USA-2 established a slender lead of 10 imps over Italy at the end of the third segment in the Blue Riband of world bridge, the Bermuda Bowl in the 39th World championship being played in Sao Paulo.
USA, which has won 17 times and Italy, 14 times are battling it out again in the finals. USA-2 began strongly by taking a lead of 36 imps in the very first segment, but was blitzkrieged by the Italians in the second segment 57-1.
The Americans recovered, and at the end of third segment had established a slender lead of 10 imps, 102.33-93. Earlier, both USA-2 and Italy had trounced their opponents, China and Bulgaria respectively, by over 100 imps in each of the semifinals.
Women’s teams from USA have won the Venice Cup 10 out of the 16 times the event has been played. This time around, an inspired Chinese team is ahead of the US at the half way stage, 121-78.
Unlucky Texan Aces
Internationally, the best performing Indian team in the recent past, Texan Aces (Gopal Venkatesh, J.M. Shah, S. Sunderram, P. Sridhar, B. Prabhakar and Rajeswar Tewari) lost to Zimmerman (7-23), the front runner and the favourite to win the title, and failed to gain a QF berth by just one victory point.
In the Zimmerman team were Geir Helgemo and Tor Helness (the anchor pair of the 2007 Bermuda Bowl winners, Norway) and the Polish World Grand Masters, Cezary Balicki and Adam Zmudsinki.
