CONGRATULATIONS TO FIRST USBF TEAM SELECTED FOR 2012 WORLD 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.

CROATIA UPDATE

SATURDAY

Congratulations to team USA (Kevin Dwyer - Owen Lien, Jeremy Fournier - Mitch Towner, Roger Lee - Dan Wolkowitz on winning the silver medal in the BAM teams in Croatia! Well done!

All of the US players in Croatia reached the finals of the Board-a-Match competition. The USA and USA-U21 teams, both of whom failed to qualify for the Knockout Finals earlier this week (USA by the narrowest of margins - they were tied for the last qualifying spot and lost the tie-break), moved on to the Board-a-Match qualifying and semi-final, in which they ranked 6th and 7th after 3 days of competition. The top 8 teams qualified for the BAM final, where they will be joined by the 4 semi-finalists from the KO. Marius Agica, whose team (Ned-Rum) lost in the KO semi-final and then defeated the other losing semi-finalist to win the KO bronze medal, will  also be playing in the BAM final tomorrow. Good luck to all of our USBF Juniors in Croatia!