PLEASANTVILLE, N.Y. — Major League Table Tennis fans packed Westchester Table Tennis Center on Saturday night to watch the league’s first-ever match between a Los Angeles (1-5, 50 points) and a New York team (6-3, 101 points).

They left the venue after watching one of the greatest MLTT matches of all time.

Expectations had been shattered from the very start. Los Angeles’ Kou Lei won two games against New York’s Koki Niwa in Singles 1. Matilda Ekholm won three consecutive golden points against Haeeun Choi. Lubomir Pistej and Marcos Madrid won two doubles games to give the Spinners a five-point match lead heading into the break. And at that break, it really looked like the underdog Spinners would take down the East-leading Slice in New York.

That feeling only became more real when Alexandre Robinot took the first two games of Singles 3 against Kaden Xu. Xu won that third game, but they still had an uphill battle. Los Angeles had a 9-3 lead and were about to send out Pistej to start Singles 4. Yiran Wu would need to win at least two games to give the Slice a chance to win this match. And after splitting the first two games and falling behind 6 to 3 in the third game, Wu would take that final point and win 11-8, keeping the Slice within six points ahead of the Golden Game.

“We called a timeout just to reset his mind, and he was able to fight back and steal the game,” Slice coach Adam Hugh said.

The Slice looked up at a five-point deficit to start the Golden Game. The Spinners weren’t helping to make that lead any smaller. But after Wenzhang Tao’s impressive Golden Game sweep, the Slice started to crawl their way back into this game. Their fight only grew stronger when the Spinners reached 20 points. They earned point after point until they reached 20 themselves. Choi and Ekholm took the table. The winner of this point would win this match.

And Choi secured that final point, completing New York’s six-point comeback.

“Everyone played a role in making this happen,” Hugh said. “Every one of our victories this year has been a full team effort, and that’s no exaggeration.”

The New York Slice took advantage of a golden opportunity to add more wins to their record, which was already the best in the East Division. Not just with Saturday’s comeback, but with Friday’s 14-7 triumph over the Smash. The Slice looked incredible in both matches. Koki Niwa once again gave fits to his rivals’ best players. Kaden Xu was a momentum-shifter at the latter half of each match. Haeeun Choi, the league’s reigning Women’s Player of the Week, played in six golden points throughout the weekend. And with the crowd on their side throughout most of their weekend, the Slice took the first two matches, just as they did in their prior two weeks. 

But for the third consecutive time, the Slice could not finish off an undefeated weekend. The Slice’s dominant stars couldn’t find their rhythm whatsoever against Princeton on Sunday. Niwa lost all three of his games to Benedikt Olah. Wu only took one from Koyo Kanamitsu. Tao had three chances to stop rookie Seungmin Cho from taking a 10-5 lead heading into that Golden Game, but couldn’t manage to do so.

Another difficult Sunday aside, the Slice still have the East Division in their back pocket for now. Some of their rivals will have chances to take that crown for themselves while the Slice take a two-week hiatus, but they continue to make such a task seem very difficult to achieve.

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Princeton Revolution‍

The Princeton Revolution (2-4, 56 points) arrived in Pleasantville with a clear and obvious mission. They were one of the league’s two remaining winless teams at the beginning of Week 5. They started their season on the wrong foot after suffering three brutal losses during Week 4. If they wanted to rise from the depths of the East Division and earn a coveted postseason spot, they would have to earn at least one win.

They ended up with two.

The Revolution looked like a brand new team after just one week. That’s because, in some aspects, they were a brand new team. This weekend marked the MLTT debut of 2025 fourth-overall pick Seungmin Cho, who won six of his nine games against Kou Lei, Joao Monteiro and Tao Wenzhang. Benedikt Olah also won six of his nine games, which included a three-game sweep of Niwa to open their match against New York on Sunday. 

But the shining star of the Revolution was Koyo Kanamitsu, who lost just one of the seven singles games he played. There wasn’t much that Alexandre Robinot or Yiran Wu could do to stop him. Just his presence out there served as an omen for his rivals: any time Kanamitsu played in a singles set this weekend, the Revolution would go on to win that match.

The combined effort of the Revolution’s star players led to a cathartic first win on Friday. A team that had known nothing but losses all season stormed the court after taking down the Spinners 14-7. They did the same on Sunday after getting their revenge against the East-leading Slice, who had beat them in Week 4. That match ended with a jaw-dropping final score of 16-5 after a 21-10 Golden Game.

