Thursday, October 4, 2007

Day 4 Wrap and Day 5 Thoughts

Indonesia is another one of those teams who Australia don't seem to fare very well against over a long period of time. And so it was that we were hoping to turn this history upside down.

I hadn't done the datums for the New Zealand Match but relied on the players comments after the session. History proved them to be accurate with Murray/Andrew being -20 imps and Bruce/Jedi being +4. As the lineup of Bruce/Jedi with Warren/Pauline would be in accordance with the rotation we went with this.

I was enlisted to do some online VuGraph for this match which was featured online BBO so was following every board with increasing delight. With each board of the middle eight we built on our lead to win the match 21-8 - an excellent result.

Despite scoring 13-11-21 for 46 we managed to move up to equal fourth place but only 13 ahead of the all important ninth position.

With the datums being

8th Bruce/Jedi +0.54 IMPS a board
26th Warren/Pauline +0.12 IMPS a board
42nd Murray/Andrew -0.11 a board

I decided to field the two better performing pairs for the all important match against Norway tomorrow morning. Norway are running 4th= and are in my opinion a good chance to make the finals with the likes of Helgemo, Helness, Brogeland, Saelensminde, Tundall Groetheim.

But hey their pairs are only averaging 0.42, 0.00 and 0.16 - we can beat these guys.

You may be aware that Boye was on our team that won the NOT this year. As has been our tradition for the past few years at World Championships I took him out for dinner this evening in the hope of getting him to have a few drinks and perhaps play a little worse than normal tomorrow. Damn if he wasn't sitting out against us. Uncharacteristically his is the third best performing pair in the team but when you are in a team with the other four, fighting for the title of best pair is a tough call.

After that we have another toughie against Sweden who are under-performing badly in this tournament running 14th at this stage after being in the last few earlier in the tournament. Certainly a team to watch. We then finish the day against Japan who are knocking on qualifying running 9th.

A tough day ahead not that any match is easy. At this stage 15.5 is qualifying so we have to simply play good bridge, be solid and focus on each match as it comes along.

More soon
David

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