 Avoid playing at the table.

Therefore when serving, don't serve short, perhaps once in a

while for variation's sake. Use mainly long or half long backspin serves, vary their
placement. Short serves can too easily be attacked or played short. In both cases you're in
trouble, because you have to stay at the table and can not return a strong attack.
 When receiving, you do not have many options. This is my time. You are forced to stay
at the table. But do not attack my serves - I'm used dealing with much stronger attacks off
my serves than you can consistently put up. Push everything long.
 Do not try to counterloop my opening loops, as your consistency and penetration is not
good enough. Chop them, if possible use your pimples.
 Vary spin a lot, pushing with pimples to get dead balls is good, as long as they are placed
long and low.
 Your counterattacks are effective, but only as a variation. Wait for the right situation.
 Use your pimples much more. Your base position should be more to the right (I'm
righthanded) to be able to chop more with your pimples - again because your chops off
my loops are more consistent with your pimples.
 Move more, back up from the table further and as soon as possible. Therefore again: push
long, I can not touch the ball short when you give me a long backspin ball.

Well, that gave me something to think of. I had the impression that I played him very
defensively. But he is right. The reason is that I am afraid of his attacks. My way of dealing with
this pressure is attacking myself, even knowing that my defense is not worse than my offense.

Then I took a little time to review some videos of pros and paid special attention to their
receiving game. Guess how many times Shiono attacks when receiving? Right, never. I found
only one (!) surprising flip on a dead serve. This holds true for most of the choppers, even those
playing very aggressively. When receiving, they always push and they always push long. They
don't even counterloop or block the opening topspins of their opponents. Mostly they back up
from the table and fish (Filus, Gionis, Chen) or chop (Shiono, Muramatsu, Joo) the first topspin,
the counterlooping part comes later in the rally - and never at the table but from middle distance.

What can be done to change the tactics?

I have the impression, the solution is simple: just do it. Right now in training sessions I either
play drills without much tactical background or I play matches without consciously incorporating
the drilled strokes (i.e. fh chop). Instead of trying to win training matches, I should try to defend,
regardless of results. I should set myself a requirement for every match - i.e. not attacking at all,
using only one serve, implementing a pattern of placement (like 2 strokes to bh, 1 stroke in the
fh), using only one side of my racket - anything forcing me to a more defensive game and
distracting myself from the idea of wanting to win.