The “tricky” player with atypical equipment

The six previous styles cover most of club and competitive table tennis. But in any local league a player turns up who fits none of them: mounting combinations the catalogue does not suggest, mixing surfaces that in theory should not coexist, and winning matches — or losing them spectacularly — because the opponent does not know what to expect. This is the “tricky” player, and their relationship with equipment differs from everyone else's, because the bat does not merely execute the stroke: it forms part of the tactics.

What defines this profile is neither a weakness in disguise nor a collector's whim, but a conscious decision: to exploit the opponent's disorientation as a weapon. The physics of table tennis means that different surfaces return the ball with very different behaviour against the same incoming stroke — the comparative table in 6.7 quantifies it — and the tricky player builds their game on that asymmetry. It is not merely a matter of mounting long pimples on one side and inverted rubber on the other, which is the asymmetry of the defender described in 16.5; it is a matter of combining surfaces whose difference of response maximises the confusion. Long pimples on the forehand and inverted on the backhand, reversing the usual division. Anti-spin on one side and a fast tensor on the other, so that the same incoming ball comes back dead or accelerated according to which side touches it. Short pimples without sponge on one face and tacky Chinese rubber on the other. The combinations are as many as the player's imagination allows within the rules.

Equipment as tactics. In the earlier styles, equipment serves the stroke: the rubber chosen is the one that best executes the topspin, the block or the chop the player needs. In the tricky profile, the equipment is part of the point. Twiddling the bat — changing the face that strikes between one serve and the next, or between the return and the third ball — turns the surface into a variable the opponent has to decipher in real time. Since the rule change that imposed different colours on each face, the opponent can identify which side is striking by paying attention, but at the speed of real play that reading often fails. The special rubbers involved — short pimples, long pimples, anti-spin — are developed in chapter 6; what matters here is that the tricky player chooses them not only for what they do but for what the opponent believes they do.

The blade. There is no canonical blade for this profile because there is no canonical stroke. The blade has to meet one minimum condition: working with two surfaces of very different behaviour without either becoming unusable. In practice that usually translates into allround or allround-offensive five-plies, without composite, with a low blade weight — between 75 and 85 grams — so that the assembled set-up does not shoot up even with two rubbers of different natures. Stiff blades with a pronounced catapult make the disruptive side harder to control, and very slow ones punish the offensive side when the player needs to attack. Chapter 9 develops all-wood blades and their range of response; the allrounder of 16.4 shares with the tricky player that need for a wide dynamic range, though for different reasons.

The rubbers and the division. The typical combination sets an offensive side against a disruptive one. The offensive side carries an inverted rubber — a tensor on medium sponge, or a Chinese rubber of moderate hardness — allowing an attack when the chance arises. The disruptive side mounts a special surface whose effect on the ball is as different as possible from the offensive side: long pimples that reverse the spin, anti-spin that cancels it, short pimples that ignore it. Section 6.6 develops the niches of each type of special rubber for each player profile. Which side — forehand or backhand — takes which rubber does not follow the convention of the modern defender; it depends on which hand dominates the attack and on how the player executes the twiddle. There are tricky players who attack on the backhand and disrupt on the forehand, reversing the division most people assume by default.

Weight and distance. The assembled set-up is usually light — between 155 and 175 grams — because special rubbers with thin sponge or none at all weigh less than a tensor at maximum thickness. That lightness favours the speed of twiddling, which is central to the style. The playing distance varies: close to the table for the disruptive block with pimples, at mid-distance when the player opens with the offensive side. There is no fixed band, and that unpredictability is part of the arsenal.

Limitations and honesty. The tricky style has a competitive ceiling that is better not concealed. Against opponents who read surfaces well, who do not rush and who keep calm in the face of an unexpected return, the surprise factor runs out. What remains is a player with an offensive side inferior to the pure attacker's and a disruptive side that no longer disrupts. That is why this profile thrives on the club circuit — where opponents change and adaptation is limited — and is scarce at the top level, where players meet repeatedly and learn to read. Atypical equipment is not cheating, as argued in 20.6, but neither is it a substitute for technical level. It is a legitimate tactical tool whose effectiveness depends on the context, and the honest player knows when the context supports it and when it does not.