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?