FIRST IN OUR GROUP AND THIRD OVERALL SO FAR! WELL DONE!

Dear team mates,

Last Wednesday’s match between our team and Durbanville was quite a remarkable one and not for the faint-hearted. As it was expected, Durbanville came very well prepared and played a strong one club system.. They started the match outperforming the same contracts by a trick at a time (b.2 & 3). Then, they bet on the wrong horses and went down as they picked the worse performing contract and overbid another contract (b.4 & 5). A swift penalty X further increased the lead of our team (b. 9). They bounced back, as they successfully sacrificed a doubled part-score suit contract and imposed a penalty X on our team, reaping the rewards of our failure to impose a penalty X on a doomed part-score suit contract (b. 8 & 9 ), while our team managed to get another IMP, by outperforming them on the same part-score suit contract by a trick (10).

Then, disaster struck our team, as we failed to make a rather plain game NT contract and also failed to spot the next deal’s game in suit contract, allowing Durbanville to clearly lead in the score-table by a margin of 14 IMPs (b. 11 & 12). However, they failed to pick the proper slam contract on the next deal, choosing a NT contract and went down by a trick. However, they bounced back as they boldly bid and made an impossible part-score contract at 3-level against a mere 1nt of our team (b.14). Fortunately, next they failed to bid a game contract and a penalty-doubled, impossible game suit contract bid by Inger-Lise was made as the captain of the other team failed to defend properly. What a match!

You may enjoy the results in our group below.

Overall, our team came third overall out of 12 group leaders, as regards the VPs score made in the group stage, behind only the teams of Vienna (119.03) and Cefalu (114.52 ; yes, last year’s winners). Rejoice!

Next Wednesday 21 of April is a rest day and on 28 of April the Intermediate KO stage will be held, where the teams in the fourth and the fifth places in every group will compete in the so-called Intermediate KO stage. For our team, it will also be a rest day.

You may want to download the deals played on Wednesday from this location https://bit.ly/3x2beJ7 . You may also check the results on BBO hand records, however bear in mind that all the results displayed on BBO are deleted after 2-3 months.

Best regards!