Here I am sitting in my hotel room with a hot keyboard which will probably blow up with the effort required to understand the comings and goings at the World Seniors today.
I will start with the ladies - as they are simpler - no I do not mean the ladies are simpler, I mean the explanation of what is happening is simpler.
Group A
7 teams with 2 to qualify for semi-finals
Today they had 2 games and at 1230 nothing much exciting happened!! Canada beat Denmark, USA beat Finland and Scotland beat Ireland What did this all mean - well it meant that the Scottish ladies had guaranteed themselves at least a tie breaker against the USA, each team having 4 wins and the USA with no more games to play. If Scotland could beat Canada tonight then they would go through to the semi-final, if not they would play USA in a tie breaker.
In tonight's game they could not beat Canada and so the final standings in the group (with the Draw Shot Challenge scores) are:
1 Canada (6-0) (dsc - 21.02)
2 Scotland (4-2) (dsc - 98.54)
3 USA (4-2) (dsc - 58.34)
Canada qualify and the winner of a tie breaker tomorrow morning between USA and Scotland will qualify. For what its worth (not a lot), Scotland were ranked second in the group as they beat USA but they need to play a tie-breaker under WCF rules as teams are not meant to go out of a competition without losing a game BUT SEE LATER!!
the rest of the rankings were
4 Ireland (3-3) (dsc - 102.90)
5 Denmark (2-4) (dsc - 32.28)
6 Finland (1-5) (dsc - 102.50)
7 Russia (1-5) (dsc - 86.82)
Finland ranked above Russia as they beat them in the round robin.
Group B
7 teams with 2 to qualify for semi-finals.
Sweden had already qualified top of this section with 6 wins and they were joined today by the surprise of the ladies' competition, New Zealand who defeated Japan 10-2 to qualify ahead of Switzerland who did what they had to do by beating the Czech Republic (but it was not enough), while Italy won their first game by beating Slovakia. So final standings are quite straightforward:
1 Sweden (6-0) (dsc - 74.28)
2 New Zealand (5-1) (dsc - 72.44)
3 Switzerland (4-2) (dsc - 77.00)
4 Czech Republic (3-3) (dsc - 75.00)
5 Japan (2-4) (dsc - 102.24)
6 Italy (1-5) (dsc - 70.18)
7 Slovakia (0-6) (dsc - 125.02)
So the semi-final line up is Canada v New Zealand and Sweden v Scotland / USA
And now for the men - and we shall take the simplest group first!! But first an explanation.
There are 4 quarter finals in the men's competition so we need 8 qualifiers from 3 groups. The first two teams in each group are automatic qualifiers as is the third placed team with the best dsc score. The other two third placed teams will play a quarter-final qualifier to get the 8th team.
Group B
This group had 2 games today and so at 0900 we had Finland beating England and Ireland beating Latvia (at an extra end). These two teams therefore remained undefeated and their afternoon game would decide who finished first and second. Switzerland beat USA and Russia beat Slovakia. this meant that third place was still up for grabs but with Switzerland due to play winless Slovakia in the last game they were hot favourites to qualify in third place ahead of England who had to beat Latvia to have any hope and only if Switzerland lost.
In the end Switzerland did win to be ranked third and Latvia defeated England (with yours truly playing second in place of John Summers who had a hot lunch date). The USA also beat Russia and this meant that Latvia, England and the USA all finished on 3 wins and 4 losses and, since Latvia had beaten England who had beaten USA who had beaten Latvia, the dsc would decide the ranking. Meanwhile the table top battle went to an extra end (Ireland's second of the day remember). In the end JohnJo Kenny did not need to play his last stone to win and ensure Ireland finished top. Final positions:
1 Ireland (7-0) (dsc - 48.63)
2 Finland (6-1) (dsc - 64.02)
3 Switzerland (5-2) (dsc - 94.37)
4 England (3-4) (dsc - 29.32)
5 USA (3-4) (dsc - 32.12)
6 Latvia (3-4) (dsc - 62.02)
7 Russia (1-6) (dsc - 81.97)
8 Slovakia (0-7) (dsc - 136.02)
And just to blow England's trumpet and particular Michael Sutherland's - England had the lowest dsc of the group and Michael's consistency was excellent - his 7 last stone draw distances were as follows:18.1, 34.2, 38.6, 30.4, 55.8 (discarded), 34.3 and 20.3. As these are centimetres from the button you can see that everyone that counted was inside the 4 foot circle.
