Day 2 and 3 of Team Funbridge at the 8th World Youth Transnational Championships! (updated 21/07/24)

New challenge for Team Funbridge after their first tournaments of the year in Alpe d’Huez and the Marit Sveaas tournament in Bodø, Norway. Follow their new adventures in Poland on this page which will be regularly updated!

Team Funbridge at the 8th World Youth Transnational Championships!

Day 1 – Summary by Andrea Nilsson (Team Funbridge Pink)

Day 1 – Summary by Finn Kolesnik (Team Funbridge Blue)

Day 2 – Summary by Sofie Græsholt Sjødal (Team Funbridge Pink)

Day 2 – Summary by Andrea Abragj (Team Funbridge Blue)

Day 3 – Summary by Léo Rombaut (Team Funbridge Blue)

Team Funbridge at the 8th World Youth Transnational Championships!

Team Funbridge will be competing there. It will be their third trip in 2024 after Alpe d’Huez and Bodø.

Who will star for Team Funbridge?

The Championships will consist of two different competitions over that period: a teams championship (4 to 8 players) from Saturday 13 to Monday 15 July and a pairs championship (2 players) from Tuesday 16 to Thursday 18 July. Of course, as in every youth event, there will be 5 separate series: U16, U21, U26 (Open), U26 (Women) and U31.

Team Funbridge will be represented by:

• Christian Lahrmann (Denmark) with Nicolai Heiberg-Evenstad (Norway) – U26 Pairs
• Margaux Kurek-Beaulieu (France) with Wilhelmine Schlumberger (France) – U26 Pairs (Women)
• Margaux Kurek-Beaulieu (France) with Constance Belloy (France), Elise Nugues (France), Wilhelmine Schlumberger (France) and Wilfried Libbrecht (France) as captain – U26 Teams (Women)
• And many others…

Day 1 – Summary by Andrea Nilsson (Team Funbridge Pink)

Today was the first day of the Transnational World Championships. Me and my team, Klara, Sofie and Olivia are playing in the U26 category as Team Funbridge Pink. There are two days of qualification with five sets each day and then either BAM or round robin for the top four teams.

For the first match of the day we played France and it did not go as we had hoped. We had a quite unlucky board where the opponents managed to find the right opening bid.

South opened 1♣ even though they played 5542 and not 1♦ unbalanced. At the other tables, the majority opened 1♦, which made 3NT a lot easier to play for EW since Declarer could then expect Diamonds not to break even and therefore play for the clubs to break and the diamond finesse to work instead.

In the game against our Swedish friends, we were luckier since we got the cards for a grand slam on our side.

Both Klara and I had some tough decisions on this board. Some players in the competition chose to bid 3♥ with Klara’s hand, but Klara didn’t because of the bad suit quality and only 10HCP. After asking for Aces, Klara was more than happy to put me in 7♠ after I showed 4 aces with the Queen of Trumps and King of Hearts for +2210. She wasn’t quite sure though if we had a third control in Hearts, but then we just needed some luck with a 2-2 break.

After a long day of play we went to meet up with our Swedish friends for a nice dinner at their hotel. With a lot of food and laughs, we ended the dinner early to take a Uber home to our apartment.

Message from Sofie (Norway):

“Here is a short summary of the European Championships: The Norwegian Under-26 women’s team started very well with a good first day and were in the lead by a good amount. Unfortunately, the third day was not good for us and we didn’t manage to pick up enough on the last day, so we ended in 6th place (8 teams qualified for the World Championships: Venice Cup in August 2025 in Macao).”

Day 1 – Summary by Finn Kolesnik (Team Funbridge Blue)

Today was a great start for the tournament. We made the last-minute addition of Jakub Patreuha, a superstar Polish player and we were ready to start strong. In the first round, we had a very good start to lead 36-7 IMPs before the last board. I was dealt ♠86 ♥A97 ♦QT987 ♣T52. The auction goes 1♣ 1NT 2♥ to me. My normal-looking options are trying to sign off in 3♦ or pass and try to defend with my A97 of Hearts. A third option that I largely considered is bidding 3NT. I only had 6 points, but this contract looked like one we could expect to play well. Alas, I tried to sign off in Diamonds and I bid 2NT. Pass – 3♦ and 3♥ on my right. I passed and we defended there. I led my doubleton spade, my partner won and returned a trump, they played the Jack and I ducked (which was a mistake) and now they played a second heart, which I won with my Ace (also a mistake) to smash my partner’s King. Alas, we played 3 more spades and my 9 was promoted to beat the contract, but we only beat it by 1 trick and lost 8 IMPs against 3NT.

Then we played against Tim and Oscar, a Dutch pair who is one of the strongest in the event, so we needed to be tough. On the second board, my partner Jakub held ♠J7 ♥T82 ♦AKQJ63 ♣J2. It went pass pass to him and we were white vs red. He made a nice bid of 1NT to steal the auction or make a light game and I raised him to 3. The lead was the ♥K and he could see that he was in trouble. He played a diamond to the Jack to make it look like a finesse and played a club to the King (guessing clubs and playing them like he needs them to lie mostly). Now he played a heart and the defence had to take the club tricks now to beat him, which is very tricky. They continued with a heart and another one, so 3NT scored up.

After four wins and one big loss, we ended the day in 3rd place with some work to do to stay in a qualifying position for the final.

Rankings before the last match; it is very very close:

Team Funbridge Blue qualifies for the final!

