With Myrtle Beach Looming…MLTT Grab Bag!
Get your tickets now for what promises to be an explosive 2nd weekend of action for the Eastern Division teams, as rosters have been firmed up and the intensity level will undoubtedly be through the room of the Myrtle Beach Sports Center! Don’t overlook that discount code, Majorponghead readers!
October 10, 2023. With just a few short days until the MLTT tour re-ignites in Myrtle Beach, we wanted to dash off a quick article to catch us up on the goings-on in the world of Major League Table Tennis. Looking forward to seeing a few new faces make their debuts, namely Daniel Gonzalez for the Florida Crocs, Jishan Liang and Koyo Kanamitsu for the Princeton Revolution, and Petar Kostovsk for the division-leading Carolina Gold Rush. Can’t wait to see the transformation that Commissioner Flint Lane and his MLTT team have undoubtedly begun to work upon the arena by the beach. And if you’re a golfer like us, well there are 90+ courses nearby to choose from…as long as you get your 18 in before the table tennis action begins. Get your tickets now and join us in Myrtle Beach for what promises to be a cool AF weekend! OK, time for a few odds ‘n ends, a grab-bag of MLTT-related news!
The Top 10 ranked players of MLTT’s newly-released Power Rating stats page. We have insider info into the formula behind this newly-minted Power Rating.
When MLTT first unveiled their stats page, our collective pongheads nearly exploded. Statistical data and rankings are of course a mainstay for all major American sports, but it’s always been a blind spot for the WTT and table tennis in general. By releasing this stats page after only the first week of play in the league, the MLTT is signaling that it will be placing a higher value on statistical data, emulating the MLB, NBA, and NFL. For better or worse, we Americans love our stats and our rankings. We applaud the vision of Commissioner Lane for acknowledging the importance of statistical red meat for MLTT fans to sink their teeth into.
At first glance, the Top 10 list seems to correlate well with our eye test for top week 1 player performances…#1 Kou Lei was certainly head and shoulders above everyone else in the west, whereas #2 Daniel Gorak and #4 Enzo Angles were the clear alphas in the east. Additionally, #3 Alexandra Cazacu, #5 Ono Onaolapo, #6 Kai Zhang and #7 Andrew Cao were certainly the players from the middle and even bottom of their respective team rosters who showed up and showed out with fantastic performances beyond what their coaches and teammates could have asked for…and so it’s completely legit to see them so highly ranked. #8 Damien Provost and #9 Nikhil Kumar had more-than-solid performances as their respective team’s top dog, while #10 Amy Wang, the lone woman in the Top 10, is there by way of her fantastic doubles performance and even more impressive Golden Games 68.8% win percentage, good for 2nd best in the Top 10 (to God of the Golden Game Daniel Gorak’s mind-boggling 81%) and tied for 4th best overall with Texas Smash teammate Darryl Tsao (quick shout-out to Tyrese Knight of the Portland Paddlers, in 3rd with a scintillating 71.1%). We did ask MLTT for the exact formula used to calculate their Power Rating, and while they didn’t disclose the secret sauce, we were told that it is calculated by taking the following elements into consideration (listed here in no particular order of importance):
• singles W-L record
• doubles W-L record
• Golden Game record
• post-tournament USATT rating
The USATT rating, we were told, is an important mitigating factor so that a player is not overly rewarded for defeating lower rated players, or vice versa. This makes a lot of sense since matchup strategy is an important element in team play, and there are certainly situations in which a coach will purposefully match a stronger player against a weaker one, or vice versa. By taking into account the post tourney USATT rating, it serves as a balance for those victories/losses. Anyhow, our endless obsessing over the entire stats page of players #1 through #48 has left us with the general impression that this formula is working pretty darn well initially. In the end, what you want for the power rating is simply that it accurately reflects the value of a player to his/her team’s success, and it already seems to do that. We say “simply” but it’s obviously not such a simple thing given the unique competitive structure of MLTT’s match play. Only time will tell how accurately the current formula works, as more data becomes available to input…but what a heckuva fun start and certainly a great basis to spark an endless series of debates…not to mention a major factor in determining regular season and playoff MVP awards.
At the WTT Star Contender Lanzhou, the Bay Area Blasters’ Ma Jinbao gave the international table tennis community the third “Hello World” moment this year from an MLTT athlete, on the heels of breakout performances by Aditya Sareen (Oceania Championships) and Amy Wang (Pan Am Championships).
The story itself in not unfamiliar: unheralded low-ranked player (#311 in this case) battles his way through the brutal qualifying draw and then catches fire, running through a phalanx of higher ranked favorites in a romp that leaves spectators agog and tournament organizers shaking their heads in disbelief as their seedings go up in smoke. In the case of Ma Jinbao at WTT Star Contender Lanzhou, a major tourney in the WTT schedule drawing the top talent from around the world and especially powerhouse home team China, this meant rattling off a series of upset wins over Ho Kwan Kit (HK, #157), Robert Gardos (AUT, #95), recent breakout star Kao Cheng-Jui (TAIWAN, #30), and fellow hot-as-balls qualifier Ryoichi Yoshiyama (JPN, #229), before giving French enfant prodige Felix Lebrun (world #15) an absolute run for his money in the quarterfinals (losing 3-2) before finally bowing out of the tournament, just a hair’s breadth from reaching the Final Four. In this case, however, it ended up being a historical performance as no American man had ever advanced to the QFs in an WTT Star Contender event. Safe to say that Ma will no longer be flying under anyone’s radar in the future, especially after his exploits were heralded by the WTT in a front page article. Here at home, Coach Maggie Tian’s Bay Area Blasters cannot wait for him to make his debut…hopefully later this month in Houston. We can practically hear the opposing coaches muttering “yeah…he’s gonna be a problem.”
We here at Majorponghead are almost as fond of our MLTT Time Machine as we are of the Chicago Wind’s player ambassador, and hardest working man in table tennis, Damien Provost! Here he is before he accumulated a million frequent flyer miles.
We leave you with a heart-warming story about one of the best guys in the MLTT, the Chicago Wind’s Damien Provost. Majorponghead has officially bestowed upon Damien the title of “Hardest Working Man in Table Tennis” as our recent attempts to follow his travels and exploits have been nothing short of exhausting. So where in the world is Damien? First he appeared in the Spanish league, winning for his Burgos club vs the reigning Spanish champion Priego. Next day he was in the UK, in a livestream of his British Premier League team’s (defending champs Ormeau) match against none other than the Table Tennis Daily team, where he was absolutely the Man of the Match, drawing oodles of admiration from the TTD chaps. Then before we knew it, he was back in France playing for his hometown team Vibraye ASTT for the first time in 24 years (perhaps when the above pic was taken?) and leading them to a 14-0 landslide victory in front of friends and family. Talk about a returning hero! Now he’s packing his bags for Myrtle Beach. Wherever Damien goes in the world, he leaves a trail of good vibes in his wake. MLTT is both lucky and smart to have signed him as a player ambassador. As evidenced in the nice shout-outs for the MLTT in the TTD livestream video, Damien is already spreading word of the league across the world.
