Just more than half way through the qualifying stages of the Open, Women’s and Senior series, teams are starting to watch their IMPs and victory point totals more closely.

This is especially true in the Open and Women’s competitions, where only about a quarter of the field in each of the groups will qualify for knockout play at the end of the round robin.

In the Seniors, half of the field in each of the two groups will make it to the round of 16 when the qualifying rounds are over.

Only a few teams in any of the groups are truly out of contention, and at this stage teams do not want to sustain the kind of “accident” that happened to Brazil Monday evening against Italy. The 94-4 whipping by the Italians dropped Brazil from their place near the top of the standings in Group A all the way down to ninth. There is still plenty of time for a comeback, of course, but time soon will begin to grow short.

Through nine matches in the Open and Women’s series, the top performers are Israel with 194 VPs (86%).