Greg Letts blunders on his video

[Drean Orydeaws]

I was looking at the video (link below) by Aussie Greg Letts on YouTube



At 1.28 of this video, Greg Letts says :-

The first step was obvious . In 1999 we changed the pips out aspect ratio rule in order to make the current world champion’s pips out rubber illegal

Four blunders here by Gregg Letts

1, Only the actual enforcement of the pips out AR (Aspect Ratio) change started in January 1999 but the change itself was already passed in Durban, South Africa in a secret EGM meeting of the executive council in 1998 (I have the exact dates & details saved somewhere on one my old data disks. I will dig this up & post later) after the change failed at the Tianjin BGM in 1995 (I may be wrong on this but my understanding is that the change failed miserably as a “rule” change submitted to the ITTF’s General council of 220 (then) or so nations and rule changes require a 75% vote but Scholer cleverly made this change as a “regulation” change which only needed a simple 51% majority & still only passed by the closest of margins like 19-17 or such)


2. Liu Guoliang became World Champion only later in August 8, 1999 at Eindhoven WTTC but not in January 1999. So Liu was NOT the (then) current World Champion in Januray 1999. The World Championships were originally scheduled from April 26 to May 9 in Belgrade, Yugoslavia but were postponed after the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia during the Kosovo War in March 1999 and this was the first time the WTTC was split into WITTC & WTTTC. The first WTTTC was in 2000 Kuala Lumpur when Sweden beat China with Jorgen Persson beating Liu Guoliang in the deciding 5th match, This was the last time that a non-Chinese team ever won Men’s team event at WTTTC

3. The 1998 pips out AR change was not directed at all at short pips users like Liu Guoliang. The 1998 Durban AR change was aimed ONLY & strictly at long pips players for chopper extermination. By ITTF definition a short pips must have an AR of less than 0.89. The 1998 AR change ONLY effected Long pips (which by ITTF definition have an AR of over 0.89) The 1998 AR change reduced the maximum allowed aspect ratio of long pips from 1.3 to 1.1 (which is also the current value today in March 2022)

4. The regulation that effected Liu Guoliang’s short pips (& all pips including long pips) came much later in circa 2002.-2004 (after & because Liu became World Champion in 1999) .That change is called the Pip Density Reduction Regulation of circa 2003 and details of this change are elsewhere in another post in this forum (as are details of 1998 Durban AR change

The funny thing about this video is at the very beginning 15 seconds. It is quite clever because it looks like the video had had been doctored to add this disclaimer in the beginning where it says facts have been distorted as a parody but I am pretty sure that is not true. Because it looks to me like this 15 second disclaimer was added after the above 4 grave errors were later identified by & advised by someone else to Greg Letts.

It is quite sad because September 2015 is almost 17 years after the 1998 Durban Aspect Ratio Massacre & still people like Greg Letts , Rev. Larry Hodges etc have not clearly understood the horrible ramifications of the 1998 Durban AR massacre. Oh well what can say.

[Le0 Mess1]

Greg has good understanding of long pips but way back from his about.com he has demonstrated extreme loyalty & worship of ITTF & refuses to acknowledge the level of corruption in ITTF.
I hate to stereotype one whole country or countries but the mentality of thinking from places like especially Australia seems to be that ITTF knows what is good for you simply because they are supposedly the formal authority ona given sport
As happened in the case of Kerry Packer's World Series of Cricket & Kapil Dev's ICL