11th WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS August 16-31, 2002 • Montreal Quebec Canada

CHAMPIONSHIP LINKS

OFFICIAL (WBF) World Bridge Federation Page Click Here

DAILY BULLETINS

DAY 1 | DAY 2
DAY 3 | DAY 4
DAY 5 | DAY 6
DAY 7 | DAY 8
DAY 9 | DAY 10
DAY 11 | DAY 12
DAY 13 | DAY 14
DAY 15 | DAY 16

Fédération Française de Bridge Championship Page - find French players easily - great national coverage
Click Here

 

Italy's Dramatic Open Victory
USA Claim Women's Title
(words from the WBF site)

Italy's Fulvio Fantoni and Claudio Nunes are the new World Open Pairs Champions. As the final session reached its climax they overturned the seemingly insurmountable lead built up by Zia Mahmood and Michael Rosenberg.

Some sporting legends are famous because of what they did not achieve. Ken Rosewall couldn't win Wimbledon, Ted Williams never captured the World Series and Stirling Moss didn't become World Motor Racing Champion. Everyone hopes that Zia will eventually secure the World Championship he clearly deserves. Meanwhile another great showman, Brazil's Gabriel Chagas alongside Diego Brenner finished third.

It was Karen McCallum, she also won in 1990 with Kerri Sanborn, and Debbie Rosenberg, who is already planning her new book My Life with Michael, who captured gold in the Women's Pairs, followed by Anne-Frederique Levy and Blandine de Heredia who took silver for France with Kerri Sanborn and Irina Levitina finishing third.

Gold For Bulgaria in World Senior Pairs!
(words from the WBF site)

Bulgaria has been represented by only two players here in Montreal but that has not stopped it from taking a gold medal. Congratulations to Christo Drumev and Ivan Tanev, who won the World Senior Pairs Championship yesterday.

Lavazza takes Power Rosenblum to Italy
(words from the WBF site)

Giorgio Duboin, Norberto Bocchi, coach Massimo Ortensi, Lorenzo Lauria, Maria Teresa Lavazza, Alfredo Versace & Guido Ferraro gave Italy another World title when they defeated the pride of Indonesia, Eddie Manoppo, Henky Lasut, Frankie Karwur, Denny Sacul, Taufik Asbi & Robert Parasian Tobing, with NPC Munawar Sawiruddin. The previous 1998 Rosenblum was also won by Italy (Angelini, Sementa, Lauria, Versace, Buratti, Lanzarotti)

In addition to this latest title Italian teams now hold the Olympiad, European Open, Mixed and Junior Championships.

Poland's Cezary Balicki, Adam Zmudzinski, Michal Kwiecien & Jacek Pszczola Leandro Burgay & Carlo Mariani took the Bronze medal, defeating Sweden's Fredin.

Senior Gold for Canada/USA

Boris Baran, George Mitteleman, Diana Holt, Ed Schulte & Joe Godefrin are the new World Senior Champions, winning an exciting final against America's Chris Larsen, Joe Kivel, Gene Freed, Nels Erikson, Lew Finkel & Bernie Miller. The bronze medal went to The Netherlands Roald Ramer, Jan Willem Bomhof and Henk & Elly Schippers.

USA recapture the McConnell Cup

An American team won the inaugural McConnell Cup contest in Albuquerque in 1994 and now eight years later the trophy returns to its native soil. The all American final saw Kerri Sanborn, Jill Meyers, Randi Montin, Irina Levitina, Lynn Deas & Beth Palmer comfortably outscore Judi Radin, Shawn Quinn, Mildred Breed, Rozanne Pollack, Hjordis Eythorsdottir & Valerie Westheimer.

JACK RETAINS CHAMPIONSHIP! One IMP decides the 64-board final. Jack played WBridge5 in the final for the title of World Computer-Bridge Champion. With decisive wins in their semifinal matches Jack and WBridge5 battled for the championship, playing a 64-board final starting on Tuesday and concluding on Wednesday. GIB Withdrews, Jack, Wbridge5, MicroBridge and Q-Plus Bridge took the top four spots in the round robin. Click here for more.

Jourdain wins Personality of The Year. International Bridge Press Awards 2002. For PDF page from World Championship Bulletins, Click Here ...

