Preneseno iz stranog tiska

subota, 09.07.2005.

Skinuto sa rec.games.bridge: Mail od strane Migry Zur Campanile, člana izraelskog tima koji je igrao protiv tima Lavazza kada se desila afera sa parom Lanzarotti - Buratti.

This was the 3rd board of the match, the 1st 2 were quite flat. In the 6D contract, lanzarotti leaned to look into Bareket's cards and put 3 fingers on his left arm, tapping them. After the lead of the A of H, Roll asked 1 question only, and this certainly doesn't mean he doesn't have the QD singleton or doubleton as in that case he would be looking for a 2nd trick somewhere anyway, and played a club.

Lanzarotti repeated for the 2nd time the 3 fingers tapping. At this point Buratti put HIS head on the table as he had to think about the very difficult percentage play in diamonds (or maybe he was recalculating the diamonds splits in tenerife) and dummy made the 3 fingers sign AGAIN. Now the JD was played, Bareket played low smoothly and declarer ran the J.

At this point Bareket told the TD what happened. We didn't ask for an appeal or for the result to be changed. That was what the TD did when he reported the case to his superiors. At the end of the match me and Michael Barel went to Bocchi and told him the story, he laughed and said that probably Buratti saw Roll's cards. At this point the AC was convened and Bareket, Roll and the captain went in. Buratti Lanzarotti and Mr Ortensi were there and Antonio Riccardi the chief TD who was translating the Italian.

Except from reporting what he saw and saying that he was in complete shock after this hand, the only thing that bareket said was that he travelled a long way from Israel, left home a wife and 2 small kids in orer to be able to play against some of the great players. But if this is what he sees he will think better before coming next time.

The things that BL said were stupid, the way they behaved in there smelled guilty, to come up in your defense with "diamonds do not split, my pd did look but he doesn't see red honors with his left eye and our captain asked for swings, the great Lavazza team playing against "the giants" from Tel Aviv - Migry, Jacco, Bareket and Roll who never won a single national event in Israel is like asking the LA Lakers to play swingy against Matthew's team.

Mr Ortensi, who for the record came to us and APOLOGIZED afterwards said in their defense that there was not a single Italian pair cheating in the last 30 years, at which Bill Pencharz replied by asking how come BL ended up playing for Spain :)

Another member of the Lavazza team, Ferraro, came to us and said that they commited suicide and they didn't cheat up to that point in this specific event but because they were having a bad tournament, they probably decided to put the "overdrive" on, whatever that means.

As for us gaining out of it, we hardly thought that this will be the outcome.Bareket only wanted not to feel as humiliated as he felt at the table, and by the way he had no idea who he was playing against as we barely had time to find our places before starting to play. Even if he knew it was the Lavazza team he had no idea about the history of BL.

And i am quite positive that if this wd have been an isolate incident or if BL could come up with a better explanation, like the one they managed to find now, nothing would have come out of it. The fact that when we came back from dinner, we didn't even wait for the results of the appeal, everybody in the lobby started to cheer and suddenly Bareket was the hero of the day, being congratulated by EVERYBODY (including Dano De Falco, Fantoni and Versace) should mean that from some unknown reasons, verybody seemed to be ecstatic with the decision. people were going to the members of the AC, shaking their hands for what they felt was a brave and right decision (albeit a bit too late in many people's opinion).

And this completes a very accurate description of everything that happened.

Migry