Watching from afar

It is the first weekend of the EBU Brighton Summer Congress and this means fourteen rounds of Swiss Pairs over two and a half days. A number of Scottish pairs are 'down south' for the duration and I'll follow their progress over the congress.

The placing after the first three matches is not that important, but perhaps only the pairs in the lower half will agree:

• Michael Ash & Liz McGowan (3rd)
• Frazer Morgan & Tom Slater (9th)
• Nigel Guthrie & David Barnes (44th)
• Myles Ellison & Gareth Evans (73rd)
• Andrew Symons & Andrew Philip (73rd)
• Dee Harley & Derrick Peden (117th)
• Anthony Bates & Robert Clow (131st)
• Anna St Clair & Fiona Greenwood (165th)
• Samantha Punch & Stephen Peterkin (218th)
• Helen McEwing & Ivan Bruce (238th)
• Jim Forsyth & Susan Aitchison (302nd)

Apologies to anyone that I've missed. Numbers are down quite a lot this year, with only 352 pairs compared to 436 last year.

Next weekend I'll be in Brighton for the teams, playing with Alex, Anne and Sheila. But in the interim I'll be following the progress of the Scottish Juniors who are playing all the midweek events - presuming that they have no more car crashes before they get there!

Robin Barker is providing a Tournament Director's view of the event on his blog.