Each Pingic web site user can create player profile, however, for some functionalities it is necessary to be sure that basic data are correct. E.g. for registering on tournament it is necessary to be sure that date of birth is correct so the player is registered in correct age category. While creating player profile it is necessary to send picture of some document, where basic data which are being checked (Name, Surname, Gender, Date of Birth, Photo) are visible. All the other data can be hidden or blurred. Such picture is displayed nowhere, even not to the user, and it's sole purpose is checking basic data. Once the data are checked, player profile is marked as verified and user cannot change verified data anymore.
Minors must additionally save consent from parent or guardian for publishing their data.

In ping-pong, all the players play with the same bats, provided by the organizer, which don't have rubbers but sandpaper instead. Therefore, there are no spin in the game and everyone has the same chances. It's all down to the player's skill. Sets are played up to 15 points and there are some more differences. The tables and balls are the same as for the table tennis. More details can be found at: http://www.worldchampionshipofpingpong.net/

The goal of this web site is to be central point where all the tournaments in table tennis (possibly ping-pong too) will be published. We had in mind recreational players and veterans in the first place.

The simplest way is to register with facebook account if you have it. Click on "Login with facebook", enter e-mail and password registered with facebeook account and that's it. If you don't have facebook account, click on "Register" and enter Name, Last Name and e-mail address. Verification e-mail with link will be sent to the e-mail address you entered. Click on the link and set the password. Now you can log in with those details.

Because registration allows you to add certain content, it is important to us to know who enters the data and e-mail address if we need to contact you. Therefore, the only three mandatory fields are: First Name, Last Name and e-mail address, and they need to be real.

No. We are very careful not to publish it, to avoid being misused for sending you spam. It's visible to administrators only.

When you log in, web site recognizes you and provides you some additional functionalities, not available to visitors e.g. possibilities of adding sport hall on the sport halls list, editing data etc.

All the users that log into Pingic web site have user profile hence it contains only data necessary for logging in (username and password). Users are not necessarily players and maybe they want to create sport hall pages or tournament pages only. On the other hand player profile contains more details related to playing table tennis and participating in competitions e.g. Date of Birth, racket grip, photo, type of rubber on racket etc.
It consists from basic data which are necessary for competition registrations and which are being checked (Name, Surname, Gender, Date of Birth, Photo) and data used in popularization of table tennis (height, weight, rubbers on racket etc.) and which are not being checked but each player keeps them updated.

The picture in player's profile must be the player's head on single-colored background, like picture for ID or other official document. All pictures taken in different way will be deleted and will have to be entered again.
Once the profile is verified, including the picture, the user will no longer be able to change picture by himself and will have to contact us via e-mail.

Pingic project (web site) is almost completely based on voluntary work and relies on donations either in money or work of founders and Pingic related enthusiasts. Everything done so far was developed in free time.
Still, in order to meet users' needs, please send your wishes for new functionalities to webmaster@pingic.com and we will put them on wish list and evaluate how complex and time demanding it is to develop such functionality. Then we will publish it on Pingic web sites as well as suggested donation (which is, of course, much lower than market price of development) which would help for that functionality to reach top of the priority list for development of new functionalities.

In order to prevent appearing of fake players' profiles on the Players' list, only players with verified player's profile are displayed on the list.
Please send us an e-mail to let us know that you finished creating your player's profile and are waiting for verification.

International Table Tennis Federation regularly updates and publishes it's Statutes on it's official web pages, part of which are the rules of the table tennis described in chapter 2. THE LAWS OF TABLE TENNIS.

ITTF publishes on it's web site in section More/Comitees/Umpires and Referees/Documents/Handbook detailed explanations in Handbook for Tournament Referees (English)
Please check that you are reading the latest version.

ITTF on it's web site in section More/Comitees/Umpires and Referees/Documents/General publishes FAQ where different situations that can happen in a match are described and what rules should be applied in those situations.
As questions and answers are added and updated from time to time, please check that you are reading the latest version.

