Watching the Final, Three

Restart at 6am our time. Must be mad here. England start with a lead of 21 IMPs.

Board 17 of the final (-2)

A not unreasonable sacrifice by NS costs 500 against the 420 for 4 by E/W. Even though it’s IMPs out it shows the boys are keeping the pressure on their opponents. Meanwhile in the Open and Women’s series, both teams in the quarter-finals have healthy (60 IMPs or so) leads after 4/6 sessions. I don’t think anyone would have dared predict so much success for the team. The Senior team are sadly a similar margin behind Japan in their round of eight, which nonetheless is an excellent performance following on their tied sixth place in the recent European Championships.

Board 18 flat in 4 a pretty straightforward hand. More coffee. I cannot see the score for Board 19 yet, but I know England have gained 13 IMPs!

Board 19 was flat — West making eleven tricks in 4 so the swing must be on Board 20, which I know is a potential slam for N/S.

Board 20 Got it now. Ben and Rob are playing N/S and have made 6 for +13. The slam depends on a finesse, which for once wins so the lead is extended to 32 IMPs. Let’s hope the Bridge Gods continue to smile on the team. If the East and West hands had been swapped, the lead would have been down to single figures. Phew.

Board 21 Flat in a rather odd way. Ed and Tom (E/W) went one off doubled in a rather ambitious 3NT for -100 but Ben and Rob defeated 3 by two to save any IMPs.

Board 22 I cannot see the hand yet, but France seem to have gained 13 IMPs. It’s a long time before the fat lady will sing (or indeed cry). Tom has gone off in a 4 contract made at the other table. Ah now I see the hand it appears that nine tricks is the normal result so on the surface it looks like the swing came from some defensive lapse by Ben and Tom.

(Now an hour or so later I know this is wrong — a board was misscored – this one I think and not -13 but flat — so all the later margins are wrong — England are 13 IMPs better off than I feared)

Board 23 is flat. A slam for E/W. Well done Ed and Tom. (Truthfully, not so hard, but a test of nerve at this stage).

Board 24 Our boys are in part-score contracts at both tables failing by a single trick, but that’s 4 IMPs away. It’s one of those hands where the contract and outcome seems to be different at every table. There are some penalty doubles and -500s flying around so perhaps it’s not so bad. Starting to get nervous again.

Board 25 I can see that Ed has failed to make 4 and after five minutes or so I get the even worse news that 4 has made at the other table. Mmm. 4 looks cold for one off so more defensive problems. As dawn breaks (07.10) on the English-Welsh border, the lead is down to just three IMPs. I cannot see the hand for this board yet, but I know that on 26 and 27, Tom has declared 4, making one and going one off on the second.

Board 26 4= at both tables

Still worse, no score for 27 yet, but France have gained 10 imps to take the lead. Looks like a passive spade, a trump lead from Ben, solved declarer’s problem of finding J. An unlucky way to lose ten imps, the 4 contract looks normal, but failing more often than making. Lots of games have made at Tom and Ed’s tables in the next few boards, two at each table, but Ben and Rob’s scores are slower coming through so we shall have to wait to see if they are flat.

Phew ten imps back on 28. Tom succeeded in 4, while his French counterpart failed. We’d settle for our 3 IMP lead in 36 boards time though if finishes that close we’ll have lost about a half our hair (not much to lose there) and about three pounds (plenty to go there)

Board 29 flat in 3NT=. Seems like a normal result. Three boards to go in this stanza

Board 30 flat — ten tricks to England in 4 and the same number to France in 3NT. The latter looks somewhat eccentric with South holding a 6-1-1-5 shape, but you cannot argue with success. Still 3 ahead.

Board 31 flat too, eleven tricks for West in 4. A pretty dull hand to be truthful. Tom and Ed have gone three down in 4 on the final board but it’s impossible to tell if that’s good or bad until we see the hands.
Bad I’m afraid – 5 IMPs away, 3NT only goes one off at the other table. Not a good set, England led by 32 IMPs at one stage, but ending up losing 23 and surrendering the lead by 2 IMPs at the halfway stage in the match.

