Day 1 of World Championships

Good morning everyone,

Today is Sunday, November 5th. It is 10:00 am here in Beijing.

The first day of play was a disappointing start for our team.
In our first match versus China, with what seemed like a pretty flat set of 16 hands,
we were soundly beaten by the Precision playing Chinese. China 23 VP's - Canada - 7 VP's.
In our second match versus Denmark, the team got back on track with a 9 IMP victory.
Canada 17 - Denmark 13. In our third match versus France, our team lost by 10.
France 17 - Canada 13.
After three matches we therefore stand in 14th out of 18 with a Victory Point total of 37.
Average is 45. The leaders in our group have 61 VP's.
We knew as mentioned yesterday that our first two days were going to be tough, but we'll
need to do better today to start getting back into the hunt.
Our draw today likes like this:
11:00 - Finland
2:00 - Scotland
5:10 - Russia
The Canada-Russia match will be shown on BBO, but unfortunately, it is airing at 5:10 am
Toronto time, so you are all going to have to retire early if you plan to watch. Russia is
expected to be a strong opponent. The Russian women won this event the last time it was held,
four years ago in Istanbul.

As is usual at the bridge table, the consensus was that our opponents did not really beat us with their brilliancies, but rather that we were the architects of our losses through errors or missed opportunities on our part. Our greatest missed opportunities were in the area of slam bidding which was critical in these matches. There were, to my count, seven excellent small slam contracts available to be bid. Of those seven, our team reached only two of the slams. One of those slams that we bid resulted in a large gain and one in a push. The other five represented losses or missed chances. The teams who handled these slam hands well in all the events were destined to do well yesterday.

I am waiting to get some advice from Matine Lacroix, member of our team, to show me how to post hands on this blog. She is experienced with blogging. I am not. I hope to give you some
hands after she shows me how to do so.

Congratulations to our Open and Senior teams who both got off to great starts yesterday. See Sandra Fraser's and Dave Willis's blogs for more on those teams. Canada' Open team was featured on Vugraph yesterday afternoon vs. the all-powerful Italians and emerged with a small and confidence building victory. If they can beat the Italians....

It is rainy and cool this morning in Beijing - a huge city of 15 million inhabitants.

The Women's team is hopeful and confident of better things today.

Talk to you tomorrow.