First Daily Bulletin chock full of good reading!
World Championship Daily Bulletins are a great opportunity for bridge journalists from around the world to share their talents and the Day 1 bulletin of this tournament is one of the best yet (see link at left). Inside you will find write-ups on four important championships (see list below) as well as the opening address from WBF president Jose Damiani:

The Celestial Inter-City Bridge Championships (China) by Brian Senior (p2)
The Junior European Championships (p14)
The 41st PABF Championships by Mark Horton (p8)
The 1st Commonwealth Games Bridge Championship

The Events

The Mixed Pairs Championship consists of three qualifying sessions and two final sessions.

The Rosenblum Knockout Teams and the McConnell Knockout Teams will be played in three stages. In the first stage the teams will be divided into groups of 11, 12, 13 or 14 teams and will start with a Round Robin until the field is reduced to 64 and 32 teams respectively. A second stage of a straight knockout will follow, and the Championships will be concluded with the quarterfinals, semifinals and final/playoff. All teams are quaranteed of 3 complete days of play in these events.

The Open Pairs Championship and the Women Pairs Championship are matchpointed events, with 4 qualifying sessions, 4 semifinal sessions and 5 final sessions.

The Junior Triatlon will have an individual ranking and it consists of a teams competition, a pairs competition and an individual competition.

The Par Contest is a competition where 16-20 of the world's top players will be invited to participate facing computers which will be evaluating every one of their moves. There will be three sessions. The contest is certain to contribute to the enhancement of the image of the game and to its worlwide promotion.

All Junior and Senior events as well as the Mixed Pairs, and the IMP Pairs are transnational events.

The tournament will also feature an ACBL regional - with masterpoints for many winners from the ACBL and the World Bridge Federation. The regional begins Aug. 16 and concludes Sept. 2. In the regional, WBF masterpoints will be "instant" - awarded as certificates the day after they are earned.

The World Championships also feature mult-screen vugraph with commentary and a Daily Bulletin published each day of the tournament.

The last World Championships of this kind were held 1998 in Lille France. Click Here for a link to the webpages from that competition.
 

Great Tournament pix on Glen Ashton's site: Bridgematters.com

Rosenblum Vugraph in HTML format from Yvan Calame - Click Here

WBF President's Report to Congress includes: IOC matters; Changes in WBF Constitution and By-Laws; and Our daily life,our recent past,our present and our future Click Here for PDF File

The World Championship is the biggest competition staged by the World Bridge Federation. It is held every four years, in the even-numbered non-leap years. The Championships comprise tournaments for pairs and teams in various categories (open, women, seniors, mixed). This great Championship is open to bridge players from all over the world, and there are no restrictive quotas.

2002 ACBL 6th annual World Computer Bridge Championship to be held in conjunction with the WBF World Bridge Championships, August 2002 Click Here

e-bridge will produce a FREE online vugraph for the 2002 World Championships as a live feature. The bidding and play will be transmitted from the playing tables directly to the Internet. The spectators will enter a special vugraph room on e-bridge's web site and watch the match as it develops. Experts' commentary of the matches will be provided online by chat. This service will be offered for semifinals and finals of the Rosenblum (August 27-28), and McConnell Cup (August 26-27). e-bridge will transmit one of two matches that are running in parallel. The service will be also offered for the finals of Pairs event (August 29-31), e-bridge will transmit two best pairs in parallel. After the event live vugraph will be converted to off-line vugraph and available for access to all visitors to e-bridge and ACBL Online web sites. Access to both vugraphs (live and offline) will be free to all.

HISTORY

The World Bridge Championships came into being in 1962, under the name of World Pair Olympiad which comprised the World Open Pairs Championship, the World Women Pairs Championships, as well as the World Mixed Teams Championship. Pierre Jais and Roger TrĒzel of France were the first Open Pairs champions, while in the Women event, Rixi Markus and Fritzi Gordon from Great Britain prevailed. The second event, held in 1966 in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, had a new competition added to the programme: the World Mixed Pairs Championship. The same programme applied to the third event, organized in 1970 in Stockholm, and the fourth one held in Las Palmas, Canary Islands, Spain, in 1974. An important change took place in the 1978 Championships, held in New Orleans, which saw the inauguration of the World Knockout Teams for the Rosenblum Cup, named in honour of the former WBF president who had died five months earlier. First holders of the Cup were Poland. A similar competition for women, the McConnell Trophy, was added in 1994 and won by the United States.