A Great Match

Hello, teammates !

Last Wednesday’s match was an amazing experience for all of us who were there. Let me take this opportunity and thank you Ken, Øystein and Inger-Lise for playing, for your patience and perseverance to finnish the 24-boards Team Match.

It’s also been a challenging experience for me, as the TD and the captain of the team and also as a player. The other team’s demand for half-time replacement of two players and the previous substitution of one player were a setback to our plans for a smooth match. I had to interrupt the carefully prepared team match and set a new one at half-time and this was not an easy task at such a busy time.

While the first half was more or less an easy walk for our team, during the second half, a couple of mistakes allowed Praha to improve their score and after a few boards with a positive result for our team, the last few boards ‘sealed our fate’ and allowed Praha, not only to make a 31 HCPs comeback, but also nominally beat us by 1 hcp.

The last board was a bit difficult to swallow and, as our table had finished first playing, we watched as kibitzers the drama unfolding at the other table. As Ken and myself were NS, we were pretty confident that our 4SX+3 result of a partnership with 17hcps (and two voids) was decent enough to save us from trouble. However, player med, following the 4S bid from N, which went undoubled by EW, took some two minutes of thinking, and eventually decided to raise the bid to 6 level, while W was taking the fatal decision to double this slam bid. It all looked suspicious, and it still does, however both the captain of the other team and the ICL organizer, Paolo Garrisi, assured me that nothing like cheating happened and that it was a risky but legitimate bid.

However, the ICL director also told to both of the captains of Kampala and Praha teams that he would like to see both of us playing in the next phase of the ICL tournament. I do not know what this means or whether they will allow our team to play in the next phase or not. Please bear with me for details, should there be a next phase at this time for us!

You may enjoy the results of the last 12 boards here https://webutil.bridgebase.com/v2/tview.php?t=7751-1588794368&u=antepa

The results of the first 12 boards are displayed here :

Should any teammate need the deals of the first half, just contact me as I have saved them all!

P.S. There’s no continuation for our team, we were knocked out! Of course, we will consider participating to the fall edition of the ICL or to other tourneys on BBO as a team!