers (yesterday I lost 6-0 again against a blocker, so I'm not a master of my own tactics)

1. deep, deep, deep: serve deep, return deep, loop deep. Blockers usually stand fairly close to the table. They don't have problems with short serves or returns. They don't have a problem with mid table loops. But when you play deep, they have a harder time controlling the game because they have to cover a larger distance. They usually don't loop well, so the risk of playing deep is reduced with such a player

2. wide on both sides: since blockers are close to the table, they are more vulnerable wide on their forehand or backhand. The angles are sharper.

3. slower and recover: you need to expect the ball coming back, so it's better to play it a litlle slower and recover for the next ball, than going all out on the attack. Slow spinny loops, deep into the body are very difficult for a blocker to control, especially when close to the table.

Basically, I will still play the attacking game but pay much more attention to placement. In fact, this is a viable strategy against every player, which however is most effective against blockers, who will not readily attack or counterattack.

Hi Dieter,

The only thing I would add is looping shorter on the table can be very effective too as a variation because the blocker often cope well with the lesser speed and also having to move in or wait for the ball when it is closer to the net.