Why do choppers use long pips?

Some say long pips are cheating. Some say long pips are a waste of time. So why do almost all choppers utilize long pips on one side of their paddle?

For this post, a “chopper” will be defined as a player who uses a downward stroke to impart backspin on the ball that they are sending back to their opponent a majority of the time. All players can chop, but I only considered players that chop at least roughly 50% of the time. So even defensive players who chop some of the time will not be considered unless they chop most of the time.

I spent countless hours researching choppers. I have researched most of the top rated or highly regarded choppers to see their technique and equipment. I’ve looked at players in different eras, and different rankings, and even some amateur play. All of these choppers have different preference for brands, techniques, blades and rubbers, but almost all choppers above a certain skill level had one thing in common: they use(d) long pips.

Choppers can largely be sorted into two main categories: pure choppers and modern choppers. There are some that might not fit neatly into these molds, but they normally lean heavily into one of them.

Pure choppers

Pure choppers tend to take less risks. Unless they know they have a winning kill shot, they will play a safer, chop return. Some players even utilize long pips on both sides of the rubber, but this is very rare. They may twiddle to use the long pips on both sides, and normally play far away from the table. Pure choppers tend to rely on their opponents making mistakes that they can capitalize on, and will be mostly reactionary.

These players can be very entertaining to watch, and often draw crowds and cheers. While certain players have had some success with this style, their success is rarely maintained for long stretches, and they generally do not rank super high.

The prototype player that I consider one of the top pure choppers of all time is Koji Matsushita. I encourage you to watch videos of his matches to get a feel for his skill in returning the ball. He is famous for being one of the most entertaining choppers of all time, and had the ability to chop the ball back onto the table from crazy positions and less than ideal circumstances. He would sometimes take more risks than other pure choppers, but rarely turned into an “attacking” player for any length of time.

Modern choppers

Most choppers you see today would be considered modern choppers. Modern choppers tend to be more aggressive, and may take more risky kill shots looking for winners. Sometimes, you may see a modern chopper change up their style and turn into a mostly attacking player before changing back to chopping mainly. They may still twiddle, but less frequently. Some modern choppers may not even chop on their forehand side. Modern choppers tend to use their chopping to help set up attacks, and will sometimes try to predict what their opponent will do or force them into disadvantageous situation.

Modern choppers tend to have a higher average ranking than their pure chopper counterparts, but still rarely rank super high. Again, they normally do not have sustained success, but have tended to have more success in tournament placing. You may also find a few choppers who use inverted rubber on both sides of their blades. These choppers tend to be much more aggressive, but can fall back to chopping for periods of time. Dual inverted choppers tend to mostly be women, and are very rare.

One modern chopper who has had a couple stretches of sustained success, and has been ranked very high most of his career is Joo Se Hyuk. Many, including myself, consider him the greatest chopper to ever live. He has seen the most tournament success as a chopper, and also has one of best records against top ranked players as a chopper. His technique seems almost perfect, and while he has shown that he can chop from awkward angles, he is rarely caught out of position. You will see less “crazy” shots from Joo than you might see from Koji, but you may never see a more consistent chopper. This chopping prowess, combined with a pretty aggressive and powerful attack has helped Joo maintain a presence in top table tennis circles for decades.

So why long pips?

I have heard some people say that long pips is cheating because you never know what spin is going to come back. On the contrary, spin is as easy to predict as it is on inverted rubber. Some might even say it’s easier to predict because there is less chance of variation. So then why do almost all choppers use long pips on one side of their blade? It has to do with the physics of the long pips, and the way that they help choppers deal with topspin. 

Overcoming topspin

As blades, rubbers, balls and players have all advanced, the ability to create spin on the ball has also advanced. Blades started as just pieces of wood, and you couldn’t really create much spin on the ball at all. Then people started putting sandpaper on the wood. This allowed the player’s paddle to “grip” the ball a little bit, giving them the ability to create some spin. Then people realized you can put rubber on the paddle which grips better than sandpaper. Adding sponge/foam under the rubber allowed the ball to sink in, and gave the rubber more surface area to grip, and the rebound of the foam helped add more speed and spin to the ball. Pretty soon, you started seeing a crazy amount of spin being able to be generated, and you see something similar to the game we see played today.

When a ball has spin, it will grab onto the rubber and jump off it in the direction of the spin. So a ball coming towards you with topspin will tend to jump upwards off of your paddle. To combat this, it is common to angle the paddle down when making contact with the ball. However, because choppers strike the ball with a downward motion, they cannot add significant angle to their blade to counteract the topspin. This means the speed of their blade must be moving at least as fast in the same direction as the surface speed of the spinning ball to make an effective, controlled chop.

Because of how fast the ball is spinning, it can be very hard to swing your blade that fast. As the ball travels, it loses spin, so chopping from a distance away from the table tends to be easier. But choppers often are caught too close to the table to effectively chop the massive amounts of topspin they encounter. This is where the long pips come into play.

Mechanical advantage

Long pips bend when they come in contact with the ball. Because of this, if a ball is incoming with heavy top spin, and hits a paddle with long pips, the pips will bend with the spin on the ball. This means instead of 100% of the spin pushing the ball up off the rubber, maybe 50% of the spin’s energy is used to push the pips down, and 50% of the spin’s energy is used to push the ball up.

Combine this with the fact that long pips provide less surface area for the ball to grab, you now have a rubber that reacts much less to the spin of the ball. 

By reducing the effect of topspin, choppers are able to perform a much better, controlled chop, even when they are closer to the table. Even though they cannot chop faster than the spin of the ball, the long pips will help make up the difference.