Correction: So the real margin was -10, not -23. Not great but England still lead by 11 IMPs. I’ve been talking to Sheepy — Rob Myers on BBO. Team in good heart and looking forward to the fray.

Both teams know how close the match is and what is at stake — a gold medal in a world championships. There is little between them and I’m sure that there will be plenty of swings in the decisive 32 boards still to be played. Good luck to our team and their coach and NPC, wish I was there with them, but not sure I could cope with the agony and ecstasy.

Two more sets to go, playing again at 08.50 and 11.40. You can see running scores here or here and maybe some BBO coverage of the same hands from the U28 event

Watching the Final, Two

06.00 I cannot believe that I’m sitting here waiting to see some more scores from halfway round the world an hour before dawn. There are three sets to go and roughly six hours of Bridge left. Let’s hope it’s very boring and England build up a big lead.

I’ve found some scores from the first set of 16 boards. While I’m sure that being in Beijing with all that’s going on in the World Mind Sports Games is fantastic, many supporters of Youth Bridge are disappointed that access to information is swamped by everything else that’s going on in the six different Bridge championships. I’ve found some scores from the U21 match, but unfortunately the hand records that go with them are not available yet so it’s hard to tell exactly what’s been going on, but England made a fantstic start to the final scoring 32 unanswered IMPs on Boards 1-3.

On Board 1 Ben Paske, playing with Rob Myers made 3NT, while Adam and Dan defeated 4. +10. On Board 2 Ben lost 150, going 3 off in 4, but Adam succeeded in 4X for +790 in the other room. The French playing against Rob and Ben then seem to have imploded on Board 3 when they conceeded 1070 in 4X+2, while Adam and Dan made no such mistake and lost a more normal 620 against 4. Apart from that there appears to have been a game swing and a part-score swing each way, but the rest of the boards were flat or just one or two IMPs either way.

I’ve also been able to find some information about the Round Robin and the Butler scores. In major competitions, Butler scores for each pair provide a guide to who has played well. All three of our pairs has Butler scores of greater than +1 IMP, which means that they scored an IMP a board better than the field. It may not seem much, but it’s a fantastic performance and reflects a consistency and superiority which is very marked. They were all in the top six, which means that it was a real team performance with all three pairs involved in the tournament and playing a big part in the team success.

It’s 1pm in Beijing and Session 2 is about to start. Watching Bridge scores on the internet is a bit like watching cricket on Teletext. Every now and then the score changes, hopefully in the desired direction. I can see the hands and the contracts too so hopefully I’ll be able to make some sense of the team’s progress.

Watching the Final, One

Great excitement that our U21 team has reached the FINAL of the World Championships at the World Mind Sports Games. With the England teams in the Open, Women’s and Senior’s teams all still fighting in the quarter-finals of their events and so much going on in Beijing, it’s hard to get information, but when I woke at 4.05 this morning, I rushed to my computer to look at the running scores. The U21s are playing France in the final, the team we lost the bronze medal to in the European Championships by 1 VP. I’m not sure what we expected of the team this time. U21 Bridge is not exactly predictable, but Mike Byrne and Alan Shillitoe have worked so hard with the squad and I guess “nervous optimism” summed up the supporters’ general viewpoint. They finished second in the round-robin behind... yep France, so the final looked a close but realistic ambition. Good wins in the quarter-final against Netherlands and a nail-biter against the hosts, China in the semis saw the team into the final with a 5.7 IMP deficit because of the round-robin defeat in the first round. The only way of following progress in the final is by watching a feed of the running scores on an experimental webpage.

When I start at 4.10, we’ve scored 28 IMPs after ten boards and lead by 22. Go boys go! It’s not easy to master technology at this time of the morning. The computer is slow. I try to send a text message to Michael Byrne the NPC of the team with words of encouragement and support. After two failed attempts (sending messages to my brother-in-law!!) I succeed. What’s the score now? Where’s the coffee?

