Junior Europeans - U25s & U20s - Wednesday recap

Michael Byrne, NPC of the Under 20s

 A change is as good as a rest and after a change in line up we are back in the driving seat.

We crushed Germany this morning and then lost very narrowly to Latvia. The bridge has improved significantly and I am hopeful, with all of the good teams out of the way that we can rise through the field. 

This was a nicely bid slam hand today:

KJ107                

J                        

AK73                

10874              

A32

A105

106

AKJ95

1C                        1NT (GF with clubs)

2D (unbal)          3C   (waiting)

3S  (natural)       4H (cue)

4S (cue)              6C

With trumps 2-2 this didn't even require the spade guess for 920.

This hand was played 16 times in the U20s and not a single pair reached 6C apart from Sam and Ben. (8 teams bid it in the U26s)

Tomorrow we face Israel who are normally a little "tricky" in several departments and then Denmark who are 7th. 

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Alan Shillitoe, NPC of the Under 25s

Into the meat of the schedule - the procession of tough matches we knew were coming our way. Israel and home team Norway. The two worst boards of the day were unerringly similar. A grand slam in diamonds off a keycard. The one against Israel cost momentum in the match and we never really recovered losing by 17. The one against Norway took us out of the lead in the match and precipitated a slide to be behind by 20IMPs. It looked pretty ropey at that point, but a comeback was mounted, aided by another false card of a Queen - there seems to be a theme going on here too - and we came back to win by 15. Approximately all square on the day then.

The hardest part is the watching. I'm normally in the VG theatre. They're all big boys now and have been here before. They have their way of handling themselves at the table and can look after themselves. When I'm watching the scores come in, I'm still living every deal, but I can't influence it any more. If you see a game swing go out, it's difficult and you want to rage, but usually there's some quite rational reason and the Bridge gods simply weren't smiling on you. Jon has found the watching harder than me - this is his first major championship as a coach. Both of us would rather be playing as any player worth their salt wants to take their destiny into their own hands. But we can't do that. Instead we are left to agonise from afar outside the arena. All we can do is make sure they are in the best prepared manner to face the battles facing them.

Tomorrow Sweden, Italy and Germany await. More nails will be bitten.

 

U15s Wednesday night

We started poorly against the very inexperienced Scots team - they had a five-bid auction to a cold 6♦ slam, while our pair followed a complicated route which stopped short.  The Scots continued to play simple but effective bridge, losing only an overtrick here and there, so it was halfway through the match before we took the lead.  After that we were able to build a lead, but we missed two more slams and won by a slightly disappointing 25 IMPs.  Still, it was a morning win: it turns out the key is to select not the right  line-up but the right opponents.

In the afternoon we played the very young Norwegians.  They're a team to watch for the future, but in the present our guys knew what to do more often than they did, and we accumulated IMPs steadily.  This time Oscar and Harry had a simple auction to an excellent 6♦ contract - they were the only U15 pair to bid it.  We won the match by 38 IMPs.

Our final position in the top six would depend on how the leading teams had fared against each other.  As it happened, the VPs shared out less well than they might have from our point of view, and we finished fourth, 4VPs behind the teams in second and third.

It's disappointing  to miss out on the medals, but fourth is an excellent result for our recently formed team.  Thanks to coach David Bakhshi, especially for his meticulous briefings on opponents' systems, and congratulations to Sarah O'Connor who assembled and trained the team, and to all six players - Daniel Winter, Jack Ronayne, Liam Sanderson, Isaac Channon, Oscar Selby and Harry Madden.

Junior Europeans - U25s & U20s - Tuesday recap

Michael Byrne, NPC of the Under 20s

Today we played one match against the Czech Republic and whilst we gained several imps in the plus column we gave out far too many in the minus column and lost heavily.

Tomorrow we face Germany and Latvia and we are trying new partnership combinations to shake the team up and give them some momentum. 

We shall see how our new strategy goes.

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Alan Shillitoe, NPC of the Under 25s

A quiet day today - just the one match against the Welsh which, after a few sweaty moments, we pulled away to take a near maximum. We lie 16 or so clear of second with Israel and second placed Norway to play tomorrow. It's about to get real. The schedule though has meant that apart from Poland vs Germany, none of the current top six have played each other yet. The final half of the event is going to be a ding-dong slug fest. So starting from the position of power feels like the place to be.

