São Paulo Focus - Preview

The championships in São Paulo begin today and the England Senior Team begins its campaign to win the Ernesto d'Orsi Bowl.

The Ernesto d'Orsi Bowl is the trophy awarded to the winners of the Seniors World Championship. This is the fifth to be held, USA have won the first four, time for another country to wrest the trophy from them, why not England?

Twenty-two teams from eight geographical zones have qualifed for these championships. England are one of six teams that qualified from the European Zone.

The event begins with an all play all round robin, three 16 board matches a day for seven days, twenty-one matches in all.

At the end of the round robin the leading eight teams will qualify for the Quarter-Finals and the teams will then play 96 board knock-out matches from then on.

The winners of the round robin get to choose their Quarter-Final opponents from the teams that finish 5th to 8th. The 2nd team gets to choose next, then the 3rd team and the 4th team plays whoever is left over.

The round robin winners also get to choose their semi-final opponents, unless both USA teams qualify for the semi-final in which case the two USA teams MUST play each other.

So from England's point of view the first aim is to ensure they finish in the top eight in the round robin, but ideally they want to qualify in the top three so that they can choose opponents in the Quarter-Final.