Pau - Down to the wire

Open group A will go down to the wire. There are nine qualifying places up for grabs, and only two teams, Netherlands and Italy, have secured their places. There are eight teams battling today for the seven remaining places. Today will not be about bridge, it will be about which teams can play best under pressure. After a poor day yesterday, England start in tenth place. They need a good result, and they need one of the teams above them to faulter. Ironically it was our old rivals Scotland that caused England the most problems yesterday. They always save their best form for when they play England, and so it proved yesterday, Scotland beat England 20 - 10 in match 16. Match 17 was against qualifying rivals Denmark and it ended with honours even, a 15 - 15 draw. England recovered a bit from the Scotland defeat in match 18, with a 19 - 11 win over Croatia. Leading Scores: 1. Netherlands 331, 2. Italy 319, 3. Latvia 309, 4. Iceland 304, 5. Denmark 299, 6. Czech Republic 296, 7. Israel 294, 8. Turkey 291, 9. Finland 290, 10 England 286. Group B is alot clearer, Sweden, Norway, Rusia, Bulgaria, Germany, France, Portugal & Poland have all secured their places in the final. Estonia are 9th and Ireland are 10th, 15.3 Vps behind them. So Ireland need a big win and they need Estonia to lose heavily, otherwise Estionia will be the 9th qualifier from Group B.
England's final group match, against Switzerland, will be broadcast on Bridge Base Online . I trust you all will be watching and supporting!.

Round 19

09:30

England v Switzerland

You can download Bridge Base Online or view it without downloading anything, from the BBOTV website.

Also, 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.