Transnational Mixed Teams
Mixed means that a team must always be represented at the tables in play (normally two) by "mixed" partnerships of one man and one woman. Transnational means that four to six players regardless of nationality may compose a team (including at least two men and two women, for mixed play).
Like the Seniors, the Mixed Teams was not a WMSG medal event. It is an official world championship tournament but a secondary one. This rendition was played on the last six days of the Games, concurrently with the quarterfinal, semifinal, and final knockout matches for national teams. Furthermore, members of quarterfinal-losing teams in the main events were welcome to enter new teams in the Mixed on the third of four days preliminary play.
This year 116 teams played on the first two days, 118 on the next two days. There were four belated entries assigned a tie for 15th place and evidently two dropouts. One of the drop-in was Sabine Auken of Germany with three men and one woman from Poland. Auken was the defending 2004 champion captain, from the last Olympiad, playing with new teammates. In fact Auken scored very well and climbed to second place while two more of those belated entries scored well and advanced to the knockout stage; all three won round of 16 matches.
The tournament comprised 3-1/2 days of 10-deal matches followed by 20 deals in the round of 16 matches, 24-deal quarterfinals, 32-deal semifinals, and a 48-deal final coinciding with the second day of the 96-deal finals in the main events.(# complex!)
The gold and bronze medalists were in fact uni-national teams from Taipei and China respectively, while the silver medalist called "Russia" was trans-national from Russia and Belarus.
Read more about this topic: Bridge At The 1st World Mind Sports Games
Famous quotes containing the words mixed and/or teams:
“All nature is a temple where the alive
Pillars breathe often a tremor of mixed words;
Man wanders in a forest of accords
That peer familiarly from each ogive.”
—Allen Tate (1899–1979)
“A sturdy lad from New Hampshire or Vermont who in turn tries all the professions, who teams it, farms it, peddles, keeps a school, preaches, edits a newspaper, goes to Congress, buys a township, and so forth, in successive years, and always like a cat falls on his feet, is worth a hundred of these city dolls. He walks abreast with his days and feels no shame in not “studying a profession,” for he does not postpone his life, but lives already.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)