The rules say:
3.2.2.2 The main color of a shirt, skirt or shorts, other than sleeves and collar of a shirt shall be clearly different from that of the ball in use.
More detailed instructions are given in Handbook for Match Officials:
8.1.1 The main colour of clothing must be clearly different from that of the ball in use, but the “main” colour does not necessarily mean the colour occupying the greatest area. A solid
patch of colour on the front of a shirt that covers only 40% of the area may still be the
dominant colour, whereas a much larger percentage of the same colour evenly dispersed could be relatively unnoticeable. The purpose of this clause is to ensure visibility of the ball, and for that reason the colour of the back of the shirt can be disregarded.
8.1.2 It is the apparent colour of the clothing, which is important, and the referee has to decide whether it provides sufficient contrast with the colour of the ball. Predominantly yellow clothing may be quite acceptable with an orange ball and patterned clothing having a white background may be satisfactory with a white ball, provided the perceived colours of clothing and ball are clearly different.

The LET is called.
From ITTF FAQ:
5.7. Ball breaks during a rally
Umpire must call LET (Handbook 2.9.2.4) – regardless of direction of ball’s trajectory. If a ball is obviously cracked or completely broken during a rally, then the umpire will always call “let” (2.9.2.4 because the conditions of play are disturbed in a way which could affect the outcome of the rally). The trajectory of the ball is irrelevant and it doesn`t matter where the ball is when it is struck.
E.g. If a player hits the ball with the edge of the racket and the ball breaks into two halves or the broken ball goes into a direction away from the table, the umpire must call a LET.
But after the rally a player cannot claim that the ball was broken in the previous rally.

According to the rules:
2.2.1 The net assembly shall consist of the net, its suspension and the supporting posts, including the clamps attaching them to the table.
2.7.1 The ball, having been served or returned, shall be struck so that it touches
the opponent's court, either directly or after touching the net assembly.
According to that, the net holder is considered the net assembly and for the return strike to be valid it is necessary for the ball to hit the opponent's court after hiting the net holder.

The first step is to log into Pingic web pages. After that it needs to be checked if facility page exists and if it doesn't it needs to be created. The next step is to go to Tournaments page and click on icon for creating tournament page. The form will be displayed in which you need to enter tournament details and save them.

Theoretically it is possible, howerver we don't recommend it for several reasons. The user which creates tournament page gets tournament author status and that person only (except admins) has the rights to change tournament details. Therefore we recommend that organizer or someone close to him creates tournament page so he can quickly change data (e.g. tournament is cancelled or timetable has changed etc.). Also, the organizer should post results, pictures and report after the tournament and that's all not possible if we create tournament page.

Of course!
On the tournnament day, additional fields will be displayed to the tournament author, so he can enter text (report), photos, documents etc. so the complete report from the tournament can be created.

On the tournament page, there is a button Share which has to be clicked on and then you can choose if you want to post page on your own timeline, on some facebook page you manage, in some facebook group or send it to your friend via facebook messenger. On the tournament day, the new fields for entering text, photos, documents etc. will be shown to the author, so complete tournament report can be created after the tournament and we recommend to share it as well

Yes you can.
Your web administrator has to insert one line of HTML code on your page and the calendar will be shown and kept up to date on your web page automatically.
However that code contains certain parameters, depending on what and how you want information to be displayed e.g. do you want all the tournaments or just from certain countries, in which language you want it to be displayed, do you want tournaments in table tennis or ping-pong etc.
Therefore, please contact us and we will customize and send you the code to be inserted on your web page.

When tournament page is created and venue is chosen, the first image of a "playing area" type from sport hall page is automatically chosen as tournament page photo. If there is no image of a "playing area" type, then the first image of an "Outside" type is chosen. If there is no image of a such type either, Pingic logo is displayed.
If some picture of a "playing area" or "Outside" type is uploaded at some stage later, it is possible to go to tournament page and change logo into one of those uploaded photos, or one of the photos from tournament reports from the tournament in the same series held in the same sport hall.

