Jacek Kalita, Michal Nowosadzki, Rafal Jagniewski, and Wojciech Gawell are the players of the Polish Team who won the 2013 Spingold Knock-out Teams. After sixty-four boards the results was tie: 112, that is only 3,5 imps per hand. The play-off eight boards gave the victory to the Poles (22-1).
Congratulation to Grue too: Joe Grue, Leslie Amoils, Brad Moss, Thomas Bessis, Peter Bertheau, Jacob Morgan.
Grue started 9th, Bridge24 was 39th: this upset, and others happened before, call for some thoughts. Bridge is a partnership game, and nothing can be more true than this, but also it is true that a team might be stronger than the sum of its pairs’ strength. The general rule can be said as follows: when the human being make team, and when the people trust each other, the strength of the team is superior than its parts. The history doesn’t lack of examples of this, but standing in the field of games it is worthwhile to remember what was happening in chess, an individual game, in the sixties and seventies: Hungary, with good players but never world champion as individuals – Bilek, Csom, Forintos, Portish, Ribli, Sax – was withstanding, and often winning, against the giants of Soviet Union: Spassky, Tal, Petrosian, Karpov, Korchnoi, and the others.
Such considerations, again confirmed in this Spingold, and more than once, lead to a practical conclusion for bridge: the qualification to a team event, for example the trials to Bermuda Bowl, must be made by teams as it is in the USA, and not by pairs as somebody suggested in Italy.
***
Paolo Enrico Garrisi