(By Steve Hopkins)
USA Men: Home Stretch in Group Stage
Team USA began the tournament with an upset of Spain in the group stages of the Liebherr 2018 World Table Tennis Team Championships. They have since defeated Puerto Rico and lost to Iran. This 2-1 record is shared by Spain, Iran, and Kazakhstan in the group, so effectively there is a four way tie for first and only three teams will advance to the compete in the knock-out stage for the championship of the 2nd Division.
Team USA has two matches remaining: Kazakhstan and Luxembourg (the teams seeded directly above and directly below the USA in the group). Team USA controls its own fate, in that winning both of the remaining matches will mean the US finishes no worse than second. If the US loses one of their remaining two matches, then their odds of advancing are good but not definite. And if the US loses both of the remaining matches they are not immediately eliminated, but would need some help from other teams (Spain would need to lose twice as well).
Thus far, Team USA is doing exactly what they need to do. They entered the event seeded fourth in the group and need to ensure that they finish in the top three. The win over Spain has put them in a very strong position. Tomorrow will be an exciting day – not just for Team USA but also for the rest of the group.
It is very difficult to predict results for the final matches as these competitors have not played each other previously. Though it is worth noting that Luxembourg and Puerto Rico were pretty evenly matched (Luxembourg won 3-2) and Team USA defeated Puerto Rico somewhat easily (3-1). On the other hand, Kazakhstan has an almost identical record as Team USA – they defeated Iran 3-2 and lost to Spain 2-3 (while Team USA defeated Spain 3-2 and lost to Iran 2-3). The match between Team USA and Kazakhstan could be the most important of the tournament for both teams as the winner will certainly be in the top 3 while the loser likely will not.
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Amicus Prime owners, if you want a video of a Fethomania drill, you will need to manually link the video for a particular Fethomania drill with the following steps:
Download the video to the device that contains the Amicus app (probably to the Downloads folder).
Open the Amicus app on that device.
Select the matching drill in the Exercise List.
Tap on the Drill Description. The Set Exercise Properties popup window will appear.
Tap on Select Video button at the bottom of that window. Then navigate to where the video is located in the file directory and select that video.
Tap Save at bottom right of the popup window, Save at the top right of the main window, then Save in the resulting popup window.
Tap the Drill Description again and the title of the video should now appear in parentheses after Select Video.
To play the video, tap the Play Video button on the Play Exercise screen.
Amicus Prime owners, save these drills to your device via the following steps:
Click the Drill image below to download the file to your tablet, cell phone or other device that has the Amicus app on it.
Open that file and a window will appear in the Amicus app to confirm you want to import those drills. Tap Import to add the drills to the Exercise List.
You can then play those drills just like any other drill in the Exercise List.
Tip – After importing the drills from a Fethomania Session, tap on the drill description to reveal Stefan’s technique pointers for that drill!
For owners of models other than Prime:
The Google Sheets image takes you to a spreadsheet that gives the settings for each drill. While these won’t be the exact settings for the Control Panel on your robot, they will give you an idea of where to start, and you’ll need to adjust from there. At the bottom, we’ve included the ranges and defaults for the setting on a Prime so you can compare these to the ranges and defaults on your own robot. In general, default settings should give you a similar ball regardless of what model you have. If a drill has a change of speed, spin, or trajectory, you will be unable to replicate that drill on a Basic or Start model.