Day 2 – Summary by Sofie Græsholt Sjødal (Team Funbridge Pink)

Team Pink needed a very good second day of the qualifying to be in the top four because they had changed the format. Instead of quarterfinals, only the top four qualified and then played a Round Robin. Since we didn’t know this before we arrived, our goal was to be in the top 8. The second day started with some loss, so we were no longer able to qualify, but we still wanted to have some goals, and thus aimed at finishing in the top 8 and also above average. With a good last match, we reached both our goals and are happy with the result. Unfortunately, even if we reached our goals, we are only playing BAM tomorrow, but we will be cheering for Team Blue in the final.

Klara had a nice play in 6NT:

The lead was the Jack of Diamonds, which was won by the King in dummy. Then Klara played AK of Clubs and saw the bad break, realising that the contract was a bit tougher than expected, but the good news was that 7C was not making. With the clubs 4-1, there were several possibilities for squeezes and maybe endplays. So, Klara played another high club, on which North pitched a heart. She therefore assumed that the Hearts broke 5-2 because we played against good opponents. Now she needed to get the tempo, so she played another club, giving away a trick, and the opponent played another diamond to the Ace. Now she cashed all her tricks and North was squeezed in the red suits. Had it been South who had four diamonds, he would be squeezed in Spades and Diamonds.

Day 2 – Summary by Andrea Abragj (Team Funbridge Blue)

Today was the second day of the qualifiers. These short qualifications always cause some good teams to get knocked out early and our goal was not to be one of them. With a big win against Australia in the second-to-last match, we only needed to draw against Japan in the last. That worked out and we will be playing the finals tomorrow.

Day 3 – Summary by Léo Rombaut (Team Funbridge Blue)

Hello, everyone! Léo here, number 10 on Team Funbridge.

If you are following the Funbridge blog, you might know that I have just played 10 days of European Open Championships and 1 week of European Youth Championships one after the other, representing France. We finished in a very promising 8th place in the Open, which qualified us for the next World Championships; same in the Youth event. That was somewhat below our expectations but also qualified us for the Worlds next year.

I was lucky enough to play the Transnational World Championships on Team Funbridge; this took place over 3 days at the same venue as the European Youth Championships, in Wroclaw, Poland.

Team Funbridge Blue, comprising Finn, Christian, Nico, Andreas and me, qualified brilliantly for the final on the last day by finishing 4th. The format of the final would be very simple: it would consist of a mini-round robin with the 4 qualified teams and each team would meet each other team in a 16-deal match. The 4 teams that qualified for the final were the French, the Dutch, the Greeks and Team Funbridge.

We started off this final with a match which felt fratricidal to me. We were facing those who had been my teammates 3 days earlier: the French! This team was made up of Maxence Fragola, Nao Tabata, Luc Bellicaud and Romaric Guth. This first match started off rather well with a nice deal where our teammates’ bidding led them to a 3NT contract, for 9 tricks and bringing in 10 IMPs.

Another deal brought in 13 more IMPs. Andreas and I had played in a very good slam with not a lot of strength and in a not-very-scientific auction, having been pre-empted by the opponents. Before seeing the dummy, Andreas’ hand, I was not too serene; but I breathed a big sigh of relief immediately upon seeing it as our hands fit together perfectly and all I had left to do was to ruff 2 spades.

Unfortunately, we finished this match very badly by losing 9 and 11 IMPs on 2 of the last 3 deals. We won this match anyway but only slightly, by 2 IMPs (43-41).

Andreas and I were sitting out for the second match, against the Dutch team. The deals were very swingy, as you can see on Nicolai and Christian’s table: they played 7 out of 16 deals in doubled contracts. Nothing worked in our favour; but luckily, a nice win on the last deal won us 13 IMPs and meant we could limit the damage this time to only lose by 7 IMPs (36-43). Knowing that the 2 matches we hadn’t played had also been very close, that left us in great suspense before the final match: any of the 4 teams could win or, equally, come 4th!

We were very motivated before this final match and hoped to turn the situation around. I love these final sets, with a bit of stress and high stakes! Andreas had a migraine and therefore preferred not to play. I would therefore play this set with Jakub, our last-minute local recruit for this competition. He played very well, brought a good vibe and, especially, could advise us on the best places in Wroclaw. We got up to speed on the main conventions we would be playing and went on the attack!

However, this match did not go at all as expected. The Greeks were inspired and played very, very well throughout the match, which was not the case for us. Honestly, it would have been almost impossible to win this match. In the end, we had lost 48-5. But I can still show you a nice deal where we bid 7S, which was reproduced in the other room.

Summary of the results…

With that heavy defeat in the 3rd match, we therefore finished 4th; a very disappointing result knowing the day before that the worst possible result would be 4th place. But today, the step was too high. It should be acknowledged that the Greeks played very well and deserved their title. I am also happy for my French friends, who collected the bronze medal. And, of course, I thank Funbridge and my super teammates Christian, Nicolai, Andreas, Finn and Jakub for the 3 days of competing in a very nice atmosphere where we were not far off a nice result. I am sure that we’ll come back stronger next time!

As for me, I am going back to Paris for 2 days, to rest before going to play the American Nationals in Toronto, Canada. I also hope that my friends on Team Funbridge win a medal in the World Pairs Championships that are taking place over 3 days, also in Wroclaw. Olivia and Sofie will be playing, while Christian and Nicolai will be out for revenge (I would bet a pretty penny on them for a medal).

Thank you to everyone for following us and I’ll be back soon!

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