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Linda Lewis is captain of Lewis Team, one of those that will play the Women’s Trials: the event, starting on June 6th at Marriott Renaissance Center in Detroit, will name the two teams to Venice Cup (Veldhoven, Netherlands, in October). The other players of Linda are Cathy Strauch, Suzy Burger, Beverly Gardner, Linda McGarry, Jo Ann Casen.
Lewis have fifteen Positioning Points, the points earned in the preceding national events by the single players. Here is the participants list in order of overall PPs; higher the score, strongest the team:
Dinkin 50,00: Sam Dinkin, NPC; Lynn Baker, Karen McCallum, Lynn Deas, Beth Palmer, Kerry Sanborn, Irina Levitina.
Westheimer 50,00: Valerie Westheimer, Capt; Hjordis Eythorsdottir, Mildred Breed, Shawn Quinn, Rozanne Pollack, Cheri Bjerkan.
Joel 48,04: Geeske Joel, Capt; Tobi Sokolov, Debbie Rosenberg, Janice Seamon Molson, Jill Levin, Jillian Meyers. We already talked of this team (click here)
Moss 44,74: Sylvia Moss, Capt; Judi Radin, Migry Zur Campanile, JoAnna Stansby.
Mancuso 17,99: Renee Mancuso, Capt; Sheri Winestock, Kathleen Sulgrove, Brenda Bryant, Georgiana Gates, Patricia Griffin.
Sprung 17,58: Danny Sprung NPC; JoAnn Sprung, Janet Robertson, Cinthia Balderson, Carole Miner, Sally Wheeler, Cindy Bernstein.
The Lewis Team, already said, has 15,68 seeding points: not many. They don’t look favourite, but who can say? The Team Bathurst, recent winner of Open Trials, started from tenth place (of sixteen), and that was a KO event, so even more difficult to win from a low starting place; they in fact had to meet and defeat all the strongest team of America: Mahaffey, Nickell, Wolfson, Diamond.
But the Women Trails isn’t a sheer knockout event. They will play a double round robin of eight boards in 20-0 scale; the best four will enter semifinals. The winner of the final will be USA1 in Netherlands; the defeated semifinalists will face and the winner will contend to the defeated finalist the right to be USA2. The schedule is as follows: June 6th and 7th: round robins. June 8th: semifinals (64 boards). June 9th and 10th: USA1 final and USA2 semifinal (96 boards). June 10th-11th: USA2 final, 96 boards.
In the list of Teams we wrote the players’ names according to their pair. The last seeding team, with 5,13 points, is that of Toni Elaine Bales (Capt). The pairs should be, in the duly order, Toni with Anita Torrence, Terry James, Cheryl Lynn Schneider, Lee Venora De Simone, Kay Enfield. By their System Summary Form, instead, looks as there are not only pairs but triads too:
Bales – James – De Simone
James – Schneider – Torrence
De Simone – Enfield
And the three systems are different each other. It means that James and De Simone would play two different systems, and others but Enfield would play the same system with different partners.
We’ll try to get their Convention Cards to confirm it, but it is not for now: a pair only, of another team, sent their CC to USBF: it’s requested, not required.
Such promiscuousness recalls two important cases in the past of Contract Bridge.
Early fifties. The American teams win four consecutive Bermuda Bowl with loose partnerships. The skill to play with several partners was seen as a strength, but English first, French after, and Italians later prevail by their fixed partnership with specialised systems.
Saint Vincent, 1963. The Italian Blue Team is at a critical time in his history. The partnership D’Alelio – Chiaradia is broken, and Forquet, former Chiaradia’s partner, feels much better with Garozzo, in team since two years. Captain Perroux lined up in Bermuda Bowl two triads instead of three pairs: Forquet-Garozzo-Chiaradia (playing Neapolitan Club), and D’Alelio-Belladonna-Pabis Ticci (playing Roman Club). It was a mistake: the Americans went very next to break the string of Italian victories.
Are Bales & Partners repeating mistakes of the past? Or are they going to show a new way to do better what was wrong then?
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