According to General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) by European Parliament and Council from 27.04.2016. personal data processing shall be lawful if the data subject has given consent to the processing of his or her personal data for one or more specific purposes.
Consent of the data subject means any freely given, specific, informed and unambiguous indication of the data subject’s wishes by which he or she, by a statement or by a clear affirmative action, signifies agreement to the processing of personal data relating to him or her;

You need to register on Pingic web site with e-mail given in the Consent for personal data processing and log in with that e-mail address. All the collected user data can be seen in user profile, including the data which are not made public.

Most of the personal data (e.g. about racket, grip, contact data and similar) you can correct by yourself in user's profile.
However, some basic data (e.g. name, surname, gender, date of birth) are necessary to be verified by documents as they are not likely to change and are necessary to be correct so the competitions and consequently ratings are regular.

Data are necessary for registering to the tournaments, running tournaments, creating rating lists and making table tennis more popular.

No.
Mandatory data are clearly marked on the form and without them it's not possible to get some functionalities (e.g. without correct Name and Surname it's not possible to register to the tournaments or create rating list and process results).
Some data are informational only (e.g. height and weight) and are not mandatory but make Pingic web site and table tennis more interesting and popular.

They are kept for 30 years from the last tournament played, or as long as Pingic has tecnical and financial capabilities, however they can be removed earlier on request.

If it's data that you submitted to Pingic web site, e.g. in your user's profile or player's profile.you can delete or change that data through user's profile.
Please contact us if you have any difficulties in doing so.
If it's data that some third party published e.g. tournament organizer in tournament report or photos, we suggest to contact them first and ask for data to be removed and if you cannot get in touch with them and reach agreement, please contact Pingic office in writing.
If it's data that Pingic collected and published e.g. rating list, tournament results, player's profiles etc., please contact Pingic office, so the data can be pseudonymised.
Pseudonymisation means the processing of personal data in such a manner that the personal data can no longer be attributed to a specific data subject without the use of additional information, provided that such additional information is kept separately and is subject to technical and organisational measures to ensure that the personal data are not attributed to an identified or identifiable natural person

No.
There will be only age displayed in player's profile, so it will be known in which age category player belongs.
Date of birth can be forwarded to tournament organizers as sometimes age category for events on a tournament are determined by age on the date of a tournament and sometimes by age in an year when tournament is held.

Tournament organizers often try to help players, especially the ones coming from far away, in a way that they try to avoid players from the same country or town playing against each other in the early stages. Therefore, that information is necessary for draws.

No, it won't.
Unless you enable that option in your user profile.
E-mail or phone number can be forwarded to tournament organizers you register, so they can contact you in case of delay, postponement or cancellation of the tournament of if they need to contact you for some other organizational reasons.

Images of the sport hall can be entered by the author (usually the person that entered sport hall data) or admin only. If you are not author, please contact author through sport hall page. Don't forget to write which sport hall those pictures belong.

Of course.
When you edit sport hall page, click on the image and drag it where you want it to appear. The other images will automatically move one place forward.

Of course!
That's one of the reasons why these web pages are created. You can enter all the sport halls, regardless of their size and whether table tennis is being played in them constantly or just temporarily. Being private or open to public. You don't have to be sport hall owner or manager. It's only important that details are as accurate as possible. The more sport halls are entered in the database the more useful these web pages will be for the table tennis enthusiasts.

You need to log in first, and then in the upper right corner of the sport halls list the + sign will appear. Click on it and screen for entering new sport hall will open.

