26 teams participated in the Open Teams tournament during “Riga Invites to Jūrmala” festival. After 9 Swiss rounds Latvian-Estonian-Russian team Rigainvites.lv (K.Rubins, M.Romanovska, M.Tenn and D.Prokhorov) lead the field and could pick the opponent for the semi-final match.
They could choose from team Klio (J.Alfejeva, S.Birins, M.Lebedeva and I.Khazanov), team Aris (A.Muhortov, V.Makarov, S.Vaganov and A.Tatarik) and team Finland (K.Kauko, S.Niemi, O.Parviainen and L.Utter), who grabbed last semi-final place in the last boards of elimination.
Rigainvites.lv picked Finland and it was very unlucky pick for them: Finland won the 12 board semi-final by 29:25, meanwhile Klio won the second semi-final with 46:12.
In the play-off for the 3rd place the winner was decided in the last board – team Aris overbid to the slam and went two down, giving the victory to Rigainvites.lv by 16:10. In the final Finland was better by 33:9.
The festival continues with Open pairs – 65 pairs will play 3 session event. All the details at www.rigainvites.lv.
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Kārlis Rubins