Strength in depth?

Standing: David, Irving and Danny
Resting: Liz, Alan, Anne and Brian.

Congratulations to Brian Short, Alan Goodman, Irving Gordon, Danny Kane, Liz McGowan and David Liggat who, under the expert guidance of NPC Anne Symons, won the Seniors Camrose over the weekend. It was a very tense affair, especially for the NPC I'm told, as the result was not known until the last board was played. As none of them are in Seniors team for the World Championship, Scotland is showing strength in depth in this age category.

Unfortunately only one match from each session was broadcast on BBO, so much of the weekend remains a mystery. We have results but so much can be missed from a simple score. In the penultimate match, Brian Short played the following hand well and took advantage of a slight defensive slip to produce a very pretty endplay.

Very nicely done by Brian. In the other room North and South never entered the auction and Liz McGowan went one down in two spades (at least that is what the record shows, it does seem it should always make), meaning 12 IMPs to Scotland.

Getting ready

Iain Sime and John Murdoch won the bronze medal in the Scottish Seniors team at the European Team Championships last year, earning themselves a trip the D'Orsi Senior Bowl in Bali at the end of September. They, and the rest of the team, have started a series of BBO matches as they prepare for the trip and last night faced Israel Women, another Bali-bound team.

Iain and John were impressive last night as the Scots won by 74 imps over the twenty boards. I thought Iain played this hand particularly well - click on Next to step through the hand.

 

There is another chance to see Iain and John tomorrow, when they play in the Scottish Cup final which is being featured on BBO Vugraph. But they will be in opposition this time, so a nice twist to the event. The 64-board match starts at 1100 UK time, 1000 GMT, 1200 Paris and 0600 New York.

Spring Fours summary

The indisputable Scottish star of the Spring Fours was the young Morrison team, Frazer Morgan & Philip Morrison, Philip Stephens & Alex Wilkinson. They were unseeded, mainly because they have not been playing a lot and, with some of them keeping masterpoints in England, not getting the full benefit of being non-English players. Despite losing a life in the first round, unsurprisingly given that they were playing the England Open team for the Bermuda Bowl, they went on a winning streak all the way to the quarter-finals.

En route, they beat the #3 seeds and the reigning holders who were seeded #8. They finally fell to Sandra Penfold's all-star Bulgarians, a team that would have a good lead in the final before losing narrowly to Janet De Botton.

But a tremendous performance and hopefully they can find some more events to play in and build on this success.

Our team did okay but, as always, it could have been better. We started with a reasonable draw in the triad that was run over the first two rounds - it was considered that Seale was overseeded at #6 and the English U20s, though improving, were a team we'd expect to beat (and did so last year). We did beat the juniors easily and lost heavily to Seale, after one very poor set, but the big surprise was that the juniors beat Seale. This was a great result for them, given that Seale would reach the quarter-final before losing to De Botton, and they continued in the main event until Sunday evening. What their result meant was that each team won one match in the triad and positions were decided by net imps, which left us third.

So on Saturday evening we played in another triad, this time with two out of three teams getting through. This was caused by the entry size of 47 teams, as everyone else was playing 32-board head-to-head matches. We breezed through this round, beating the Scottish Kane team and Irish Pattinson team comfortably.

On Sunday morning we played our Premier League team mates, McIntosh, with both teams probably thinking this was an acceptable draw. Our opponents played well but had a lot of luck on their side - a grand slam on a finesse rolled in, a bidding misunderstanding resulting in a game they'd never bid coming home, and two other games where different auctions led to game swings out. We lost 50 imps in the second set and there was nothing in the rest of the boards to let us get this back, so we were out. Like many other teams McIntosh would lose to De Botton narrowly on Sunday evening.

We dropped into the Plate and faced another triad with only the winners going through. Again we won both matches comfortably, one against more Premier League team mates, qualifying for the quarter-finals on Monday.

However, unfortunately, we were unable to take our place. Anne and Sheila had booked their return flights for 8pm on Monday, easily time to play in everything except the main event. However Flybe cancelled this flight and the final return flight on Monday became 4pm. We were not permitted to play in the knockout stages, given we'd not be able to finish, which was understandable but disappointing.

Elsewhere the mainly Scottish Rees team (Tim & Sam, Brian and Paul) won the Swiss on the Monday. A small consolation for a weekend where they were probably disappointed overall given their high seeding.

It's still the best event of the year and I'm sure most of us will be back next time.

EBU Shapiro Spring Foursomes

Although there is some doubt, at least north of Watford Gap, whether it is actually spring a number of us are still descending on Stratford-upon-Avon for the Spring Foursomes this weekend.

It  is comfortably the toughest weekend tournament of the year in the UK, starting on Friday night and finishing on Tuesday evening, a double-elimination event based on 32-board matches.

This year there are 47 teams registered, which means triads for all the teams except two in the first round. Unless a team from Argentina turns up announced, which happened last year, or someone enters late, which I'm sure the organisers would welcome.

