European Youth Teams (Riga 2026) - Day 456

Day 4 

Matches 13-16 were losses against Netherlands, France, England and Netherlands again.

Wasn't all bad. In the board below we got a rare gain against England:

Anya sitting West decided that the five level belonged to here, and boldly bid on to 5S. I think this is good judgement, as you have a double fit for partner's suits of Spades and Diamonds, so it's exactly the right time to bid one extra.

North couldn't help doubling again, and if declarer gets trumps right she makes the contract. Anything except starting with the Ace works here, so well done Anya for 5Sx=.

At the other table we defended a more normal 4S after this auction

South's 2NT bid showed Clubs and a major, so if I was North I would be bidding 5C automatically as you also have a double fit (Clubs and whatever major your partner has).

At the end of the day we are still in 13th place:

Day 5

Match 17 was a respectably close loss to Czech Republic. We are so close to great bridge - take this deal:

 

Our North-South pair of Rachel and Niamh had a good auction to 5C:

East took her two Aces and had a trump trick to come, so off one. 

The other table featured an artificial bid: 

1D is a transfer response. Our defence is that Double shows the bid suit (Diamonds) and bidding the suit being transferred into (Hearts) is takeout. So in a parallel Universe West would have made a double, and East would lead Diamonds to beat 3NT (or the opponents would play a failing 4H or 5C).

On the day though didn't find a Diamond lead and the contract made.

Next up was a similar size loss to Poland, then Sweden. We are not getting whitewashed and are slowly gaining on Estonia, who have now become our great rivals:

Day 6

We started with a decent 17-3 VPs loss against Israel, before a respectable 19-1 VPs loss to Norway. Then came the big match against the Estonians.

At the halfway stage we were losing by 21-13 IMPs in a tense encounter, making me glad I wasn't the non-playing captain, or the pair sitting out and watching. But after that the IMPs came rolling in, with the Estonians getting caught out overbidding and being doubled several times. It happened twice to them on the last board, netting us 17 IMPs.

On one table East-West got to 4S, which Niamh sitting South doubled. 4S is close, but South's two trump tricks meant one off. 

On the other table the Estonian North-South tried 3NT, after North opened 2NT showing both minors. This time Artem found the double, leading to 3NTx-5!

We won 53-21 IMPs, this time getting the big win for ourselves. 

The final match of the day was an easy win against Bye, so another 12 VPs, and into 12th place.

Poland and Israel are close at the top, but the real battle is between the two at the bottom. Estonia just beat Latvia so it's close again - let's see what tomorrow brings!

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! 

European Youth Teams (Riga 2026) - Day 3

Match 9 vs Poland

Four tough matches today, against teams in the top half. Poland first up, who play a difficult system, and play it well. Two boards in and we are 24 IMPs down. This was a missed opportunity:

West found herself in 3NT doubled, with a Heart lead from North. Count the tricks: 4 Spades if you finesse, 3 Hearts, 1 Diamond and at least 1 Club. So nine tricks are there, as long as you finesse in Spades, which you should do as North has shown a hand with long Hearts. The difficulty is, you must take that finesse at Trick 2, while you are in dummy. 

At the other table North didn't enter the auction, which made life harder for declarer, who finished in 3NT-1. So we lose 3 IMPs, which is actually one of our better boards.

Another missed opportunity when Poland played 6NT and one of our defenders had ♠AKQ.  Unfortunately it was not the defender on lead. I have mentioned a few times that, if the opponents don't bid Spades, they don't have them, so maybe we could have found a winning Spade lead, but not easy and another gain for Poland. 

Next, this nasty board:

I was pleased to see our North open 5D, well bid Rachel (I like a 3NT opening, and so does Michael Heubeck). The Polish East overcalled 5S, and played there, off two. 

At the other table North also opened 5D. Our East, Iris, doubled, which is reasonable, and Anya sitting West bid 6C, also very reasonable. Well bid both of you (though 6C has no play). 

We lost by about 50 IMPs to at least scape about 0.1 Victory Points. 

One of the benefits of having such a young team is they are very keen to learn, and we immediately went over a few things afterwards. The team are doing great playing at a high level against much more experienced opponents.

Timon seems to be supporting Sweden

Good news from Scotland U31 - after loitering near the bottom of the table they just beat World Champions Bulgaria! 

Match 10 vs England

I'm following this one from Riga airport, while also trying to save battery power. I'm flying home today.

