Today the Final Round robin of the Open Series begins, and the important thing, as far as the England supporters are concerned, is that the England team qualified (which is more than can be said for our football team!). Whether teams qualified in first place or ninth is now irrelevant, the scoreboard is wiped and all the teams are starting level again. The final will be a complete round robin of 17 matches, so England will play the eight other qualifiers from group A for a second time, as well as meeting the nine qualifiers from group B.
THere are just two matches on day 1 of the Final.
| Round 1 | 09:30 | England v Estonia |
| Round 2 | 13:15 | England v Turkey |
You can follow the results round by round on the
European Bridge League website. You can even get the running scores of matches currenly in play, click in the box at the top of the page.
Congratulations to the Open team on qualifying for the Second Week final. Several people have commented that the teams that struggled to qualify will inevitably suffer in the second half of the competition. Well undoubtedly the opposition will be tough, but the pattern of England's results suggest that this may even help the team. Looking at the first week's scores shows a noticeable feature. Where England struggle is against the weaker teams. The Italians and the Netherlands for example inflict heavy defeats on the second tier of teams but England have not done this. The Czechs who finished in 8th place one ahead of England scored 33 more vps against the non-qualifiers than did England. I think this suggests that a top ten position is within the team's grasp.
ReplyDeleteMike Amos
Indeed. If you do a ranking list of the matches between the teams that qualified, it looks quite different:-
ReplyDelete1. Iceland 131 2= Italy & Latvia 127 4. Netherlands 125 5. England 123 6. Turkey 119 7. Israel 116 8. Denmark 111 9. Czech Republic 99
Average for 8 matches is 120, so England is above average for the matches involving the qualifers, and only 8 below than the best score. They may well come good when the weaker team drop out.
David