European Youth Teams (Riga 2026) - Midway reflections

Now I'm back home I won't be following the event very closely, so although the team still have four days tough bridge to play, it's time for my reflections.

The event itself has been impressively organised, with tight security and enforcement of the rules. All of the bridge seems to have run smoothly, with scores always available and no technical glitches as far as I could see. I would have liked the organisers to do more in terms of the social side, perhaps providing a late night speedball or two where you had to play with someone from another country, or maybe a group outing, to make the most of the fact that many of Europe's best young bridge players are gathered together.

On that topic, I'm glad as Scotland non-playing captain I got us all out of the hotel and into Riga Old Town for an evening, and even better the U31 team came too. These veterans could have sat on their own, but joined in with the younger players, including playing poker and a very large game of Spoons, and other games I didn't understand.   

In terms of the bridge, our limitations have been shown up and it is understandable that we will lose more than we win at this level. Our training sessions have focused on familiarising the team with the unusual bidding of the other teams (Multi 2D, Strong Club etc) which has been useful, but you can't replicate years of practice in dealing with common situations.

A few specific bridge things it would be great to improve on

• When we have strength for game, we have to be in game. This is Teams, so playing 4D when everyone else is making 3NT is usually  bad score
• In a suit contract, we have to recognise the value of distributional hands, bidding extra when it is right to do so
• As declarer, a few blind spots. Counting tricks before playing the first card remains the number one skill. It's hard for me to tell (no records of the play), but it looks like our declarers are not always able to take advantage of information from the bidding to help them play the hand.
• Defence could improve by making safer leads, if the auction demands it. This is also hard, as it involves adjusting your traditional rules (lead fourth highest of your strongest suit against NT) to take account of the specific auction

Finally, all the Scotland team are a very agreeable group to travel and work with. Good luck to them in the remaining matches!