Burke Snowden, who will be going to China on the USA2 team for the Damiani Cup this summer, was recently featured in two articles, one in the Denver Westward News and one on ACBL's Youth 4 Bridge website. Way to go, Burke and as always the best of luck to our USBF teams in the Junior Championships.

Congratulations to Adam Kaplan, Zachary Brescoll, Adam Grossack and Zachary Grossack, who won the online Trials for USA1 for the 2012 Damiani Cup (Players Under 21) to be held July 24 to August 4, 2012, in Tai Cang City, China (outside Shanghai). The Kaplan team will add a third pair before the World Championships.

At its meetings in Veldhoven, the World Bridge Federation Junior Committee announced that the 2012 World Junior Championships would be held separately from the 2012 MindSports Games or Bridge Olympiad and that the United States would be entitled to two teams in each of the two events at the World Junior Championships. USBF had scheduled its Under-21 Trials as a two-stage event: an online event on Nov. 6th to reduce the field to two teams and then a face to face playoff between those two teams to choose our Under-21 team for the 2012 World Championships. Four teams had entered the Under-21 Trials. When we learned that the United States would have two teams in the 2012 Damiani Cup, the USBF Junior Committee decided to continue with the plans for a two-stage Trials, with the first stage to be held online on Nov. 6th, but to change the format to a double-elimination Knockout to choose two teams. The four teams played a semi-final and final match in the afternoon of Sunday, Nov. 6th. The winning semi-finalists then played a match and the losing semi-finalists played a match. At the end of the day, the undefeated team (Kaplan) was named USA1 for the 2012 Damiani Cup, the twice-defeated team was eliminated, and the two once-defeated teams remain in the Trials. They will play a further match at a time and place to be determined later. The winner of that match will be USA2 for the 2012 Damiani Cup. 

The two continuing teams are Dhir (Arjun Dhir, Ricoh Das, Brandon Harper and Matthew Weingarten) who won their semi-final match and then lost to Kaplan; and  Snowden (Burke Snowden, Hakan Berk, Ben Kristensen, David Soukup and Anam Tebha, who lost to Kaplan in the semi-final and then defeated the other once-defeated team.

Scores and play records from the Nov. 6th Trials are available at http://www.bboteams.com/u21results.htm.