It’s 5.10, 16 boards played. There has been very little more scoring and the lead has remained fairly constant. +21. 48 boards to go. The next set starts at 6.00 am our time. Can they do it? Let’s hope so.

There’s no information on the team line-up at this stage but the six players are:

Tom Paske and Ed Jones
Ben Paske and Rob Myers
Adam Hickman and Dan McIntosh

Updates throughout the day. It is a 64 board match with three more segments of sixteen baords to play. It’s going to be a long morning.

Junior Successes at Brighton

Lots of young players took part in the Brighton Congress and there was no better advert for the skill and expertise of our young players than the win of John Atthey and Simon Cope in the largest event of the the whole congress, the Swiss Pairs. John, who is 23, is an important part of the U25 Squad, and although Simon is now too old to be a junior, he is much involved in coaching and encouragement of our junior teams. Simon and John led for much of the competition, except for a sequence on Saturday evening, but they came back strongly on Sunday to win comfortably in the end.
This was a great performance; a look at the top thirty places shows that the entries included a large number of players and pairs with international experience. Both players will be playing in the newly formed Premier League, starting next month, albeit in different teams.

Other young players in the top twenty pairs included Mike Bell, playing with the U20 Squad Manager Mike Byrne, who finished 11th; Andrew Woodcock and Ollie Burgess, who will represent England in the U28 team at the Mind Sports Olympiad in Beijing were 13th; and Dan McIntosh, with Chris Cooper, was 19th. Dan is in the U20 team for the same event. The huge strength in depth of the field at Brighton provides a great opportunity for serious squad practice and the junior players all welcome the opportunity they are given to take part.

We are currently discussing how more suitable midweek competitions could be organised for our young players to enter alongside the two big weekend events. The midweek teams was a strong event, bolstered by the entry of a Dutch junior team and, with 28 teams competing, the largest event for years. The competition is KO, played each afternoon and was a triumph for the junior group. Mike Byrne and Simon Cope joined up with Mike Bell, the Paske brothers and Ed (Ken) Jones. They coasted through the week and although the final was a close affair they were worthy winners.

Most of the other mid-week events are relatively light-hearted, and the juniors seemed to enjoy swapping partners and joining in. (Indeed when I took part in the Speedball Pairs one night I seemed to be the oldest player in the room — it was great fun. If you've never tried Speedball you really should give it a go — three minutes a board and a Bridgemate to cope with as well!)

The second weekend of teams saw less Junior success. Ollie Burgess and Mike Bell, in different teams, made the 'B' Final, which put them in the top 16 of the 193 that entered. The highest placed all junior team were our Camrose team from this year: Fiona Brown, Susan Stockdale, Dave Cropper and Steve Raine who finished 53rd, just outside the top quarter. The first named pair will also be in Beijing with the U28s.

Off to Loughborough this weekend for the Junior Teach-in. It will be great to see all the young keen bridge players hoping to learn and set off on their first lessons. There is still room for extra participants, email me at mamos@ebu.co.uk or John Pain at john@ebu.co.uk.

Brighton

It’s that time in August when most of the EBU seems to decamp to Brighton for the Summer Congress. I love Brighton, a little seedy but lively and cosmopolitan, lots of places to eat and for the second week in August bridge-players everywhere with those sacred pieces of paper with hands on engaged in that holy ritual “What happened to you on Board 32?”

There’ll be lots of juniors of course. Big Swiss events are great for young and upcoming players because, a couple of good matches and you get the chance to play against the leading stars of our game. In eight board matches anything can happen. It’s pairs this weekend and though I won’t be in Brighton until Sunday, I’ll be following the results carefully to see how all of the Juniors are doing.

