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World Championship prediction thread


Gerben42

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Here is my predictions:

 

BERMUDA BOWL.

  • Winners: Italy
  • Runners up: China
  • Losing semifinalists: USA2, Sweden
  • Losing quarter-finalists: USA1, Norway, Poland, Netherlands

VENICE CUP.

  • Winners: USA1.
  • Runners up: Netherlands.
  • Losing semifinalists: China, France
  • Losing quarter-finalists: England, Germany, USA2, Egypt

SENIORS BOWL.

  • Winners: USA2.
  • Runners up: Poland
  • Losing semifinalists: Australia, Brasil
  • Losing quarter-finalists: Canada, USA1, Germany, France

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Putting my picks up here is a bit like having my 5 year-old handicap the Kentucky Derby... But, it'll give me something to cheer for in September - so why the heck not.

 

Bermuda Bowl

============

QF: Sweden, USA1, China, Egypt

SF: Norway, Poland

RU: Italy

Win: USA2*

 

 

Venice Cup

============

QF: USA2, Canada, France, England

SF: USA1, Netherlands

RU: China

Win: Germany

 

Senior Bowl

============

QF: USA1, Sweden, Poland, Italy

SF: Canada, Brazil

RU: Australia

Win: USA2

 

- Dluxe

*Everyone else picked Italy, therefore this isn't a total "Homer call"

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Bermuda Bowl

Quarterfinal: USA1, Ireland, China, Egypt

Semifinal: USA2, Italy

Runner-up: Netherlands

Winners: Norway

 

Venice Cup

Quarterfinal: Denmark, Canada, England, USA2

Semifinal: Netherlands, USA1

Runner-up: Germany

Winners: France

 

Seniors Bowl

Quarterfinal: Canada, Denmark, France, Sweden

Semifinal: USA2, Italy

Runner-up: Brazil

Winners: USA1

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I am surprised to see that most of you seem to fancy USA1 over USA2. Maybe there is something magical about *1*. It's a fact that USA1 qualified first, and USA2 had to go through a "repechage", but I rate USA2 a little higher.

 

Don't get me wrong; I have a lot of respect for Jacobs, Katz, Rosenberg, Zia, Garner and H. Weinstein (USA1), but I also think that Nickell, Freeman, Hamman, Soloway, Meckstroth and Rodwell have the edge.

 

Roland

Given that USA2 has won or placed second in the Bermuda Bowl in 1995, 1997, 2000, 2003, and 2005 (and for the most part, the Bermuda Bowl is an every other year event), combined with their Spingold wins in 1998, 1999, 2004, and 2006 and the wins in 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996 with Bobby Wolff on the team instead of Soloway (I think), USA2 is always my favorite until another team proves they can beat them consistently. Right now, I just don't forsee that happening.

 

Edit: USA2 is the favored US team. I think its a tossup between USA2 and Italy as to the eventual winners.

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  • 3 weeks later...
The bookies are doing the Bermuda Bowl.

 

Check out www.betfair.com for the market odds for final 8 and winner.

Rumor has it they are using this prediction thread to assist in calculating their odds. :P

 

 

 

(Not really, I just couldn't resist.)

It's not so far fetched. The bookie probably doesn't have a regular staff that keeps track of bridge (the way they might with college football or the NFL). The bookie probably consulted some friend of a friend bridge player who referred him to someone else, sort of thing. I doubt there will be significant betting action on the BB. But, it is also probably good for the site to have lines on a wide variety of events to keep the interest of their bettors. If a handful of bettors use this site for their college football betting instead of another just because this site offers a line on a bridge event, they'll likely more than make up any potential losses due to lines not being quite as good as they might have been.

 

Or, maybe I'm wrong and there is significant betting on the BB?

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  • 2 weeks later...
Are all of the predictors aware that usa2 has lost paul soloway who has been replaced by hemant lall?

I'd guess they are.

Surely this weakens the team - no insult to Hemant Lall intended, he's obviously a strong player, but not in the same league as Soloway.

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Are all of the predictors aware that usa2 has lost paul soloway who has been replaced by hemant lall?

I'd guess they are.

Surely this weakens the team - no insult to Hemant Lall intended, he's obviously a strong player, but not in the same league as Soloway.

As I mentioned in my blog, I think this will encourage USA2 to play Italy as soon as possible in the KO stages, given the opportunity. This would give them the best chance of winning the event, which I'm sure is their only thought.

 

Paul

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I think you are wrong Paul, but I'm not 100% sure about this. It's an interesting idea but they might not have any choice in the matter.

 

If I were USA2 I would try to maximize my chances of getting to the finals, and then try to win those.