I did see that on the first board England bid 3H on also 3S on the other table, which is typical of our matches against them when they seem to declare a lot more than us. Unfortunately this time both contracts made so we start 7 IMPs down.

Final score was 29-60, with a few good ones in there. This board was a victory for the weak NT:

At one table Artem opened the West hand 1NT and played there, down one. At every other table West opened 1H, North doubled and the Spade game was reached. Even playing a weak NT I would have opened the West hand 1H, but I can't argue with an 8 IMP gain.

Match 11 vs Israel

Our second 20-0 loss. Well done to France and Israel who have both drummed us, as Artem would say. The highlight was a flat board, with Artem and Shiva getting to this fine 6S contract.

After South opened with 2NT North bid 4H as a Texas Transfer, which they had agreed but I don't think it's ever come up before. After Shiva completed the transfer Artem recognised the power of his hand and they got to 6S. As did nearly every table, but still nice to see.

It was an exciting match with a scoring correction (our 4S going down corrected to 3D=) and a 19 IMP swing (no need to see the details), but not a very high-scoring one, at least from us. Next is Czech Republic.

Match 12 vs Czech Republic

Anything above zero victory points here would be a bonus.

Update - we collected 0.01 victory points, which I suppose is above zero. Here's the standings:

Can we overhaul Estonia?

 

  

European Youth Teams (Riga 2026) - Day 2

It was a busy day yesterday with two great wins for Scotland. We also suffered a harsh ruling, with a 1 VP fine for a player sitting down to play the afternoon match at 1501. I also got a warning for submitting a match lineup late. Each lineup has to be submitted within 10 minutes of the previous match, which surprisingly includes the 10 am match, which needs to be submitted within 10 minutes of the match the evening before finishing at 7 pm. I also submitted the lineup wrongly, but the Greek captain has graciously agreed to let me amend it.

I've not been having morning meetings with the whole team, preferring to let the teenagers sleep in. This meant once again I was at breakfast on my own at 7 am today, with the rest of the team appearing about 9 am, and no sign of the pair who aren't playing the first match. 

Match 5 vs Greece

For their kindness in letting me amend my lineup we will look kindly on Greece, but still be ruthless on the table and destroy them. My heart rate climbed from 50 to 71 waiting for the team to arrive this morning. I was so relieved to see them arrive five minutes early I took this photo.

I entered the arena sat behind Niamh and Rachel for the first board, and remembered why I don't normally watch. Too stressful. Luckily they bid and played the first board beautifully, so I could leave happy:

 

It's a marginal game but I'm glad they got there. Against 4S by North East led the Ace-King of Clubs then a sneaky low one, declarer ruffing low. Making the South hand ruff is a good defence, as it could make it harder to setup the Diamonds.

Rachel crossed to her North hand with her top Spade, then finessed Diamonds. This is good play, setting up the side suit before drawing trumps, as if you draw trumps you've lost all your entries to dummy and you'll go down if the defence duck the Diamond. When she finessed Diamonds I was pleased to see West take his King, and now the contract is home.

4S= gained us 6 IMPs against 2S on the other table. Well done!

Watching this match on the Scottish team table, saw we have raced to a 19 IMP lead. Gave this all back on two boards, so I went out to get a cake from a Konditoreja I'd seen yesterday. If my children were here I'd have got them all Minion Pop-cakes. I got the most expensive cake in the shop. What looks like a layer of cream in the middle is actually meringue! Riga is full of surprises. 

Too much

Back in the bridge match, we are currently still ahead against Greece. Credit goes to Artem for a board where he held:

and when the opponent opened 1NT he overcalled 2NT, showing both minors, which propelled the opponents into 5S-2 and a big gain.

Rachel had a similar successful action yesterday. Against a strong 1C opening, she had

and found the bid of double, showing both majors. Even better, Niamh helped out by bidding 2H and the opponents ended in a strange 5NT-1.

After leading by 15 a bad run at the end resulted in losing 49-41 IMPs, not quite making a 100 IMP turnover. Unfortunately this means only 7.56 VPs, which I'd have taken at the start but feels bad having been leading.

