The Round-robins are over. 24 teams in each of the groups played 23 rounds against every other team. The top EIGHT have qualified from each competition has qualified to the Knockouts which begin tomorrow. In the past, we have seen some of the qualifying spots decided on the last deal of a match. This usually happens when there is a neck and neck competition for the eighth spot.
We wish the India Senior team the very best of luck for their match against USA1 which will comprise of 96 boards over 2 days.
In the Bermuda Bowl OPEN series, Switzerland had taken the top spot with five rounds to go and held on to it comfortably. Swiss team comprises only one pair from Switzerland, its sponsor Pierre Zimmermann who is a real estate developer billionaire and his partner Fernando Piedra. They have played together from the 1990s but later Zimmermann moved to Monaco took up resident ship there, played with Frank Moulton as his partner and had some of the best pairs from Europe in his Monaco team. After the cheating scandal erupted, he completely disbanded his team and relocated to his native Switzerland. His "Swiss" team comprises Sjoert Brink-Bas Drijver former world champions from Netherlands, Chennai winners Piotr Gawrys-Michal Kluckowski are Polish. Zimmermann-Piedra have typically played one match per day, on the last day, they did not play at all. As per the WBF rules, one cannot have the World Champion title unless a certain percentage of deals are played by the sponsor. Also, masterpoints will not be credited. If you recall, the Indian open team had defeated Switzerland quite comprehensively when they played Zimmermann. It will be tough for the SWISS teams to win the KOs with Zimmermann playing his share of deals, so one needs to watch this with interest in the coming days.
Second spot in the BB was also a consistent team, the Netherlands team. Former world champions, Simon De Wijs-Baukke Muller play what is called Tarzan Club system, a play on their last names and the name of the actor who played the role of the first Tarzan in Hollywood (Johnny "Weissmuller" was also a multiple Olympian gold-medallist swimmer). Ricco van Prooijen-Louk Verhees, also former World champions, play the same system - Tarzan Club. Tarzan club is a strong club (15+) based system with 1M-1N as Game forcing relay, 1M-2C as 9-11 with a lot of artificial relays and transfers. Their third pair Berend van den Bos – Joris van Lankveld have come thru the Dutch junior programme. They won the Junior championship pair events twice earlier in the mid 2010s and have now been selected for the Dutch National team.
Third placed is USA2, a very strong "young" team from USA, all of whom have come thru the US junior programme. They are strong contenders for the title along with the Dutch team.
Finishing fourth was a surprise package - Hungary. Hungary has had a decent Bridge team for quite sometime, but they have not won any top level competition even in Europe. They qualified from a strong European zone when the qualification was held online in 2021. They have Miklós Dumbovich, Gábor Winkler, Csaba Szabó, Balázs Szegedi all play rather simple 2/1 game forcing style standard system. Gal Hegedus-Balazs Szeged play similar system, but with weak NT.
Switzerland picked England for the round of either KO. England has very experienced pairing of Peter Townsend-David Bakshi playing along with Kieran Dyke-Micheal Byrne and youngsters Mike Bell-Ben Norton. While the senior pair play 2/1 GF with fairly natural methods, the youngsters play artificial responses over minor openings. All partnerships play standard based methods which is a complete break from the traditional ACOL systems of the past.
Netherlands picked Italy who have not been looking at their best with a weak pair as a part of two strong pairings.
USA2 picked Norway out of the remaining two (rather than pick USA1) and that leaves Hungary to play USA1. USA1 has one of the top pairings in the world Steve Wiensten-Bobby Levin along with Eric Greco-Geoff Hampson and the sponsor Nick Nickell playing with Ralph Katz. They also have Eric Kokish as their coach.
In the VENICE Cup Round Robin, POLAND put up an impressive show. They had taken the top spot after the second round and did not relinquish it for 21 more rounds after that. They picked Denmark as their opponents. Poland had finished second in 2019, China who finished first is not participating this time.
England will play France. The latter had missed qualification in 2019. Vastly experienced Heather Dhondy-Nevena Senior, Sally Brock-Fiona Brown, FAWCETT Gillian - DRAPER Catherine are representing England. The first two and last two were in the team in 2019 as well.
2019 Winners Sweden finished third, they picked Italy in the KOs. Fourth Placed USA2 will play Turkey. Former Swedish Junior Sandra Rimstedt is now playing for USA2.
Indian SENIORs qualified quite comfortably today. They tied with Bulgaria in the opening match of the day 37-37 +10, then lost to Poland narrowly 27-34 +7.93 and in the final round comfortably beat Norway 55-28 +16.26 to finish with a total of 268.35 VPs and in the fifth position. Being fifth means that they are not in a position to pick their QF opponents, but could be picked as opponent by any of the top four finishers.
In fact, they were picked by the top team of the qualifiers – USA1 – who had beaten India 17-57 in the Round Robin. Unlike earlier years, there are no carryovers. So both teams start on a clean slate. Only if they finish dead even in the KOs, USA1 will go to the semis as they had won the RR match. USA1 has Zia Mahmood-Jeff Meckstroth, Mike Pasell-Eddie Wold, Mark Lair-Mike Levine.
In one of his books, Zia recounted that picking India as opponent in a KO is a no-brainer. Apparently, Indians are fatalists and are resigned to lose to a (ostensibly) stronger team. So he believes that US teams will choose India as opponent in KOs. USA1 had the best margin of victory against India, not as good against the other teams who finished 5 through 8, so it may be more to do with maths than just fatalism!
Among the others to qualify, second ranked Denmark picked eighth ranked USA2 (four former world champions Bob Hamman-Peter Weichsel, Kit Woolsey-Bart Bramley along with Pratap Rajyadhyaksha-Dan Morse). Poland picked Bulgaria while France will play Sweden.
In the Mixed teams, FRANCE has taken on the top spot midway during the competition. They never lost that place after that. France is represented by Benedicte and Phillppe CRONIER, Vanessa Reess-Lionel Sabbane, Joanna Zochowka-Pierre Schmidt. They have picked sixth placed Romania as their opponent. Romania qualified in 2019 also in the fifth place. Romania has an unchanged team from 2019, the Geta-Radu Mihai, Marius Ionita-Marina Stegaroiu, Mikaela Balint-Dan Moraru. Only the Croniers are from the 2019 team.
The team which finished second USA1 picked eighth placed Latvia. For Latvia, this is a repeat of their entry to any KO in 2019. Latvia had finished 7th at Wuhan.
Poland picked Italy as their opponent for the KO. Both Poland and Italy had failed to qualify in 2019 Only GRZEJDZIAK Igor- GRZEJDZIAK Sabina are from the 2019 team for Poland.
The final pairing for the QF is Belgium against Germany. Both these teams are first timers to Mixed teams at the World level. Neither qualified from the European zone in 2019.