Group C
Had one game today and the three qualifiers were already decided - Australia, Norway and Sweden - it just depended on the order in which they qualified. In today's games Sweden defeated Denmark and Norway eventually broke the deadlock against Australia with a 5 in the 7th end. The other games saw wins for Germany and Austria. So all three qualifiers had 6 wins and 1 loss and the dsc would decide the order as they had beaten each other - and it worked out like this:
1 Norway (6-1) (dsc - 33.15)
2 Sweden (6-1) (dsc - 33.60)
3 Australia (6-1) (dsc - 41.88)
4 Germany (4-3) (dsc - 43.43)
5 Austria (2-5) (dsc - 43.47) (Austria beat Czech Republic in round robin game)
6 Czech Republic (2-5) (dsc - 41.57)
7 Wales (1-6) (dsc - 71.95) (Wales beat Denmark in round robin game)
8 Denmark (1-6) (dsc - 40.42)
Group A
And now you need to concentrate!!!!
There were only 7 teams in this section but we still needed to find the top 3 qualifiers. Canada and New Zealand had already qualified before tonight's games and since Canada defeated New Zealand they finished top with an unbeaten record with New Zealand second. That left third place between Italy, Japan and Scotland. Japan were not playing tonight and had finished with a 3-3 record. If Italy lost to Netherlands and Scotland beat Hungary they would also have 3-3 records and normally two tie breakers would be required to get one team from three with equal records. In the end Italy did lose and Scotland did win and so comes the change to the tie breaker rules I sort of trailered earlier.
First an apology as I got it wrong yesterday as I thought that we would have ended up with the three teams having beaten each other but in fact Italy had beaten Japan and Scotland and so they were ranked 3, while Scotland had beaten Japan and were ranked 4 with Japan ranked 5. Now normally with three teams equal on wins for one place the bottom ranked pair would play first (in this case that would have been Scotland and Japan) with the winner playing the top ranked team (in this case Italy) with the winner qualifying.
But as an experiment in the minor Championships this year the WCF are restricting tie breakers to one and so a team can exit a competition without having the chance to stay in it by winning another game. And so the unfortunate Japanese became the first team to be eliminated in such a fashion and one tie breaker for third place will take place between Italy and Scotland tomorrow. If Scotland had lost tonight then the tie breaker would have been between Italy and Japan - with one end to go Scotland were 4-3 up without the hammer against Hungary but fortunately for them they held on to win
The final rankings in this Group were therefore:
1 Canada (6-0) (dsc - 15.10)
2 New Zealand (4-2) (dsc - 20.34)
3 Italy (3-3) (dsc - 106.66)
4 Scotland (3-3) (dsc - 44.56)
5 Japan (3-3) (dsc - 15.14)
6 Netherlands (2-4) (dsc - 20.66)
7 Hungary (0-6) (dsc - 76.68)
Having now worked out the qualifiers we can rank them in the following order based on Group position and dsc:
1 Canada (1st in Group - dsc - 15.10)
2 Norway (1st in Group - dsc - 33.15)
3 Ireland (1st in Group - dsc - 48.63)
4 New Zealand (2nd in Group - dsc - 20.34)
5 Sweden (2nd in Group - dsc - 33.60)
6 Finland (2nd in Group - dsc- 64.02)
7 Australia (3rd in Group - dsc - 41.88)
8 Either Scotland if they win the tie breaker to be third in Group- dsc of 44.56 or Switzerland (dsc of 94.37) if Italy win the tie breaker
9 Either Switzerland if Scotland win the tie breaker or Italy (dsc 106.66 ) if they win the tie breaker.
The order of the last two rankings is unimportant - basically Switzerland will play the winner of the tie breaker in the quarter final qualifier to decide the last quarter final place. It would have been more complicated if Australia's dsc was higher than one or more of Switzerland,Scotland or Italy.
So tomorrow at 0900 Scotland play Italy in tie breaker and at 1400 Switzerland play the winner of the tie breaker in the Quarter Final qualifier.
Got that????
And based on the above rankings the quarter finals will be:
Game 1 Canada v Switzerland / Scotland / Italy
Game 2 Norway v Australia
Game 3 Ireland v Finland
Game 4 New Zealand v Sweden
I hope I have this right as I have not seen a draw yet but as these do not take place until 1900 tomorrow I have time to rectify the information!!
And the semi-finals on Sunday will be winner of Game 1 v winner of Game 4 and winner of Game 2 v winner of Game 3.
Right I think that is enough for tonight!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
well done John know i know
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