Estonia is the first opponent.
After the morning team meeting, where - as usual - the main topic was throwing and allowed/forbidden mushrooms and materials, we started preparing for the first game. There is no pre-tournament practice at this championship and instead each team has 13 minutes to familiarize themselves with the ice and rocks before the game. The game is played on thinking time (22 minutes), two LSDs and a refined LSD measurement. The ice is proving to be quite difficult to read. Its development over time is clear and, given that many stones in this category are played with the same tracers, irregular across the board. Our opponent had the advantage, and in the first end we protected a cheap advantage, and only for a one. We could have equalised in the second, but instead of a roll it was just a stay on the opponent's deuce. And then, on top of that, after some good stones by the Estonians, a three was added to their account. We corrected with a nice deuce and in the next end we played beautifully to our deuce, but the last guard overran and after a double take out of the opponent the score was 2:7. There was nothing left to do but take risks, but the Estonians played some heavy stones and there was no way back. Statistically both teams were evenly matched, but you don't win on percentages in mixed doubles. After the match we decided to modify our pre-match training a bit. The next opponent is the Scots.