In the 70s of the 19th century the sport of tennis arose, which was then played fanatically.
Of course it happened regularly that the weather conditions were very bad and then the sport could not be played. In England they didn’t leave it at that, they went looking for solutions. They soon came up with ideas to move the sport indoors.
And that is how the sport that is now known to us as table tennis was born. But how exactly does table tennis work? And how does the scoring system work?
Table of Contents
Goal of table tennis
Table tennis can be played with 2 or 4 participants. It is played on a table divided into 2 halves by means of a net in the middle.
When serving, you must bounce the ball on your half as well as on the half of the opponent(s).
After the serve, on the other hand, you hit the ball in one shot at the half of the opponent(s) during the game.
During the service the ball may not go through the net, this is allowed during the rest of the match.
The goal during the match is to hit the ball in such a way that your opponent(s) is/are no longer able to return the ball correctly.
The serve
We will first correct a common mistake when playing table tennis.
In tennis there is such a thing as ‘first mistake’, this means that you can do the service wrong 1 time without consequences.
However, this rule does not exist in table tennis. In case of a wrong serve, the opponent immediately gets a point.
In addition, it is of course important to know who should serve when.
During the match, after 2 points served, the service taker is changed.
An exception to this is if a score of 10-10 is reached. In this case, a change is made after each point.
Table tennis scoring
In short we can say that a table tennis match consists of 3 or 5 games and each game is played until someone reaches 11 points.
We will work this out a little more clearly now.
So in a match a specific number of games are played, usually 3 or 5 games.
However, not all of these games need to be played. For example, if 3 games have been chosen and someone wins the first 2, the last game will not be played anymore.
A game is played until 1 of both sides reaches 11 points.
The difference in points must be at least 2 at the end of a game. If the score is 10-11, play continues until this difference is reached.
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