There is a myth continually floating around table tennis circles that says, “Anyone who begins using long pips or anti can go up 200 points overnight.”  I have heard this saying at many table tennis clubs over the last 15-20 years.  This statement might be true under two conditions:
 
1.      It might be true if you are playing against a player who thinks that you have normal sticky inverted rubber and doesn’t realize that you have unconventional rubber.

 
 
 
 
 
In this article, I’m going to classify all table tennis rubbers into one of three basic categories.
 
 
Grippy Inverted Rubbers
What you see is what you get.  If your opponent strokes the ball with a topspin stroke, the ball will be topspin to some degree or another.  Same principle applies to backspin or sidespin.
 
 
Recreational Rubbers, Short Pips, and Long Pips with Grip

 
 
 
For those of you who are preparing for our Sep 26-27 tournament, I would highly recommend that you carefully read this article and takes notes in order to mentally prepare for the competition.  I posted this article in the past, but decided to re-post it as a refresher...