Grips

Though table tennis players grip their rackets in various ways, their grips can be classified into two major families of styles, penhold and shakehand.

Penhold

Penhold is the Asian-style grip of holding the racket, where the head of the racket is facing down and is held the way a person holds a pen or pencil.The style of play among penhold players can vary greatly from player to player. The most popular style, usually referred to as the Chinese penhold style, involves curling the middle, ring, and fourth finger on the back of the blade with the three fingers always touching one another.

                                                            

Shakehand

The shakehand grip is so-named because the racket is grasped as if one is performing a handshake.Though it is sometimes referred to as the "tennis" or "Western" grip, it bears no relation to the Western tennis grip, which was popularized on the West Coast of the United States in which the racket is rotated 90°, and played with the wrist turned so that on impact the knuckles face the target. In table tennis, "Western" refers to Western nations, for this is the grip that players native to Europe and the Americas have almost exclusively employed.The shakehand grip's simplicity and versatility, coupled with the acceptance among top-level Chinese trainers that the European style of play should be emulated and trained against, has established it as a common grip even in China.

                                                            

Seemiller

The Seemiller grip is named after the American table tennis champion Danny Seemiller, who used it. It is achieved by placing the thumb and index finger on either side of the bottom of the racquet head and holding the handle with the rest of the fingers. Since only one side of the racquet is used to hit the ball, two contrasting rubber types can be applied to the blade, offering the advantage of "twiddling" the racket to fool the opponent.