Latvia 1 (Alfejeva, Birins, Lorencs, Neimanis, Romanovska and Rubins) with 74,89 VP leads EBL Small Federation Games in Jurmala, Latvia. Estonia (Karpov, Levenko, Maripuu and Sester) are 2nd with 69,32 VP and Luxembourg (Banchereau, Dolla, Palazo and van Cuyk) are 3rd with 65,32 VP.
On the 4th Round team Latvia 1 met Czech Republic (Botur, Lauer, Macura and Spalovsky) – winners of the last year Small Federation Games. On the low scoring match Latvia was a little bit better, winning with 12,61:7,39 (18:10 in IMPs). Board No 14 and practical bidding of Martins Lorencs helped Latvians to win this match:
Martins, holding ♠KQ1096; ♥-; ♦AK74; ♣KQ74 was on the second seat and heard his RHO Milan Macura open 1♥. He chose to bid 1♠ and was prepared to double or bid more later. After 3♥ (pre-emptive) by LHO Michael Botur, Martin’s partner Maija Romanovska bid 4♠ and RHO bid 5♥. Now Martins made practical bid of 6♠, because he had lot of controls, good distribution, void in opponent suit and partner bidding freely 4♠, when they have agreed to have light overcalls on the first level. Maija’s king of hearts was useless, but other cards were nice and Martins didn’t have problems to make 12 tricks and 11 IMPs to Latvia, when Czech players at the other table stopped in 4♠. Full board:
The play will continue on Thursday with 4 more rounds and will end on Friday evening.
All the details at www.esfg2014.org
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Karlis Rubins