One of the joys of the game is how it can bring the generations together. It is something that seems sadly undervalued in this day and age. So tonight after dinner, a few of us were just hanging around in the lobby area chatting with Swedish legend PO Sundelin who is present at the championships as a technical adviser. There were a few games of backgammon (see twitter - #EBUTromso - for the photos) and then PO played a few hands with Isaac Barden against his dad (U15 NPC) and Jon Cooke (U25 Coach). Jon related a story of how PO was in some some way influential in him taking up the game in the first place. When he was a child of about Isaac's age, he saw the BBC TV program 'International Bridge Club' (http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/3b65862af3bf46cc904264e25d04b265) with PO, Zia (now a friend of Jon's), Sami Kehela and England's own Tony Forrester playing on the Canberra as it (coincidentally) was cruising up the Norwegian coast. Jon was inspired by the program to learn the game and is here in the picture playing against one of those very people. Will this meeting with PO have inspired another young English player? 

 

U15s Tuesday night

Tuesday was our third attempt to win a morning match, this time against the Dutch.  Lots of IMPs changed hands but at the end we had half a dozen fewer.  Never mind, it was our best morning so far.  Our second match was against Germany: on the first board Isaac misguessed trumps in a 4♥ contract, and then had to play J107x opposite K65 for one loser: luckily he found 98 doubleton on his right.  Meanwhile Daniel and Jack bid 5♣ the other  way: the defence needed to switch to diamonds early on to get ♦K established. When they missed that we picked up a double game swing.  A series of smaller gains followed and we won by 58 IMPs for a near maximum VP score, moving us up to 5th place.  Our third match was against the Czechs, who were now a fraction of a VP behind us.  A pair of vulnerable games came in in the first three boards, after which there were no major swings.  We won by 15, staying in fifth place overnight,

On Wednesday we play our last two matches against Scotland and Norway, who have both struggled so far.  Scotland in particular will be keen to beat us, but we have the chance of getting into the medal positions if we play our best and results go our way.

Photos from the European Youth Championships

Photos from the event are available on the EBL Facebook page.

Some pictures featuring English players are:

Junior Europeans - U25s & U20s - Monday morning

Michael Byrne, NPC of the Under 20s

Today was a better day, but still tough.

We started against Hungary, one pair was ok the other pair were beginners. However there were two honourable flat boards:

4                   

KQJ10        

A                  

AK98732   

AQ109742
A
KQ32
10

Laura/Stephen did nicely to bid these cards to 6C (7S was attempted by at least one pair in the junior series) and Stephen remembered his card combinations and ran the 10, guarding against a small singleton offside (slightly more likely than singleton jack or queen)

AJ852   

A43       

10          

AQ10

Q4
Q
AKQ973
K873

This was well bid to 6C on a controlled auction. (This time England U25s rolled in a rather dodgy 7C!)

The rest of the set was one way traffic and we won by 56 imps.

Match two was tough against France (who are leading), we led with 5 boards to go but then crashed and burned and lost by 36.

The final match of the day was a missed opportunity, we had a great chance to beat the Dutch (currently in 2nd place) but we made the wrong lead against a doubled game which cost 24 imps, turning a win by

14 imps into a 10 imp loss.

We face mid-table Czech Republic tomorrow, and will need a win in order to start our comeback!

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Alan Shillitoe, NPC of the Under 25s

Wow! What a start!

After two days the U25 team lie top of the standings. Things have gone almost as well, letting a lead against Turkey (a better side than their position suggests) slip aside, as one might have dreamed. We started with confident wins against Bulgaria and Portugal before a distinctly sub-par France offered us a generous score. Today we began with a professional performance against Finland before a 1IMP loss to the Turks. The team rebounded with a near maximum against a weak Austrian team to regain top spot after the Finns surprisingly reversed the Swedes.

Tomorrow are the bottom-placed Welsh in the only match of the day.

Things will then get tougher and we will then play most of the top contenders over the next three days. Form and confidence are big things and at the moment the group has them. Fingers crossed...

Tromso itself is located in a staggeringly beautiful setting. It is mostly on an island in the middle of a fjord off the Arctic Ocean with steep sided mountains rising to over 1000m to either side. In this calm mid-summer weather it has an incredibly peaceful quality feeling like a isolated beacon of civilisation on the edge of the world. It's a privilege to come and visit such an amazing place.