Seeding is done on EBU Gold Points and then they estimate the foreigners, such as the Scots. The teams featuring Scottish players are:

(#13) Rees - Paul Barton, Sam Punch, Tim Rees & Brian Spears

(#16) Teltscher - Willie Coyle, John Mattheson, Ed Scerri, Victor Silverstone, Bernard Teltscher & Kitty Teltscher

(#21) Sanders - Cliff Gillis, John Murdoch, Stephen Peterkin & Derek Sanders

(#25) Smith - Robert McPaul, Adrian Orlowski, Laura Porro & Harry Smith

(#27) Gipson - Sheila Adamson, Alex Gipson, Paul Gipson & Anne Symons

(#33) Morrison - Frazer Morgan, Philip Morrison, Philip Stephens & Alex Wilkinson
(#35) Barnes - David Barnes, Nigel Guthrie, Barry Wennell & Beth Wennell

(#39) Kane - Danny Kane, Helen Kane, Stephen Male & Mike McGinley

Only the top thirty-two teams are seeded, the remainder randomly ordered. But it doesn't really matter, all that counts is how well you play if you want to survive. So who do we all play in the first two matches?

REES plays Mike BELL, our Premier League team mates from last year who is playing with the top Welsh pair. This will feel more like a Camrose match for both teams. To make it feel even more homily, the third team, KURBALIJA, is also Welsh featuring three of their Lady Milne team.

TELTSCHER plays DUFFELEN, who has a Dutch Bermuda Bowl pair in his team, and ROPER who are unknown to me.

SANDERS plays the Norwegians, TONDEL, and Pattinson, who are unknown to me.

SMITH received a generous seeding but still got LIGGINS, featuring two of the holders, and SHAH, a team of top English juniors. 

We play SEALE, who we played last year and also in the Premier League, and NONNENMACHER, the English U20 team who are off to the World Youth Championships in June.

Once again MORRISON has been hard done by in the seedings and then the random draw. They were probably not helped by some of the team being based in England and therefore Gold Points counting for them. They play ALLFREY, the English Open team for the Bermuda Bowl in September, and MILLER, a good team but one they'd expect to beat.

BARNES plays Rune HAUGE's strong Norwegian team and then Tracy CAPAL's experienced team.

KANE plays Janet DE BOTTON's all-star team and FELDMAN, featuring two talented young players and England's Bermuda Bowl coach (who is also young and may be talented).

The semifinal and final will be shown on BBO on Tuesday.

Good luck to all of us.

You can keep up to date with all the results on the EBU web site or follow me on Twitter for our progress.

Road to Bali

Last June the Scotland Seniors team won the country's first medal at the European Team Championships. Aside from the glory, fame and fortune, this earned them a place in the World Team Championships in Bali to compete for the d'Orsi Senior Bowl.

As you might expect from such a dynamic group of young men, they now have a Twitter account (@SBUSeniors) so you can follow their progress as they prepare for the championship. I believe that this will include notification of all their BBO practice sessions, public appearances and, during the championships, regular score updates with all the gossip.


Follow @SBUSeniors

ICL update

I don't think I will lose the feeling that I am just passing the time with the Glasvegas team in the BBO InterCity League, at least not in this edition. But 'we' have qualified for the knockout stages finishing second in our round-robin group.

Bridge humour can be quite subtle but I imagine only dummy thought the following hand from last night was amusing:

Rotated for convenience

Declarer has a simple ten tricks assuming no horrendous splits and, as it is imps, some might just play quickly. Our hero though had his eye on overtricks and decided to give the opponents the opportunity to go wrong, so promptly led the jack of spades at trick two just to see if West would cover.

West did not cover so dummy's king was played. East showed out! Our Hero was now looking like the goat, because if West had two hearts then this line had created a trump promotion and he was going down in a very solid contract. Fortunately, at least for declarer, West had three hearts so our hero was not embarrassed at the table.

I played with Cliff, which is always an exciting experience since, despite a sound system, our styles and backgrounds are so different. Aside from me going down in one notrump on the first board, thinking that the diamonds split 5-4-3-2 around the table, we were fairly solid throughout. Of course, it would be no fun if I did not set Cliff at least one conundrum in the sixteen hands:

Your call? Your first task is to decide what 5NT means to most bridge players, to Scottish bridge players and then, finally, what I think it might mean to a Scottish Canadian!

In the end we lost a tight match by sixteen imps but it made no significant difference to the final table. There were just three swings of note: on the first Cliff and I pre-empted successfully against their strong club opener, but the imps went back at the other table when team mates intervention against a strong club was less successful. Then our team mates bid a slam with two inescapable losers.

There might be a wait for the knockout stages since one group has two more matches to play. I expect the team will focus on established partnerships if available since you don't get a second chance, but I'll keep reporting even if I'm not playing.

All up for grabs

It was the penultimate round of the Royal Bank of Scotland Cup, the club's pairs championship, last night and all the contenders improved their score. It is all set for an exciting conclusion with the current, unofficial, standings being:

Pair	Best 6 scores total	Lowest counting score
Paul & LotG	367.91	58.64%
Alan & Colin	367.01	56.25%
Diana & Ros	366.09	50.00%

So LotG and I enter the final week in the lead but probably favourites to come third as the competition is based on the total of your six best scores over ten nights. We have been remarkably consistent with a worst score of 55% in the season, but we don't have a 70% as the others have.

Diana and Ros are the favourites for the title with their late surge of form. Any score above average next time will increase their best six total and make life difficult for us. For example, if they were to score 60% then we'd need 67% to beat them; similarly we'll probably need to outscore Alan & Colin by 2% to stay ahead of them.

Breaking news: unfortunately Diana and Ros are unable to play in the final RBS evening, so will finish third in the championship.

Before that though I've got a Gold Cup match and the EBU Spring Foursomes in Stratford-upon-Avon. Busy times!