"I don't want to belong to any club that would accept me as one of its members," Groucho Marx famously wrote in his letter of resignation from the Friar's Club. Perhaps hoping to prevent such self-deprecation from diminishing its membership roster, USA Table Tennis (USATT) will two different membership packages, Basic and Pro, which amount to two tiers of seriousness, beginning in 2021. Perhaps unaware of the pejorative connotations of the word "basic," the USATT will offer such a package designed to attract casual players to the USATT with a low, low introductory price of $25 per year. For those players who wish to contend in major tournaments like the US Nationals and US Open, $75 will get you the "Pro" package. Among other changes slated for 2021, USATT will introduce State Qualification Tournaments, the winners funneling into regional qualifying tournaments for US Nationals. Not all states will participate in the qualifying tournaments, raising interesting questions. How does a state decide whether or not wants to participate? Does it depend on the state's mood that day, or is each state administered the Myers Briggs personality test by a licensed state psychiatrist to determine if it is an introvert or extrovert? Which state does the state which you occupy occupy? This intriguing new tournament format takes a page from the success of satellite tournaments in poker. The International Table Tennis Federation (ITTF) is also implementing similar changes on a global scale, introducing a series of regional qualifying tournaments for the World Championships intended to promote participation from countries outside the "table tennis belt" of Eastern Asia and Europe. In time, one hopes that all states will choose to host qualifying tournaments for the US Nationals, and that all of the ITTF's 226 member nations would participate in the qualifiers World Championships. After all, why shouldn't we accept ourselves as members in our own club?

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