The author is the person who created page about the sport hall and has the rights to edit it. The name of the author is listed at the bottom of the sport hall page. When someone reports the error on the page, author gets an e-mail with the text of error reporting message.
Although everyone can create sport hall page, it would be the best if it's created and maintained by someone who is at that sport hall regularly, because he knows the best all the details about the sport hall and can write instructions where to park the car, whom to contact if one wants to play at the sport hall, what's the membership fee and working hours etc.
For the sport hall pages created by us (administrators), because we cannot keep them up to date and fill all the details, we always look for volunteers from those places to give them pages for maintenance. If you recognize yourself on any of them, please contact us.

If you are the one who entered the data i.e. author (it's written on the bottom of the sport hall page), click on the edit icon and window for correcting the data will open.
If someone else is the author i.e. you don't have possibility to change the data, click on "Report an error" link on the sport hall page and write what's wrong and we will, in cooperation with the author, check and correct.

Report an error on the sport hall page and write down details when the sport hall was closed or demolished and we will remove it from the list.

Of course!
That's one of the reasons why these web pages are made.
And not only from the club's web pages but from the other web pages, documents, e-mails, tournament invitations, facebook pages and all the other places where sport halls are mentioned as well.

After we get an information that sport hall doesn't exist anymore, we will mark it as non-active and remove it from the sport halls' list, but it's data will remain on the server and linkt to it's page will still function and show.
That's important for archiving purposes.

By clicking on the map on the button next to the zoom, full screen GoogleMaps map will open and there you can select starting point and Google will calculate the route and time needed. If you use it on the smartphone, in Google navigation covered area, you can turn the navigation on, and Google will navigate you to the sport hall.

Yes you can! Please send us list of IDs of all the sport halls that you would like to show on the list and we will prepare and send you simple line of code which you will put on your web page where you would like the list to appear. Similar to how the tournaments calendar is shown.

With membership fee you are helping in keeping PIngic project alive and cover its expenses.
Although the project relies heavily on volunteers' work, there are still some expenses that cannot be avoided, like domain registration, web site hosting, accounting etc.
At the same time, membership fee will help Pingic to rise on the higher level, by creating detailed players' profiles and Pingic rating list, enabling tournament registrations via web, running tournaments, generating reports etc.

Recommended price for one year membership is 6€ during promo period, but it can vary from agent to agent, hence it's worth checking. It is possible that some tournament organisers include it in participation fee for players that don't have valid membership, or some organisations e.g. clubs, include it in its membership fee. It's also possible that some agents have surplus of membership fees and want to sell it at discounted price or just give it for free.

It is possible to buy membership from authorised agents only, and they are listed on Contact page.
You can chose any agent as there is only one membership and it is valid worldwide. Therefore it's worth checking with more agents as membership fee doesn't have to be the same at every agent.

Of course. If you get such opportunity, use it.

No.
Pingic membership fee is already included in Pingic league registration fee. Still, attention has to be paid on expiry date as Pingic league registration fee is valid one Pingic season, which lasts half calendar year

Ranking lists order players based on certain (one or more) criteria, e.g.,
number of points collected or prize money won, and often don't describe a
player's playing strength accurately, i.e., the number of points on the
ranking list doesn't necessarily correspond to playing strength. A ranking
list's goals can be various, e.g., to seed players in a tournament or to
stimulate players to attend certain tournaments (by carrying more points).

On the other hand, a rating list's main purpose is to indicate a player's
playing strength as accurately as possible. A rating list can be used to
construct a ranking list (but doesn't have to be).

In most of the tournaments in the SE Europe region, events are organized by
age categories, e.g., 40-50 years, 50-60 years. Some players find that
boring because they always play against the same players, belonging to the
same age category. Additionally, because of the wide range of playing
strengths within the category, a large number of matches have a predictable
outcome, so they are not interesting to players or to spectators.

An alternative to such categories are categories organized by players'
playing strengths, where players' playing strengths within the category are
similar, which leads to unpredictable matches and the possibility that
almost any player within the category has a chance to win, which in turn
motivates more players to participate in tournaments.

