Table Tennis > Inside This Sport

The Olympic table tennis program has changed for the first time since the sport debuted at the 1988 Seoul Games. The men's and women's doubles events have been dropped from the program for Beijing with men's and women's team events added to the Games. The four events now contested are:

* Men's singles
* Women's singles
* Men's team
* Women's team

Tournament
In Beijing, all men's and women's singles events will be contested as single-elimination tournaments. The format for teams is similar to singles, except 32 teams (16 men's and 16 women's) are involved, and contests are best-of-five matches.

Draws -- Singles
In Beijing, each table tennis singles draw was meant to feature 64 entries, with no more than three per nation. Because the Olympic table tennis field is meant to have 86 athletes as a whole, extra singles players may be qualified if there is no need to use 22 team-only athletes. Sixteen players will be seeded and receive byes for the first two rounds, another 16 will be "placed" and receive byes in round one. The remaining 32 players will be drawn into round one. Seeding will be based on the world rankings as of the date of the Olympic draw.

Draws -- Team
No player will play more than two matches in each contest.

The contest, a best of five matches, will start with two singles matches.

The third match will be doubles and must include the player who has not been selected in either of the preceding singles matches.

Following the doubles, there will be two further singles matches, if necessary.

Team captains may select the order in which the players (labeled A-B-C and X-Y-Z in the contest format) appear and they must initially nominate which two players will compete in the first two singles matches.

Following those matches, the team captain can then decide who plays doubles with the player who has not participated in the first two singles. From there, there is a formula to determine the final two matches, if necessary. A coin toss is used at the beginning of the match to give the captains a choice in picking which set of three players they wish to be. The system avoids any repetition of matches; no players can face each other on two occasions in singles matches in one particular contest.

Progression
Players advance through the draw by winning matches. Losers are eliminated until the field is down to four players/teams. At this stage, the semifinal winners advance to meet in the gold-medal final; the semifinal losers face each other to determine who wins bronze.

Match and contest format
All matches will be the best-of-seven games. Play is continuous throughout a match, except for a one-minute break between each game. All team contests will be the best-of-five matches.

In another significant change from Sydney, where a table tennis game was played to 21 points, games are now won by the first player/team to score 11 points. If there is a 10-10 tie, the game is won by the first player/team to score two points more than the opposition. In the last possible game of a match, the players/teams change ends when either player/team has scored five points.