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A familiar face entered Wednesday morning the Witte Huis. The White House Juniors is the event every junior wants to win. Therefore Thomas Bessis went for a training session of two weeks to Reno where he participated in the Vanderbilt Cup. And with great success, first eliminating the USA team (Meckstroth-Rodwell, Hamman-Zia and Nickell-Katz) that won the Bermuda Bowl last autumn and fierce going on to win this prestigious cup. So in a hurry he flew to Amsterdam to join his teammates in the White House. As Thomas himself stated, after missing on the nose (5th in the round robin) the semifinal in het Witte Huis in two previous years, he really did want to reach the knock-out this time (and even Thomas is reaching the retirement as a junior, so he has to be quick). And with the French team that won the European Junior Championships in Brasov(2009) qualification for the semi-final and even more should be possible.  
With Israel going on strong the rest of the field closed together. The Netherlands Red had two bad results in rounds 15&16 losing 5-25 to Germany and the second French team. Meanwhile the USA climbed with three times 25 and a 23 to one vip behind the Dutch who held the fourth place.

 

1 Israel                 308 19,25 21 14 21 8 24 19 
2 Australia             293 18,31 14 20 22 16 18 21 
3 France 1             293 18,31 14 20 25 18 24 25 
4 Netherlands Red  286 17,88 22 12 25 19 25 25 
5 USA                    285 17,81 16 12 11 18 13 16 
6 Poland                276 17,25 9 22 17 12 15 22 
7 Italy                   273 17,06 14 16 10 13 15 22 
8 Netherlands Blue 267 16,69 8 25 24 25 14 17 
9 France 2             265 16,56 16 17 13 14 17 23 
10 Germany Yellow 259 16,19 8 12 16 16 12 8 
11 WorldTeam        255 15,94 22 18 13 17 16 14 
12 Norway             253 15,81  
   

The top half of the table after 16 of 23 sessions. Still seven to go so only Israel seems somewhat sure.
The nice thing of these long round robins is that you can even afford three or more heavy loses without getting out of contention. So from now on we take it one session at a time and see what happens. Of course with an eye on the technique of the game but above all with the focus on the results. So USA versus Israel will be a ‘fourpoint’ match, the expression coming from the time when you scored two points for a victory in soccer (I wonder if it now is a sixpoint match, or in bridge a 25 point match?)