“To be perfectly honest, I thought this could snowball into something really bad if we continue to lose,” Revolution owner Andre Liu said after Friday’s victory. “The first thought I had was, ‘I think we saved our season.’”

Those two wins were enough to propel Princeton from the basement of the East to its third seed, all while establishing themselves as a team their division rivals should consider a threat. If Princeton continues to play like this, this weekend could serve as the shot heard ‘round the league. The Revolution is only just beginning.

“There’s no words right now,” Liu said. “All I want to do is take the team out for dinner and have some fun.”

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Los Angeles Spinners ‍

The Los Angeles Spinners entered Week 5 with a 1-2 record, needing every win, but none of them came. And not for a lack of trying. Koki Niwa and Seungmin Cho both lost two games against Kou Lei this weekend. Matilda Ekholm won five of the nine games she played in. They started off each match strong, and they even headed into two of their three doubles sets with a lead.

But it wasn’t enough. They became the first team in Season 3 to fall to the Princeton Revolution on Friday. They lost 5-16 to the Texas Smash on Sunday. And in between those games, the Spinners suffered one of the worst losses in team history on Saturday.

With a record of 1-5 and 50 points after Week 5, the Spinners now sit at fourth place in the West Division. This was a crucial weekend for the Spinners to regain some footing in what has become a highly-competitive West Division, but they couldn’t narrow the gap between themselves and several of the other postseason hopefuls in their division.

It wouldn’t be the first time the Spinners have had to navigate a tumultuous scenario. They’re still adjusting to a new location, a new coach and several new players. They’ve made multiple roster changes throughout the season and have lost multiple players due to unforeseen circumstances. And now that they’ve lost five of their first six matches, the Spinners have added yet another difficult outcome to what has been a difficult past few months.

It’s important to note that this weekend was not a death knell for the Spinners. Their season isn’t over yet, and they still have plenty of chances to turn their fortunes around, starting in Week 7 in Broward County, Fla. They could still make the postseason, but it won’t be easy. Especially if their losses continue to be as heartbreaking as they were in Week 5.

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Texas Smash‍

What do you do when you have to play a match without your head coach on the sidelines? The Texas Smash (4-2, 74 points) came up with a very strange solution ahead of Week 1. Coach Jorg Bitzigeio could not attend his team’s matches in Pleasanton, Calif., so he watched them from his home across the Atlantic Ocean while on the phone with Nandan Naresh. Naresh, wearing grey headphones on the bench, would relay Bitzigeio’s coaching to team captain David McBeath. McBeath would then make decisions for the Smash using information from Bitzigeio.

This convoluted system could have easily ended in a disaster with a simple streaming error or an accidental disconnect. Instead, it won the Smash two of three possible matches, including one against their division rival, the Portland Paddlers. This strategy was working, but could it hold? They could only hope it would on Friday, when news broke that Bitzigeio would not be in Pleasantville for MLTT’s Week 5.

Once again, the Smash won two of three possible matches.

It started with a 7-14 loss to the New York Slice on Friday, and it looked like they were about to face another one on Saturday. The Princeton Revolution had 20 points in the Golden Game, just needing one more to smash the Smash. McBeath wasn’t about to let that happen. He took point after point from Mathieu de Saintilan until he reached 20 points of his own. That set up an ultimate golden point, which Texas won.

A spectacular comeback would not be necessary for the Smash on Sunday, who took down the Los Angeles Spinners 16-5. They proved this weekend that they’re still a tough team to take down, with or without their coach inside the venue.

The Smash’s success had Amy Wang’s fingerprints all over them. It was a rocky start for Wang, who lost two games to Haeeun Choi on Friday. But the two games she took from Jiangshan Guo on Saturday and her clean sweep of Matilda Ekholm on Sunday gave Texas the momentum needed to take both matches.

Hiromistu Kasahara looked very comfortable at the back of each match, taking two games each from Benedikt Olah, Kou Lei and Yiran Wu. Joao Monteiro led off each match and made early wins difficult for Koki Niwa, Lubomir Pistej and Seungmin Cho. And aside from his Golden Game heroics, McBeath was a doubles juggernaut, winning five of his nine doubles games throughout the weekend.

The Smash know how to win. They have a knack for turning adversity into opportunity, and that’s why they won the Season 1 championship and finished as runners-up the following year: nothing can keep them down. Not even having to play without their head coach on their bench.

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