Thursday, October 12th, featured the first round match of group B: Mafioso vs Los Tollos. Mafioso is the Swedish representant of the League consisting of Swedish junior team members. Los Tollos also has some national team players: most of them have represented the Finnish open team and also have BBO stars. This might have suggested a hard time for the Swedish youngsters.

All 16 boards were played in one set. Andreas Jansson (vban) and Peter Berndtsson (gigapip) played for Mafioso against Los Tollos players Johan Blomqvist (jovibl) and Kari Mäkikangas (talion) at Table 1. Both pairs used a natural system at this table.

Table 2 consisted of Simon Bech (ringostar) and Erik Fryklund (peacockk) for Mafioso, Mika Salomaa (mikki) and Pekka Viitasalo (bagman) for Los Tollos. Both pairs are strong clubbers: peacock - ringostar a standardish Swedish strong club (17+) with 5cM, nebulous 1♦ and natural 2♣ and 2♦ openings denying a 4 card major. mikki - bagman open 1♣ already on 15 HCPs and 1M with 9-14 and 4 cards. Their 1st or 2nd hand pass shows 0-8 HCPs.

The juniors didn't let the stars blind themselves. Swedes won bunches of IMPs on 5 level decisions. They won 5 on board 3, 10 on board 4 and 6 on board 9. board 11 was the greatest swing:

11    ♠AT854       S  N  
South ♥AK8         1C 1NT   15+     10+ 5+M  
none  ♦KJ87        2C 2H     R      5+S
      ♣2           2S 3C    Sets S  Short C
♠96        ♠73     3S 4D            Cuebid
♥QJ3       ♥T642   4S 4NT           RKCB
♦Q9532     ♦6      5C 5D    0 or 3  Q ask
♣975       ♣QJ8643 6C 7S   SQ+CK
      ♠KQJ2
      ♥975
      ♦AT4
      ♣AKT

Dummy play came down to finding ♦Q - wrong. So it was 14 IMPs to Mafioso who played 6♠ at the other table.
♠ lead and a ♦ shift and a later ruff sunk 4♥ on board 14 for 10 IMPs to Los Tollos. That wasn't enough, however, and the Swedish juniors took a handy 19 - 11 (42 - 26) victory.