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I admit I have been incredibly stupid myself for 48 years to fall a victim of ITTF brainwashing claiming that “long” pips exist table tennis after 1977. Though I do have an excuse for my first 10 years because I was even more clueless & believed that top spin only table tennis is the only way to play table tennis. But I absolutely have no excuse whatsoever for the past 27 years after 1998 for NOT thoroughly researching the history of the sport regarding “long” pips when I started warning everyone about the 1998 Durban EGM Aspect Ratio Reduction massacre (of choppers). So if there are newbies like this in the sport who do not understand what “long” pips is, because of ITTF’s incessant brainwashing by fraudulently calling slim pips as long pips in their LARC, I do not have any right to blame these newbies in the sport. But what I do have a problem though is with players who want to be considered openminded & knowledgeable and have been in the sport (for 10 or more years) but refuse to accept the fact that there are no long pips in IOC’s ITTF’s version of Olympic table tennis after 1977 and continue to insist on making complete fools of them by calling slim pips on ITTF LARC as long pips.

Do you think this confusion comes because none of these players understand the simple fact that the maximum allowed pip length for any type of pips, slim (flex) or or wide (stiff) or medium or whatever is EXACTLY the same ?

It is 2.05 mm after 2024 and was 2.00 mm after 1977 but before 2024

But aren't ITTF LARC long pips close to 1.8 mm and ITTF LARC short pips close to 1.5 mm or less & so it is OK to call them long and short pips ?

Waineq wrote: ↑August 15th, 2025, 2:52 am But aren't ITTF LARC long pips close to 1.8 mm and ITTF LARC short pips close to 1.5 mm or less & so it is OK to call them long and short pips ?

I have been asked this question a lot in person by people who object to my use of the words slim (flex) pips & wide (stiff) pips.
Actually this is not a bad question but only holds water like before 1995 maybe.
Why ?
Because the so called short pips on ITTF LARC are not really short .Many of them are close to the ITTF allowed limit of 2.00 mm (2.05 mm after 2024)
I also know it may be around only 1.8 mm because the rubber sheet base thickness and glue may come to o.2 mm.

You have to look at the structural & functional behavior of these rubbers to get the full picture.
Because the key fact is that the ITTF does not define the separator between long pips and short pips based on pip length. If this was the case, I would readily admit that ITTF LARC long pips can be called as such & short pips below say 1.5 mm be called short pips.

But that clearly is NOT the case here. Because ITTF defines the separation of long pips based on some parameter that has less to do with pip length and lot more to do with structural & functional behavior of these pips.
After 1977 , iTTF started to call pips with Aspect Ratio of more than 0.89 as long pips and those less than 0.89 as short pips .
So as you can see this definition has less to do with the length ONLY.
Again, this has a lot to do with the total picture of the structure of these pips as well as resulting functionality.
This is exactly why calling the ITTF LARC pips a short & long pips is intentional fraud perpetrated by the ITTF just to confuse the choppers into believing that ITTF still has real long pips after 1977