From: sater@cs.vu.nl (Hans van Staveren)
Newsgroups: rec.games.bridge
Subject: report 18 from the EBL juniors
Date: 26 Jul 92 08:04:40 GMT

Well, it is Sunday morning and the terminal rooms are open. Let me start
to tell you that the grapevine that gave me Italy's result was one point
wrong, so Italy trailed by 4 points in stead of three.

Last night matches were played in various atmospheres, the top teams
very tense and the bottom very relaxed. I was director in the closed
room, and the match Ireland - Turkey there started already on a relaxed
mood, the Irish players having some difficulty in motor coordination,
presumably by having consumed just a tad much of that yellowish liquid,
and continued in the same vein by emptying the bar in the closed room in
a methodic fashion.

On the other hand the match Italy - Belgium was tense. More about that
later. First the results:

Iceland - Romania		15 - 15
Turkey - Ireland		14 - 16
Poland - Norway			13 - 17
France - Great Britain		11 - 19
Italy - Belgium			21 -  7
Estonia - Netherlands		19 - 11
Germany - Israel		14 - 16
Denmark - Lithuania		23 -  7
Hungary - bye			18 -  0
Finland - Greece		 8 - 22
Portugal - Sweden		 0 - 25
C.I.S. - Austria		15 - 15

My countrymen cannot even beat Estonia anymore. Germany fell back and
Norway stayed in contention, and for them more important virtually
assured third place. The ranking up till now:

 1. Italy		386
 2. Germany		383
 3. Norway		380
 4. Poland		363
 5. Sweden		360.5
 6. Great Britain	357
 7. Austria		347
 8. C.I.S.		339
 9. Hungary		327
10. Netherlands		322
11. Israel		318.5
12. Greece		317
13. Finland		310
14. France		299
15. Iceland		297
16. Denmark		291
17. Portugal		288.5
18. Belgium		284.5
19. Romania		275.5
20. Ireland		275
21. Lithuania		265.5
22. Turkey		230
23. Estonia		197

In the Italy - Belgium match in the closed room the following incident
happened:

brd 14	A K 8 2			NS: Belgium
E/-	5 4			EW: Italy, Versace Nunes
	Q 6 4 3
	7 3 2			W	N	E	S
Q J 7 3		9				1C	1S
7 6		A K 9 2		dbl	1NT	2C	2H
A K 10 2	J 5		2S	p	2NT	p
10 9 6		A K Q J 8 5	3D	p	3H	p
	10 6 5 4		3NT	p	4C	p
	Q J 10 8 3		4D	p	4H	p
	9 8 7			6D	p	6NT	p
	4			p	dbl	all pass

After South bid and alerted one spade I was called. The convention card
of the Belgium pair had marked in the section defence against strong club
that double was major, and 1NT was minors, and nothing else. Now the 1S
bid was explained as majors or minors. It turned out that they had
changed the defence, but were playing with the wrong cards. The Italians
claimed that they had not prepared a defence, so now what? I ruled that
for the moment the Italians just should cope as best as they could, and
that there might be an adjusted score if they were damaged by the
infraction. After this whole process was repeated at the other side of
the screen the bidding went on(and on, and on) until the point of no
return was passed.

Believe it or not, after the hand I was called again! Well, I posed
various questions, like what sort of defense the Italians normally
played against artificial 1S calls, but they claimed they had none. This
seemed improbable to me, so I asked again. Again no. Just for safety's
sake I asked the question again. No. If this sounds like I did not
believe them you are right. This may be a junior championship, but you
are not playing against children. Anyhow after lots of talk with my
colleagues we decided to let the result stand, because West's bidding
made no sense. His partner had bid a strong hand with clubs, repeated 4C
over 3NT, and when West jumped to slam he jumped to 6D, iso 6C.
Furthermore I gave 1VP penalty to Belgium for using an undisclosed
convention.

Anyhow, believe it or not there was an appeal :-) Given the fact that
the end of the tournament is nearing this appeal was held immediately,
at quarter past midnight. An interesting incident occurred when I was
asked for the money. The Italians had to give a 200FF deposit, but they
didn't have small change, so they gave me 500FF. The chairman of the
appeal committee asked a suggestive question about what the meaning of
this extra money was. It was taken in good humour, I think.

The appeals committee agreed with our ruling, the result stood, the
Belgians got 2 iso 1VP penalty, and the Italians their 500FF note back.

I do not have the time now to quote the bulletin, maybe later today.

Gotta go,

	Hans van Staveren