The former player of the Swiss national table tennis team, Nicolas Chambaud, is now excelling Under the name Swiss11Rally In the virtual reality (VR for “virtual reality”) version of “Eleven Table Tennis” in which it currently ranks second in the world out of over 2 million players. Cartoon Rouge met him.
After a career as a table tennis player during which he won, among other things, 4 Swiss Championship titles in mixed doubles with Rachel Moret, the Swiss Club Cup and reaching 350th in the world rankings, he turned to coaching. He runs the Bernex Club (GE) and is also the coach of France's Maxime Thomas, a bronze medalist at the Tokyo Paralympics. At the same time, he is a substitute teacher in the primary grades. Besides his professional commitments, he continues to play in the National League at CTT Bernex.
However, these are not the only activities of this 34-year-old Genevan man. He has brilliantly tried his hand at racquetball (4 racquet sports) where he was among the top 50 players in the world in singles as well as the top 10 in the world in men's doubles and mixed doubles. But it was by chance that he discovered his new hobby. He sees a video of a VR table tennis game on Instagram: “I actually tried the game quickly in the discovery platform and found it great. “But when I saw that the points looked like a ping, I wanted to buy the game,” explains Nicolas Chambod. So he buys all the equipment To play it in January 2024. No need for a gaming console, just buy a VR headset like the one offered by Meta (Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, etc. For more sensations, he also bought a paddle adapter “Since then, I feel Almost regretting that I bought my PS5 a couple of months ago. I never touched it again! “.
Equipment used by Nicolas Chambod
In January 2024, he immediately started playing it a lot and was immediately able to transfer his table tennis skills to the game. It is really possible to manage the effects as in a real ping test. The only big difference is that there is no feeling of contact with the bat. “Nicola explains. After understanding how the game generally works against a bot (computer), he starts in online mode and wins his first 60-70 matches. “With my background as a table tennis player, I quickly rose through the ranks because apart from a few adjustments, I play like I do in real life.” Four months later, he was ranked 220th in the world, and he told himself there was a way to monopolize the best places. So he trains harder and plays live in his clubroom to have more room to move around. In September 2024, he was ranked world number 2 and won a thriller in the biggest tournament of the month against the world number 1 Frenchman. Meetings are longer because there are many more groups than there are in reality. The prize money is $600, which is not enough to get rich but at least to replace the equipment.
September final
Spin management is essential in this sport. You don't necessarily realize it when you're playing at your local pool on the stone table with the famous metal mesh, but anyone who has ever traded balls against a club player knows that this is a very different sport and there are implications. Unfortunately, it is impossible to master creating and receiving effects without hours and hours of practice. This is why there are very good table tennis players in the list of top 15 players in the world. “It's impossible to play Eleven well if you don't know how to ping,” emphasizes Genevan.
As far as I know, apart from racing simulators (cars or bikes) or airplanes, this is the first time in the history of video games that we are approaching a sport that requires tactics, techniques and physical movements. You don't have to play football or be an athlete to be good at FIFA. Sports video games were a kind of revenge for sedentary people who preferred beer to dumbbells and potato chips to dips. Virtual reality may be the beginning of a new era. “At the end of my final match, I was dead. I did the star for 10 minutes on the floor. » explains Nicola. So we may soon meet people in the gym who will explain to us that they are training on their VR game!
Although video games can develop cognitive skills, they were more muscularly complex with the exception of thumb protrusion. Maybe health insurance companies will make cuts for x hours of play. What if we found a solution to reduce premiums? (Calm down, you're reading Rouge's cartoon, it's just for fun.)
Ping pong between reality and virtuality
“I even feel like I'm doing better at real ping since I played Eleven. “I think it's possible to advance on a technical level by playing this game, except for the touch of the ball of course,” explains the world No. 2. But since ping isn't really considered Its fair value in the collective imagination, it is certainly not virtual reality that will improve the situation. However, the LeBron brothers achieved the feat of popularizing the sport during the Olympics. They also proved that you can become a star athlete with a cool head. Geek. Maybe Eleven Table Tennis will awaken passions and increase the number of licensees, who knows?
For Nicolas Champoux, the next goal is to win the tournament in October and then win the tournament in the top 16 in November, which combines the top 16 players at the moment. He will also try to qualify for the World Championships, which will be held in person in Helsingborg, Sweden. Since results throughout the year are decisive, he will have to play a qualifying tournament.
If you want to try this game, you will need a VR headset but also a good connection. It would still be worse to have a bad ping.
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