The 2006 World Junior Team Championships


A really bad picture of our team that won the team trials: Jon Rice, Mike Rice, Myself and Noble Shore

In November, 2005, our team shown above won the Junior Team Trials and won a free trip to Bangkok, Thailand. We added John Barth and Mike Develin, both from California, and our NPC, Mike Cappeletti, Jr. The trip was a great experience, although I was disappointed in how I played. I didn't take pictures, but you can find some good pictures of the trip taken by Canadian friends Dan and Susie Korbel here.

Overall, as a team we placed better than was probably expected of us, but not as well as we expected of ourselves. We finished overall 9th out of the 18 teams that went, while the other team from the USA won the event. You can find full results from the Championships at the offical website. Below I have written up a detailed report of the hands Noble and I played as seen at our table, both so that I have a record of it, and because many of the hands are interesting and instructive.

Match 1 - USA II vs. Canada - The first round of the tournament we met up with the Canadian team, eh. The first set of boards was by far the wildest in the entire tournament, as there were many slam hands and distributional freaks (I was 7-5 twice in the first 4 boards).

Match 4 - USA II vs. Brazil - Apparently Polish club is played by Brazilian Juniors... I didn't know this before. Anyway, this match was a bit disappointing, and not much went our way. At least we didn't get blitzed (we lost 21-9). We didn't really get into a good rhythm at the beginning of this tournament, and it showed here. Good decisions we made didn't matter, and bad or reasonable decisions tended to go against us.

Match 7 USA II vs. USA I - We actually had an ok set against these guys (we thought it was better than it was when we finished) and were really hoping that we'd won. Justin Lall seemed a little tilted by the end of the match, which is usually a good sign. Unfortunately, Grue and Kranyak were nearly perfect at the other table, and put our teammates in some tough positions which they didn't get right. We ended up losing definitively.

Match 8 USA II vs. Hungary - This was one of the most disappointing matches from our perspective because we didn't do anything wrong and still only tied the match. Our teammates had 4 big swings go against them at their table in the span of 5 boards, all of which seemed avoidable. They did pick up some good positive swings along the way, too, but we felt that this was one of the matches where we could have picked up some of the VPs we would have needed to move up in the standings.

Match 9 USA II vs. France - This was one of our best matches, beating the strong French team solidly. This made three solid matches for us that day, where we made very few errors. Our teammates had a good set too, and that usually results in a win.

Match 11 USA II vs. Japan - This was the day from hell for me. I just wasn't entirely there mentally, I think I was a little bit sick, because I slept over 12 hours that night. We ended up winning both matches we played this day, but both could have been bigger wins, and every victory point is crucial when you have hopes of qualifying. This match our teammates covered our asses a bit - it turns out our set wasn't as bad as we thought, but it could have been a whole lot better. We definitely let an opportunity to get 5 more VPs slip through our fingers.

At this point, it is unlikely I will ever provide a thorough description of the other matches - it has been too long and I doubt I remember enough of the hands.

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