World Mind Sports Games Open Division After 6 Rounds

In Group D the USA slipped to second place in Round 6.  First they lost to Turkey in a tight match 39-31 in round 4.  They returned to form smacking England 46-17 into the next round.  But then they tied Reunion, a team at the bottom of the pack.  It just goes to show that any team can win these relatively short matches on a given day.  Germany efficiently whipped Serbid 45 -6 to move into the top spot

This division has a lot of teams bunched together in the fight for the fourth qualifying spot.  The USA remains in first place.

1.  GERMANY 128

2 USA 121

3 TURKEY 119

4 INDONESIA  111

5 ENGLAND 99

Group A could not be closer as three teams are tied for 3rd, 4th,5th.

Most of the boards were fairly flat in Round 4 but Canada was still able to thrash China McCau 43imps to 6imps to wint 24 victory points. 

Perhaps the biggest surprise this round in Group A was Albania defeated the mighty Italians 33imps-26imps to take 16 VP-14VP.   Albania is the last place team in this division and had only managed 6 VP to this point. 

In Round 5 Canada tied Romania while Italy showed some spirit coming back to defeat thrash Demark 52-5 and get all the voctory points. 

In round 6 Canada had their first disappointing resut getting blitzed by Portugal while Italy had a near blitz against Ireladn to take the top spot in the division.  Estonia blitzed Finland to take over second place. 

The standings after round 6 were:

1 ITALY 122

2 ESTONIA 112

3 CANADA  107

3 DENMARK 107

3 ROMANIA 107

In Group B the surprising leader is Israel.   You can see from the high scores at the top of the standings that this division has more than its share of weak teams.  in the third round China lost to French Polynesia another tail ender which must have been a big disappointment to the home crowd.  In round 5 China got back some momentum blitzing San Marino.  In round 6 all the leaders had convincing win with Israel getting another blitz against China Hong Kong.  But the Russians expected to be a strong contender are not far behind tied with Portugal for 6/7.

1 ISRAEL 126

2 NETHERLANDS 121

3 INDIA 120

4 CHINA  113

5 HUNGARY  107

In Group C there are some surprises near the top of the leaderboard.  

The top two teams in group C are no surprise with Norway and Poland leading the way.  Guadeloupe is probably the biggest surprise just below a qualifying sport at 5/6.

1 NORWAY 128

2 POLAND 124

3 SPAIN 119

4 BULGARIA  105

5 CHINESE TAIPEI 102

5.GUADELOUPE 102

For all they results go to the World Bridge Federation website.

http://www.worldbridge.org/tourn/Beijing.08/ResultsWMSG.htm