It’s an important time especially for the Under 21 Team selected to go to Beijing to play in the Mind Sports Games. They have been preparing assiduously, brushing up systems and making sure their agreements are all tidied up. Look out to see how they get on this weekend. I predict good things for our three pairs:
Ed Jones and Tom Paske
Rob Myers and Ben Paske
Adam Hickman and Dan Macintosh

James Paul and Graeme Robertson are not going to Beijing because of university commitments, but they did well in the European Youth Pairs in Poland recently (finishing 6th) so we can expect them to finish high up as well.

A team of young Dutch players are also preparing for Beijing by coming to Brighton and will play a midweek challenge against our team which is sure to be fun as well as competitive.

Junior Bridge is not just about internationals and high level competition. I’m getting lots of enquiries at the moment about bridge in schools and how the EBU can help. We have good teaching materials and Minibridge is a great way to start even for those as young as seven or eight. If you are involved in a school in any way and think you might be able to start a little group, get in touch and we may be able to get some more young people involved.

The Junior Teach-In in Loughborough is only a few weeks away, but as always there are still some places. Click here for details. Young bridge players are just like their seniors, entries are always left until the last moment. Individuals or groups are welcome and it’s a great opportunity to come along and meet others and enjoy some expert bridge tuition. All standards are catered for from complete beginners to experienced Junior internationals.

I’ve been busy preparing hands for the Autumn Simultaneous Pairs which will be played as minibridge, and as bridge in competitions in Schools and Universities. It’s another chance to get involved so look out for details of that on the EBU website.

Finally are there any university students out there who would like to form a Bridge Club at their university next term or perhaps need some help reviving a club that needs a boost? Let me know and we may be able to help with tuition and advice:- mamos@ebu.co.uk

I’m pretty busy next week at Brighton with TD training during the week and helping with the Swiss Teams at the weekend, but do come and talk to me. I’m free all day Friday so if you’d like a chat drop me an email or leave me a message at EBU reception and we’ll fix a time.

England Juniors in Poland

Our England Junior representatives are currently in Wroclaw, Poland today to take part in the 9th European Youth Pairs. If you know very little about this city or the Silesian region, there is some interesting information on the European Bridge League site to be found by clicking here

Our pairs are taking part in three categories and are lead by Michael Byrne who is acting as the EBU’s representative and NPC. For several pairs, this is an important part of the preparations for the Mind Sports Olympiad in Beijing in October.

In the Girl’s U25 category we will be hoping for an excellent performance from Fiona Brown and Susan Stockdale. After victories in the Channel trophy and the Junior Camrose, the partnership won the Under 28 trials for Beijing.

The relatively young pairing of Ed Jones and Tom Paske may find the going tough in the U26 Pairs, but both are determined characters and will be desperately trying to do well.

Our largest contingent will be playing in the U21 Pairs. This will be a new experience for most of the pairs, but lots of training and serious practice has been taking place and we hope that some of our pairs will reach the prestigious A final.

We wish them all the very best of luck.

Bulletins and results will be found on the EBU web-site and I will keep you informed of the results.

Fortunes are bound to be mixed as the opposition will be stiff and competition severe. Whatever the results the outcome will be that our players will have benefited from the extended experience of competing against the best of Europe’s young players.

European Youth Pairs

The 9th European Youth Pairs takes place in Wroclaw, Poland, from 15th to 18th July. The following pairs have been nominated to take part in these championships:

Under 21
Liam Jones & David Faria
James Thrower & Shivam Shah
Robert Myers & Ben Paske
James Paul & Graeme Robertson
Thomas Rainforth & Philip Railing

Under 26
Ed Jones & Tom Paske
Ian Angus & Joe Clacey

Girls
Susan Stockdale & Fiona Brown
Sinead Bird & Jennifer Marvin

This represents a considerable increase in English participation in this tournament and we are extremely grateful to the Educational Trust for British Bridge who have helped seven of these pairs, two from Wales and one from Scotland with considerable financial support. Good luck to all our pairs. Updates on their progress as the tournament progresses.