Yesterday, the Italian and Swedish teams here were the two who had already secured qualification for the semis on the first day, and today it’s the same two teams who will go into the 48-board final. The Swedes were the more convincing of the two, blitzing Parioli in the morning to win their section and then giving away very little against a good Bulgarian side.

In fact, Plovdiv earned its qualification for the semis by a not so big margin. Having lost their match against De Lombard 18-12 in the morning, they had to score at least 10 VP to finish ahead of Heimdal Trondheim. It took them a long, long time, but they finally emerged with 12 VP from this match to go through.

Parioli had even more mixed fortunes yesterday, first losing heavily to Herkules, then taking a seemingly unassailable lead (67-9) against de Lombard in 12 boards, only to see it go down to 76-58 after 24. Though the Dutch rallied at the beginning of the final segment, the Italian experience prevailed near the end of the last 12 boards, however, as many of us would have expected. So they are the Swedes’ worthy opponents again today, this time for the Cup.

In the lower half of the field, Heimdal Trondheim and Bridge Club Haifa had the better of the exchanges against their Polish and French opponents, so they will play for the 5th prize to be won.