Match 6 vs Sweden

This match was close for a while but we ended up losing 43-22, to collect another valuable 5 Victory Points. I can't find any particularly good hands, but this one is interesting:

Most North-South pairs reached the normal contract of 4S+1. On our table the Swedish East opened 2D, and South is close to a 2S overcall. Then West bid 2H, and North is close to a double. When East bid 4H that ended the auction, going down a couple and winning the board. Well done Sweden, though Scotland should have found a way into the auction. Top marks also to the Israeli East who opened 3D and played there.


Match 7 vs Latvia

The three teams competing for 11th/12th/13th are Scotland, Latvia and Estonia, so this was a must-win. Unfortunately, we didn't. Latvia bid boldly and made a lot of games. I had been waiting for this to happen, as we bid fewer games than other teams but have so far got away with it as the cards lay badly. In this match they lay well, and Latvia raced ahead. 

This one was an easy win:

Anya opened 3S and Iris raised to 4S, which made 11 tricks. On the other table West only opened 2S and the game was missed (I would have opened 4S).

We lost 60-23 to take just 2 Victory Points.

Match 8 - Bye

An easy 12-0 win. Here's the scores after Day 2, with 8 out of the 26 rounds completed:

I tried to organise a bowling evening which didn't happen, but with both Scotland teams being free this evening we all went into town together. On the way there it rained a lot, but on the way back the Old Town looked nice, including House of The Cat.

Failing to appreciate the historic architecture

Mao?

River Daugava

 

European Youth Teams (Riga 2026) - Day 1

I was up promptly for breakfast on my own at 7 am. Highlight were the little pancakes. The team joined later. I carefully explained the Estonian Strong Club system before realising that we were playing Norway first. The Norwegians play transfer responses to 1C, which is not too difficult, but we have to be careful that we don't end up passing throughout because we're confused, which is always a danger when playing against more experienced teams.

I emailed the Norwegian captain as their system card was extremely vague about their defensive signals, just saying Strength and Carding. His response wasn't very helpful, but I now think they play reverse attitude.

After breakfast we sauntered across to the venue a good 30 minutes before start time to register the team. Unfortunately, there was a massive queue of people already there, which I joined the back off with the Spanish team. The players needed to register to get their lanyards to enter the playing area, and if they wanted to leave during a match to go to the toilet. 

I got a bit anxious at the queue was moving slowly and the 10am start time was approaching. Players had been advised to sit down five minutes early, with penalties if late, and I wanted some time to familiarise everyone with the bidding tablets and screens. At 0950 the staff announced that to speed things up, everyone was to have a list ready of what size t-shirts they wanted? T-Shirts? 

At that point we abandoned the queue to take our seats for the match, but were rebuffed as we didn't have lanyards yet. Finally someone realised we didn't need our souvenir cups and backpacks yet and just gave us the IDs. At the table, the Norwegians were already there, looking very professional with laminated system cards with their photos on. I'll have to do that next time.

The match results are coming in here live: Results

Match 1 vs Norway

I've not given much of a team-talk, but have mentioned the importance of discipline. It would have helped on this board, the very first of the event, where we lost 8 IMPs

West opened1S. East has 9 points so should settle for 1NT, as responding in a new suit at the two level shows 10+, leading to 4H. It's actually not a terrible contract, but goes down if the defence switch to Clubs (declarer should just try and draw trumps and run Spades as quick as possible if she can).

Most tables played 2S+2 after the auction 1S-1NT; 2S.

Having raced to a 15-0 deficit, we gained our first IMPs on this one. The Norwegians overbid to 3NT from East-West. Our North correctly lead Queen of Hearts. 

It's common for South to play her King on top of the Queen, to avoid blocking the Heart suit. But here with 9742 in dummy South must not waste her King. I wasn't in the room, but I hope that our South played low, because of the 9742 in dummy.  

However we did it, we took 3NT down two (good job Rachel & Niamh), whereas on the other table West made 10 tricks in 3D+1. Well done Anya and Iris.

I'm outside the venue, kibitzing with the Scotland U31 team - non-playing captain Matthew Robb and new partnership Kevin Ren and Bahutan Bal. They tell me the Turkish team played every match in a friendly before the event and ranked them all. Scotland U31 are currently beating Spain. This is a good hand where they bid and made 4H, which I will leave as a challenge to my team. 

South is in 4H. West leads Ace of Diamonds then a trump. How do you play the hand?

I'm including this hand as we have a bit of a blind spot about setting up suits in dummy. I'd also rather focus on the U31 than our team, who seem to be sliding to a heavy deficit. Every match starts tied on victory points at 10-10. In these 14 board matches if you lose by 57 IMPs or more you lose 0-20, so that's our first target.

