Well here we are the day before the event.

Yesterday we had a practice against the three New Zealand Teams and the Brazilian Open Team.
This was followed by an excellent meal at the local Noodle House - $A5 per head which was well within our budgets. Actually in the ‘Super Brand Mall’ opposite the venue there are two levels with I am guessing 20 restaurants so expect to see us there again. Tonight we have booked for Japanese and Korean may follow soon.

Today the team is practicing against the three New Zealand teams and the Australian Seniors so 7 tables. They have elected to play the same direction mixing the teams about. So my three pairs are all E/W with the New Zealand Seniors all N/S as team mates. Anyway the purpose is that they can then discuss the hands more meaningfully.

The captain’s meeting is at 14:30 today and will deal with all of the administrative issues. For the first time the event will be paperless. The captains will all have home pages where they can get their team scoresheets after each match.

By the way (or BTW for you computerheads out there) Swan games will be having live scoring similar to that provided by Matthew McManus and including all the play provided the scorers can keep up with it. Go to www.swangames.com to see this in action.

Also don’t forget that you will be able to watch up to 8 tables at once, including Australia from time to time at BridgeBase Online www.bridgebase.com.

Tonight is the opening cocktail party and ceremony so after the captain’s meeting it will be back to the hotel to change into the team uniform and back to the venue.

Tomorrow’s matches are against Pakistan, Netherlands and USA1. Pakistan will likely be the easiest of these matches but all should be quite tough. Netherlands and USA1 are both short priced to make the final eight so we will have to battle hard to do well against these teams.

Again my keyword is focus. All we need to do for reasonable results is play our normal games and remain focused.

Anyway that’s all for now. Catch you all soon.....