The schedule for Canada on Day 3 included more teams in the top of the group: Estonia and South Africa sandwiching bottom of the table Kenya. Continuing with the lineups from the previous day Fergani/L’Ecuyer and Lebi/Jacob kicked it off against Estonia, followed by Lebi/Jacob and Demuy/Fourcaudot against Kenya. Both lineups played strongly with a 21-9 win over Estonia and a 25-4 win against Kenya.
A strong start to the third day as the team reached the halfway point in second place in Bracket A. The third match against South Africa was not as successful. With the Italians and Brazilians also on Vugragph it was time to watch the results come in and plan the lineups for the rest of the event. With the Italians ruthlessly taking out the Brazilians (92-0 before Brazil got on the board) attention shifted to tracking the Canada Open Team scores… Unfortunately South Africa seemed to have the same plan for our Open Team and we suffered our worst result of the tournament with a 25-3 loss and a drop to fourth place.
Other observations from Day 3:
Our scoring prowess is improving Day by Day with only one scoring correction required on Day 3 although when the Directors say here’s Canada again you know you may have visited once too often…
Canada likes giving numbers with the following making appearances in the last couple of days: 800, 2x1100, 2x1400 and the topper 1550 (you will have to work that one out on your own). We have now started our own competition for the worst of the week although 1550 will be hard to beat…
Jet Lag appears to worsen for the 5:00 match and has impacted our results the last couple of days. Ensuring that you have eaten and slept properly (not too much or too little) is very important and affected the results on both Day 2 and Day 3 as various Open Team members succumbed to the effects…
Always follow your captain’s lead as was demonstrated by the post dinner navigation on return to the hotel…
Overall the team is playing very well (except for the 5:00 match) and driving towards a qualification spot. The schedule lightens from here with 2 matches and a bye on Tues, 2 matches on Wed, a day off on Thurs and three more matches on Fri. Five of the remaining matches are against the bottom third of our group with 2 matches remaining against contending teams.
Now for the hand of the day and a superb lead by Fergani to create an important swing against Estonia in Round 7.
With E dealer (L’Ecuyer) and the opponents vulnerable the auction proceeded:
P-1N-P-4C(hearts)-P-4H.
Kamel found the inspired lead of the H7 figuring the HK in the dummy. Declarer fell into his trap and flew K setting up 2 heart tricks and when declarer later hooked into the double SQ the defense had 4 tricks and 10 imps.
On to the second half of the week…
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