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Surely this weakens the team - no insult to Hemant Lall intended, he's obviously a strong player, but not in the same league as Soloway.

As I mentioned in my blog, I think this will encourage USA2 to play Italy as soon as possible in the KO stages, given the opportunity. This would give them the best chance of winning the event, which I'm sure is their only thought.

Hmm, I disagree. Your logic (they want to play a match as short as possible against Italy) only makes sense if they believe they are the worse team. They will have the choice only if they did considerably better than Italy in the round robin. Do you really think they would believe they are inferior in that case?

(In fact I doubt this team would ever believe being inferior.)

 

I would rather guess they will prefer to play Italy as late as possible so that Hemmant have more time to get in tune.

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In my opinion it is always better to wait till the last possible moment to play your main competitors for the simple reason that they may get eliminated. Yes you can create artificial scenarios where on a scale of 1-100 team A is a 100, team B is a 95 and teams C and D are 1's, and thus C or D will never beat A and B should try to randomize it by playing a shorter match vs A. This is not the case in the bermuda bowl though where even a team like say, argentina, would have a non zero chance of beating the italians.

 

Interestingly I had this same debate in with Joe in the junior world championships where Poland was generally considered better than us and we were generally considered better than everyone else. Joe thought that if we won the round robin maybe we should pick poland as our opponents since the match would be shorter. I made the point above but of course there were other factors too (poland only played 2 pairs so they were more apt to be tired towards the end and also carryover reasons).

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In my opinion it is always better to wait till the last possible moment to play your main competitors for the simple reason that they may get eliminated. Yes you can create artificial scenarios where on a scale of 1-100 team A is a 100, team B is a 95 and teams C and D are 1's, and thus C or D will never beat A and B should try to randomize it by playing a shorter match vs A. This is not the case in the bermuda bowl though where even a team like say, argentina, would have a non zero chance of beating the italians.

 

Interestingly I had this same debate in with Joe in the junior world championships where Poland was generally considered better than us and we were generally considered better than everyone else. Joe thought that if we won the round robin maybe we should pick poland as our opponents since the match would be shorter. I made the point above but of course there were other factors too (poland only played 2 pairs so they were more apt to be tired towards the end and also carryover reasons).

In 2005 the Polish Juniors were very tired and it may well have cost them that they effectively played as a four. The won the round-robin well and then only narrowly lost the final in an eight-board playoff after they were tied with USA1 after regulation play.

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In my opinion it is always better to wait till the last possible moment to play your main competitors for the simple reason that they may get eliminated. Yes you can create artificial scenarios where on a scale of 1-100 team A is a 100, team B is a 95 and teams C and D are 1's, and thus C or D will never beat A and B should try to randomize it by playing a shorter match vs A. This is not the case in the bermuda bowl though where even a team like say, argentina, would have a non zero chance of beating the italians.

 

Interestingly I had this same debate in with Joe in the junior world championships where Poland was generally considered better than us and we were generally considered better than everyone else. Joe thought that if we won the round robin maybe we should pick poland as our opponents since the match would be shorter. I made the point above but of course there were other factors too (poland only played 2 pairs so they were more apt to be tired towards the end and also carryover reasons).

In 2005 the Polish Juniors were very tired and it may well have cost them that they effectively played as a four. The won the round-robin well and then only narrowly lost the final in an eight-board playoff after they were tied with USA1 after regulation play.

The same situation happened the next year too in thailand except this time we won the round robin (and did not pick poland). In fact we thought we might be the favorites in australia (biased of course) but in thailand we clearly were not (they had the same team, we lost our best pair from australia). Anyways sorry for the hijak just thought cardsharps comment was interesting.

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Pakistan also won all 3 matches and are in 5th overall which is a pretty good first day. Not so good for Australia who are 2nd to last and face another tough day tomorrow.

 

USA 1 had a fantastic day scoring 74, which would be a fine score against anyone but for it to include 24 off USA 2, makes it all the better.

 

Netherlands are the only team without a VP win (they beat Australia by 1 IMP for 15-15), but are tied for 11th.

 

Unsurprisingly, given the day they had, the USA 1 pairs rank 1st, 2nd, and 10th in the butler ranking of individual pairs.

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Okay I've received 17 entries B)

 

15 of 17 predict Italy wins the Bowl, one USA 2 homer call and one hopeful Norwegian :) who kindly put Netherlands in 2nd, rerun of the 1993 final.

 

Finalists after Italy:

 

7x USA 2

3x USA 1

2x Netherlands

2x China

1x Poland

 

VC Won:

 

4x France

3x USA 1

2x Netherlands

2x Germany

1x China

1x England

 

SB Won:

 

6x USA 2

3x USA 1

3x Poland

1x Indonesia (me)

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