We have just gained 4 IMPs when Norway opened 1C, and with two balanced hands both Anya and Iris found a disciplined pass, well done! I've also just seen that Iris outplayed her counterpart to make 3D=, which Niamh and Rachel took one down. A great team board. I am now daring to dream (that we don't lose 20-0).

Final score was a very respectable 21-54 IMPS, giving us a meagre 2.51 VPs. I'll take it!

Match 2 vs Estonia

After a high-scoring start we are just behind. Here is one where we gained, with a combination of good defence and restrained bidding:

When Scotland held the East West cards they had an excellent auction:

Artem Shiva

              1C

1H         2C

2NT      3C

A fine stop in 3C, making 10 tricks. Artem gives his partner plenty of chance to bid game, but knows when to give up.

At the other table Estonia did get to 3NT. Our North-South pair of Rachel and Niamh were ruthless. After a small Diamond lead the defence have five Diamond tricks, plus two Spades, and found one more as declarer finished in 3NT-5. 

I've just seen that the team have surged ahead! 13 IMPs for Scotland is worth looking into:

Artem Shiva
2C      2D

   3D      3S    
3NT         

Shiva found a reasonable pass of 3NT, though must have been close to a natural invite with 4NT or a natural 4D. 3NT was well played by Artem to get the maximum number of tricks, making +3 when North lead a Heart. At the other table the opponents got themselves into trouble in 5NT, which could have made, but went off one, this time South leading a Heart. Perhaps declarer was annoyed at having to play 5NT.

While we are ahead in the bridge I am behind with my lunch, so will be back soon.

At the local canteen I just had a tasty broth, with sour cream, and a very hearty plate of mixed vegetables. There were two large miscellaneous fried dough balls I wasn't sure about, but I liked all the vegetables and salad. That should balance tonight's likely return to Cili Pizza.      

A win! 34-32 IMPs against Estonia. 

Here's two of the victorious team off for a nap, and two trying to avoid being photographed by me.
 

Match 3 vs Denmark

There is only 15 minutes between matches, and just an hour for lunch. After chilling out for half of lunch break Artem popped across to the food court to order a pizza, which predictably enough arrived just 5 minutes before the next match was due to star. After a series of frantic texts I intercepted him sprinting across the plaza with his pizza in a box. He handed it over uneaten ("You can have a slice if you want!") before rushing into the playing arena. 

I hope his hunger won't affect his play, but I'm afraid to say it's not a great start as we have slipped to 14 IMPs down. However, we just made it all back on this exciting board:

        

  

On the first table the Scottish West was obviously not looking at the same has as I am and decided it was a weak hand with seven Diamonds so opened 3D. This considerable underbid had the happy effect of propelling the Danish North-South into 6C. This does have 12 tricks, with 9 Clubs and 3 Spades, so needs careful defence to beat it. West lead the Ace of Diamonds, then presumably found the winning Heart switch, as 6C went one off. Well done!

On the other table West took a very different view and opened the hand 1C. Their system card says that 1C is natural with 2+ Clubs, so I don't know why he opened 1C. Our South was having none of this and bid 5C, over which West bid the obvious 5D. North doubled this and the contract took just 7 trumps and a Heart for 5Dx-3. 

A great board for Team Scotland makes the match level again.

I need to go back to the hotel to recharge.

We held on for a famous win, 32-20, our second win of the day! This included our first slam, 6C= from Anya and Iris. 

Match 4 vs France

Our first match against a top team was an education, with not a single IMP recorded in the plus column. 

There were no good boards, but this one was at least amusing:

On their table Niamh and Rachel sat North South, and defended a rather improbable 3NT, South opened 1C, West overcalled 3C, and East tried 3NT. The defence found the weakness in Hearts, and took the first seven tricks there, declarer eventually registering 3NT-6 vulnerable for minus 600.

But somehow we still lost IMPs. At the other table North came in with 4H and they reached 5H+2 for plus 680.

Losing 3 IMPs here was a relatively good board, as it finished 62-0 to France. That meant Scotland got zero victory points, and moved France to the top of the table. Here are the rankings after Day One:

During this match I wasn't at the venue watching, but out exploring Riga, so feel partly responsible for the heavy loss.

Dinner was more fast food (halloumi kebab for me).