2015 World Bridge Team Championships Quiz

Answer: India

The championships were held in Chennai, India, on the southeast coast of India. Chennai was formally known as Madras.

India naturally spans the western half of one time zone and the eastern half another. Rather than split into two time zones, they compromise and are at half past an hour when most of the world is on an even hour.

Answer: Vanderbilt Cup

The Vanderbilt is the premier event of the spring North American Bridge Championships every year and is not part of the world championship.

The Bermuda Bowl was the premier event of the tournament, named after the site of the first world championship in 1950. It was an open event with no restrictions except that the teams needed to qualify.

The Venice Cup was the women's championship while the d'Orsi Trophy was the senior's championship for players 60 and older.

There is also a separate Transnational Teams event during the second half of the tournament open to anyone not qualified for the knockout rounds of the major events, including players not participating in the other events.

Answer: 22

22 teams from eight zones across the world qualified for the tournament. Each zone was allocated a number of teams based on the number of bridge players in the zone with India qualifying automatically as the host (and not counting as one of the Asia/Middle East zone's teams). The North American zone allocated two of its three entries in each event to the United States, so there were 21 different countries in each event but 22 teams.

The tournament started out with a complete round robin in each event with three matches a day for seven days. The top eight teams after the round robin qualified for the knockout stage of the tournament.

Answer: England

In the weeks leading up to the tournament, two of the top European pairs were accused of cheating by giving illegal signals to each other regarding the cards they were holding. Video taken at the European qualification tournament was used as evidence of this cheating. Although the pairs had not formally been suspended, their teammates from Monaco and Israel both withdrew from the tournament. Shortly after these accusations, a German pair admitted to ethical violations and they and their teammates also withdrew. These three countries were replaced by the next highest qualifiers.

On the eve of the tournament's start, one of the Polish pairs had their credentials withdrawn by the World Bridge Federation, ostensibly for cheating, although no reason was formally given. The remaining two pairs on the Polish team continued to play with a replacement third pair flown in from Poland a few days into the tournament. This meant that for the first four days of the tournament, Poland had to play as a four player team rather than with six which meant that those pairs didn't get any rest until the third pair showed up on day five.

In major team games, teams consist of six players with four playing at any given time and the third pair getting to rest. In order to be considered a world champion, each player must participate in at least 1/3 of the hands that their team plays.

Answer: False

The team that won the round robin got to choose which of the teams that placed fifth through eighth that they wanted to play. Then the team that finished second could choose from the remaining teams and so forth. Finally, the team that won the round robin got to choose which quarterfinal match winner that the winner of their match would play in the semifinals (this choice was made prior to the start of the quarterfinals).

The only exception was that if both teams from the US qualified for the semis, they would have to play each other there in order to avoid the possibility of an all US final.

Answer: 16

There are four possible vulnerabilities at bridge, neither side vulnerable, North-South vulnerable, East-West vulnerable, and both sides vulnerable. The dealer rotates each hand. The vulnerability rotates as well but skips one each time North is dealer. Thus after sixteen boards, all combinations of dealer and vulnerability come up.

Answer: True

Since there was a complete round robin, the team that won the round robin match between the two teams began the knockout with an advantage called a carry over. If the team that won the match also finished higher in the round robin, they started the knockout with a score of their margin of victory divided by two. If the team that won the match finished lower in the round robin, then the advantage was the amount they won by divided by three.

In both cases, there was a maximum carry over dependent on the length of the knockout match. Most of the knockout matches were 96 boards long and carried a maximum carry over of 16. However, the Bermuda Bowl final was 128 boards in length and allowed a carryover of 20.

Answer: 98

This event was open to all players except those who qualified for the knockout rounds of the major events. Teams could be composed of players from multiple countries. Play lasted for seven days and consisted of five Swiss team matches each day for three days at which point the top sixteen teams qualified to play in the knockout stage.

Based on the number of Indian entries, this was a popular event for local players as it offered an opportunity to play in a world championship without having to leave the country. However, only one of the teams from India made it into the top sixteen and they lost in the quarterfinals.

The Transnational Teams were won by four of the members of the Monaco team that had withdrawn from the Bermuda Bowl along with players from France and Poland.

Answer: France

France beat USA2 in the finals 179.7 to 171 in a very close match. In the third place match, England defeated the Netherlands. It was France's third win in the Venice Cup having also won in 2005 and 2011.

In the D'Orsi Senior Bowl, USA1 defeated Sweden 263 to 126.3 with Poland grabbing third place over USA2. It was the sixth seniors win for the USA in the eighth edition of this event, although the win in 2013 was only awarded after one of the pairs on the team they lost to was found guilty of cheating.

Answer: Poland

In a finals match that was back and forth, Poland beat Sweden 308.5 to 293 to win their first Bermuda Bowl. After six of eight segments, Poland led by 47.5. Sweden had a great seventh segment to take the lead by 16.5 only to see Poland come back in the final segment to win. Had Sweden won it would have been their first Bermuda Bowl win.

Sweden was the team that replaced Israel who withdrew when one of the pairs that helped them qualify was accused of cheating, even though that pair was not planning on participating in the Bermuda Bowl. This is somewhat ironic since Poland was the team that was forced to substitute a pair when one of their pairs had their credentials withdrawn by the World Bridge Federation the day before the Bermuda Bowl started. Although the WBF did not give a specific reason for this, the belief is that it was for cheating as well.

USA2 beat England in the third place match 252.3 to 243.