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China was better than we expected.

Instead of Wang, Liu's team came to the World Championships. Anyone who thought this would dramatically lower the quality would be wrong. The Chinese played with precision, and especially in the beginning of the match they didn't let us do anything. We started to come back the moment we were able to take advantage of China's minor back end errors. We scored two for two, then one against, and we had a good follow-up. But a great runback by Liu on three stopped us from getting going. Beth was playing and playing well. Jirka is sick, but he's under the control of the local doctors, so hopefully he'll be ok. Steve wrote us another nice and encouraging email. Thanks, pirate. By the way, D was in the audience yesterday. Jirounek, he put on some weight, but he was cheering.