Indoor Table Tennis Equipment

Let’s talk a little bit about the equipment you need for table tennis. You may think: “why on earth is this guy talking about a couple of paddles and a ping-pong ball? I can get all that stuff together for $ 5,00 at my deli around the corner!”. And you are right you can. 

Therefore, you might be surprised when I tell you that I used to spend about $ 200 a month on my table tennis equipment. Yes, that’s right. It was $ 200, and sometimes even more like recently I just bought a Stiga Pro Carbon racket for myself which has cost me about $70 just for the blade. I guess the same is true for all different kind of sports equipment. I don’t know anything about baseball. So to me all the bats look exactly the same. But even without knowing anything about it, I am sure that my theory is wrong. 

Very likely, there are huge differences between the various types of bats, the wood they are made of, size, weight, etc. So for table tennis, it’s exactly the same story. Let’s start with the paddle. A paddle consists of the bat (which is made of wood, or sometimes a combination of different woods and other materials). Now typically, each bat also comes with different handle shapes, such as straight, concave, etc. 

Each bat has two sides and in 95% of the time, both sides are covered with a rubber. There are some players who only cover one side, because they only use one their forehand and therefore don’t need to cover the backhand. One side has to be black and the other one has to be red. There are no exceptions to this rule. 

The table tennis equipment suppliers provide each of their rubbers in both, red and black. Typically, each table tennis rubber has a spongy kind of layer attached underneath. That layer comes in various thicknesses. The thinker, the fast is the rubber.  The rubbers differentiate from each other in tackiness and density. Both factors play an important role as you develop your game. Some players use a lot of spin on their shots; others prefer more the straight shot variations and therefore don’t need as much grip as others.

There are two general categories of rubbers, the inverted ones and the pimples. The inverted ones are by far more popular. The pimples, or also called long pimples, are mostly used by players who prefer a rather defensive tactic. I’m going to talk about the different playing styles and the relation to equipment in another article.

Table Tennis Rules - Service and Score

Do you really know the rules regarding indoor table tennis? Or do you just THINK you know them? Well, we shall see. I’m about to explain a few rules to you including some of which you might have never heard about before. In order to win a match, a player must have won 3 out of five games. In order to win a game, he must have won 11 points. That’s right, not 21 points. That rule has changed a while ago.

Okay, so again, a player needs 11 points to win a game and he/she needs to have 2 points more than the opponent. So for example, let’s say the score is 9:9. If you make two more points, the game is yours. But if the score is 10:10, you also need two more points in order to win the game. That means theoretically, a final score could be 17:15. So let me sum that up for you again:

A player needs 3 out of five games to win an indoor table tennis match.

In order to win a game, a player needs to score 11 points minimum AND 2 points more than his opponent.

Now let’s move on two the next rule. The service rule for table tennis. Most of the people got that wrong, too. Before you start a match, each player picks a side and coin will to be flipped. If you picked the right side, you have the right to start with the service.

However, that doesn’t mean that you have to actually use your right. Maybe you feel more comfortable to start a new match by returning your opponent’s service. In that case you can hand over the right of serve to your opponent. If your opponent was guessed right on the coin flip, it’s exactly the other way around.

Once it is decided who starts the match, he has two services. And then it keeps alternating all throughout the game, always two services at a time. The old rule was five services per player each times, but that was when a game still consisted of 21 points. Okay, so let’s say your opponent won the right of service to start the first game.

Once the first game is finished, you will have the right of services to start the second game. And for the third game, it will go back to your opponent and so forth.