Since one of my teams worked on poaching a few weeks ago I thought it might be a good time for the following question.  Why would I cut in front of my partner who has a perfectly good chance of hitting the ball back over the net and risk missing the shot and messing up the point?  Good question my imaginary friend!  HERE’S WHY – Should my partner be engaged in a rally with the other team our chances of ultimately winning the point are 50/50 give or take a few percentage points.  If the net player hits a ball into the opponent’s court by coming across the middle the chance of winning the point zooms up past 70%.​

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The sticking point is that if you miss the shot the point ends right then and there and it seems in hindsight that the deep player would have gotten it back and we would still be in the point, BUT we are dealing with percentages here and if you can win the majority of the points on a poaching chance then you need to be able to ignore the times that you can’t convert.  And don’t forget that ultimately the chance of winning the point had you let it go was only 50% not 100%.​

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Poaching can take a tremendous amount of pressure off the server and add pressure to the receivers who may just start hitting the ball into the back or side fences.  If you were to successfully poach once a game it would basically be a free point for your partner and put the receivers in an even more negative position than normal.  This is one of the major weapons of the top players.  It should be one of yours too.​