Mechanical disadvantage

So if the long pips are so effective at helping with spin, why doesn’t everyone use them? The same mechanics that reduce the effect of incoming spin also works in reverse. The amount of spin that you are able to generate is also reduced significantly. 

In fact, with long pips, changing the direction of the spin at all can actually be quite difficult. While long pips are adept at continuing or speeding up the existing spin on the ball, it can be nearly impossible to CHANGE the spin on the ball. This is the reason why some consider it easier to judge the spin of a ball when struck with long pips. It might be a different kind of spin than you’re used to, but if you pay attention, and understand how long pips work, it’s a very predictable spin that will come back to you.

This limitation is why choppers almost always have at least 1 side of their blade inverted. Long pips help with chopping and blocking, but they are terrible to attack with. However, as mentioned earlier, you may find a few choppers that have inverted rubber on both sides of their blade. You lose the mechanical advantage that long pips give you against topspin, but you gain the ability to attack with both sides of your paddle. Often players like this will not attempt to chop when close to the table, and will rely on their footwork to put them into position to chop.

But doesn’t inverted rubber create more spin?

Choppers try to create lots of backspin on the ball. And inverted rubbers are better at creating spin. So wouldn’t it make more sense to just use inverted to chop with? This is partially true. Inverted rubber is better at creating spin. However, the speed of that spin is limited to the speed at which the chopper can swing the blade. With long pips, if you “brush” the ball in the direction it’s already spinning, you can actually speed up that ball faster than if you had just used inverted rubber.

You can think of this like spinning a basketball on your finger. To start, the person will normally generate spin using two hands and then let the ball continue spinning on their finger. This is kind of what it’s like to chop with inverted rubber. You can create a lot of spin, but the amount of spin is limited to how much you can generate in one try.

However, when you see someone spin the ball on their finger, you normally see them start the spin and then “brush” the ball a couple times to get it to spin faster. This effect is similar to how things work with long pips. They take spin that is already there, and speed it up. This means you can technically generate more spin than you could with just regular inverted rubber, but it relies on the ball to be spinning in the first place. 

Different kinds of long pips

Long pips come in 3 main varieties that I’m aware of: low-friction, medium-friction and high-friction. The friction level refers to how “grippy” the rubber is on the ball. The higher the friction, the more the rubber will grip the ball. Since frictionless long pips have been banned, I won’t discuss them in depth. But those combined two different mechanical advantages to effect the ball’s spin as little as possible.

Low-friction long pips

These seems to be the least used by professional choppers. These pips have minimal grip, so they react to the spin of the ball the least, but also generate the least amount of spin of your own. If using the basketball spinning on your finger analogy, then this would be like trying to change the spin using a large paint brush. You might be able to speed the ball up some, but it would be very hard to stop or change the spin with one swipe.

Medium-friction long pips

Most professionals seem to use a medium-friction long pip. This makes sense, as medium-friction pips are the best for actual chopping. They provide more grip to generate spin, without interfering with the mechanical advantage of long pips. These pips are like trying to change the spin of a basketball using your fingertips. You may notice, this is how almost everybody speeds up the ball spin on their finger. This is because it provides enough grip to impart spin on the ball, without being too much grip to accidentally slow it down.

High-friction long pips

Some professionals use these. They allow for the most spin variation among long pips, but their grippy nature can somewhat offset the mechanical advantage of the long pips. These are like someone using their palm to change the spin of a basketball. It can speed it up if done correctly, but there is also a higher chance of accidentally slowing the ball down, and the speed of your chop makes more of a difference. The grippy nature of the rubber also reacts more to the spin on the ball than a medium-friction rubber might.

Conclusion

Long pips are not cheating. They are no more cheating than saying a topspin looper is cheating by using foam under his rubber to generate more topspin. In the same way that different thicknesses of foam under the rubber can be used to serve different purposes, different pip lengths can do the same thing. Long-pips are very predictable. They can give great advantages in some areas, but have great disadvantages in others. Below you will see a list of ball interactions using different types of long pips.

And if you ever run into someone who says, “you’re cheating by using long pips,” you can tell them, “you’re cheating by using foam.” If you think something here is wrong, or have more to contribute, please feel free to leave a comment. After all, these are merely theories.

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How will the ball react to different long pip rubbers?

Each group of reactions will assume the chopper imparts his maximum amount of backspin chop onto the incoming ball.

Low-friction rubbers (DHS Cloud and Fog III [somewhere between low and medium-friction])

Incoming heavy topspin>Outgoing heavy backspin
Incoming light topspin>Outgoing medium backspin
Incoming no spin>Outgoing very light backspin
Incoming light backspin>Outgoing no spin
Incoming heavy backspin>Outgoing light topspin

Medium-friction rubbers (TSP Curl P1-R, Butterfly Feint Long II)

Incoming heavy topspin>Outgoing very heavy backspin
Incoming light topspin>Outgoing heavy backspin
Incoming no spin>Outgoing medium backspin
Incoming light backspin>Outgoing light backspin
Incoming heavy backspin>Outgoing no spin

High-friction rubbers (TSP Curl P4, Butterfly Feint Long III)

Incoming heavy topspin>Outgoing heavy backspin
Incoming light topspin>Outgoing heavy backspin
Incoming no spin>Outgoing medium-high backspin
Incoming light backspin>Outgoing medium backspin
Incoming heavy backspin>Outgoing light backspin

A heavy chop with a grippy inverted rubber would give you heavy backspin in all scenarios, and would depend on the amount of spin you could physically generate.