Such tournaments are organized in USA, Austria, and elsewhere, where rating
lists exist, and these lists are used for placing players into categories
according to their playing strengths.

Our goal is to create such a rating list, which will enable tournament
organizers who wish to to form categories according to playing strength. In
addition the list will not be restricted to a certain territory or
organization.

When talking about rating systems, people often confuse ranking and rating
systems. Let us consider two broad categories of systems:

1. Point-Accumulation Systems

2. Playing-Strength Rating Systems

Systems in the first category are not really rating systems, but more
ranking systems where rating/ranking is done according to points collected
by progressing to a certain stage of the tournament, e.g., passing the
first round in certain tournaments gives a certain number of points, wins
in semifinals another number of points, wins in the final even more points.
That type of rating/ranking is very simple to calculate, hence many
organizations (national associations) use that system and decide which
tournaments are included into rating/ranking calculation and number of
points each tournament provides. The disadvantage is that it is not
accurate as the number of collected points does not necessarily relate to
playing strength because players that participate more in rated tournaments
have a greater chance to collect points (which may be an intention of the
organizations to motivate players to participate more). Such rating/ranking
systems are often limited to a small number of tournaments, so it is
difficult to compare players who participate in different tournament groups
(associations).

The second group of systems are trying to describe players' playing
strengths as accurately as possible. They do this using the matches played
and ratings of players playing against each other, regardless of which
stage of the tournament they meet and which place in the tournament they
finish. This eliminates the luck (draw) factor, and playing in more
tournaments doesn't result in winning more points (but does produce a more
accurate rating). The disadvantage compared to the first category is that
the calculation is more complex and usually requires specialized software.

Playing-Strength Rating Systems can be divided into:

2a. Systems that only keep track of a single number (the rating) for each
player.
2b. Systems that also keep track of how much information they have on each
player.

Systems in 2a are usually called Elo-type rating systems and are simpler to
calculate than those in 2b. Those in 2b are more advanced, more complex,
but much more accurate rating systems.

As Pingic has all the prerequisites necessary for implementing 2b type of
rating systems, we chose the more accurate rating system type.

Pingic chose Ratings Central's (RC's) rating system because we believe that
it is the most accurate rating system for table tennis at the moment, and
in cooperation with its author David J. Marcus, we got access to database
and tools for processing tournament results.

It has proved itself throughout the years processing 26,542 events and
3,008,265 matches played by 84,080 Players so far (as of 27.12.2017).

For more details about Pingic (Ratings Central) rating take a look here, or
on the RC official page http://www.ratingscentral.com/.

No.
Although it's obvious that it's not the same winning in three straight games as winning 3:2 on deuce, there are a few practical reasons why games and points are not taken into account for rating. One is that for the most of the matches on tournaments there are no umpires, but the players are counting points themselves and usually they put points in match records after the match by their memory, so the records are not reliable, when it comes to points. The other reason is that there is a huge difference between winning on deuce in fifth game and losing by two points although the difference is only four points, therefore all the points shouldn't have the same weight. One of the reasons is that it could be possible for some players to manipulate i.e. to dump games and points, where it doesn't affect for the winner passing through into next phase while affecting loser's rating. Also, when playing in group stage and passing into next stage is ensured, players are not putting the same effort as when they are still not sure in passing through. Additionally, to prevent manipulating with points, the loser should bring match records to the tournament director together with the winner, which would make running tournament more difficult etc.

All the players attending tournament must have Pingic player's profile and valid membership on the day of playing the tournament, and tournament organiser must send all the match results as soon as possible, but not later then 7 days after the tournament was played, to Pingic for processing. You can use info@pingic.com e-mail address or you can contact us for details.

Nothing
Categories can still be defined as they are now (i.g. by age) and tournament system can be kept as well (e.g. group stages and knock-out stage later)
The only must is that all players that participate in the tournament have valid membership on playing date and you to send us all the tournament results after the tournament so they can be processed.