StanisławGołębiowski– OC Member – Sports Manager (Bridge)
“The three days of the 2020 FISU WUC Mind Sports online were filled with sporting emotions. However, the qualification phase of the bridge tournament finished with no surprises. Till the end of the 15th round there was a tough competition between the Polish and Chinese teams– won by the Chinese team 4:2. The play-off phase has been also completed with the teams from France and Italy. Having this in mind, it can be said that in the quarter-finals we will be spectating the clash between Europe and China (People’s Republic of). The Polish women’s team may feel disappointed as they are ranked at the 9th position with less than 1VP dividing them to qualify for the next phase. I expect that the level of the quarter-finals will be very even and the matches exciting.”
Bridge
Today the qualification phase of the bridge tournament was finished. The top three teams are the following:
- ITALY 1 205.31 VP
- CHINA 3 201.69 VP
- POLAND 3 194.45 VP
The first 8 teams qualified to the quarter-finals. The play-off phase will start with the clash between China (People’s Republic of) and the rest of the world as there are as many as four Chinese teams with enough VP to reach the quarter-final stage. The teams placed 1-3 had the right to sequentially choose their opponents from the ones placed 4-8. Therefore, in each quarter-final match there is a team representing China (People’s Republic of). The pairings are as follows:
- ITALY 1 – CHINA 5
- CHINA 3 – FRANCE
- POLAND 3 – CHINA 4
- CHINA 1 – POLAND 1
During the qualifications, best individual performance was shown by:
| MaxenceFragola | FRANCE | 2.69 imp/board |
| Jakub Bazyluk | POLAND 1 | 2.46 imp/board |
| Andrea Manganella | ITALY 1 | 2.19 imp/board |
| Sebastiano Scata | ITALY 1 | 2.19 imp/board |
| Nao Tabata | FRANCE | 1.92 imp/board |
Here is the most interesting board of the day: POLAND 2 vs CHINA 2:
In the match of POLAND 2 and CHINA 2 very good defense was presented by Shiju SUN. After the bidding:
Xiang led spade jack:
Sun encouraged with the eight and declarer won the trick with the queen. Now declarer started to establish the dummy longest suit ‒ diamonds, playing the jack from the hand. ♢5 from South, ♢2 from dummy… Sun ducked! He has risked the trick if declarer would refuse the second finesse (particularly if he has 4 diamonds in hand), but in fact this move has the sensational effect. Declarer continued with ♢9, ♢6 from South, overtaken by the ten in dummy and now Sun won with the queen.
Declarers life became now much more complicated: Look at the complete board:
After the queen of diamonds North played ♠4. Declarer ducked. South won and played one more spade. Maciek won with the ace and tried to enter dummy, playing ♣10. South followed with a low club and declarer had to guess what to do…
Unfortunately he played the queen and this way brave diamond duck succeeded. North cashed spade king and played a heart, setting the contract by three tricks.
At replay the bidding, first lead were the same and declarer also started with the club jack, but it was won with the queen and the contract was made. It was 11 imps for CHINA 2.
CHESS
What a DAY it was!
We started with 75 teams from all the continents. The goal for most of them was only one, to qualify to top ‘16’ and play-offs. After three days of very exciting and passionate battles, arbiters have announced the final standings. China became the best team of the qualification stage. They won everything, 18/18 match points!!
China brought 3 teams to the play-off stage!
| China 1 (1) vs Colombia (16) |
| Mongolia vs Kazakhstan 1 (14) |
| Armenia 1 (4) vs Poland 4 (13) |
| Belarus (6) vs Spain 4 (11) |
The last round was not lucky for polish teams. Poland 1 was facing a strong team of Ukraine and Poland 2 got defeated by a top-seeded team from Armenia. As a result, there will be only one team representing Poland in the play-offs. All members of the Poland 4 Team are students of the Silesian University from Katowice. However it will not be easy. In the ⅛ final they are waiting for… grandmasters from Armenia.
Tomasz Sielicki , entrepreneur, former President of Polish Chess Federation and medalist of both Polish chess and bridge championship paid a visit to our studio. In 1999 he was listed among Central Europe’s Top 10 Executives by The Wall Street Journal.
During the interview he said:
“(…) Chess and bridge give students a special set of abilities. They develop the ability to learn, to memorize, analytical skills. Also, the ability to lose and be able to win again is very important. Not only in the game but also in life.”
You can watch 20 minutes interview here: https://livestream.com/fisu/mindsportsday3
Our arbiters!
For arbiters, an online event is more difficult than an over the board tournament. We are very happy to have such an international and experienced team of arbiters. All of them are having titles of International Arbiters, the highest possible title. They are representing many countries from 4 continents: Canada, Turkey, Iran, Italy, Czech Republic, Ukraine, Serbia, United Kingdom and Kenia.
And we have two bosses, chief arbiter Tomasz Delega(Poland) and Technical Delegate Georg Kradolfer (Switzerland). Great help for arbiters is coming as well from Australia and Tornelo CEO, David Cordover.
Play-offs starts at 3PM CET
Feel free to join the live broadcast with GM Marcin Tazbir and WGM Keti Tsatsalashvili!
