Halfway through the quarter-final rounds of the Bermuda Bowl, Venice Cup and Seniors Bowl, some of the matches were shaping up as nail-biters. Others were not so close, but there were no white flags waving with 48 boards still left to play.

The closest match was in the Bermuda Bowl, where defending champion USA1 held a 12-IMP lead against Brazil. The other leaders – Italy, Sweden and USA2 – were solid but taking nothing for granted.

USA1 started out well, winning the opening set 40-9, but Brazil won the next two sets to close the gap. USA2, trailing Argentina for most of the third set, put on a burst at the end to take a 31-IMP lead.

In the Venice Cup, France – the runaway winner of the round-robin – were more than 100 IMPs ahead of Canada, while USA1 were comfortably ahead of USA2, 134-76. China and the Netherlands were relatively close at 109-87 for the Dutch, and Germany were not ready to relax with a 131-91.7 margin over England.

Round-robin winner USA1 in the Seniors Bowl will start today’s play 50 IMPs ahead of France. The other American team ended play 25 IMPs in arrears to the Netherlands. Indonesia led by 31 over Portugal, and Denmark was ahead of Israel by 42.

Play in the Transnational Open Teams begins tonight at 8 p.m.