Paul Magerman celebrates after being awarded the EBL Gold Medal at the President's dinner on Monday evening.

The first day of the 7th European Bridge Mixed Team Championships featured many difficult deals, which severely taxed even the great champions competing here. A feature of the draw was that in the first round, teams of approximately equal strength were paired together, which led to some heavyweight clashes right at the start.

After four rounds, the early leaders are from Germany in the guise of team Gotard whose score of 82VP leaves them three ahead of the Russian squad Volina, who in turn are one point ahead of another German outfit, Maybach, the losing finalists in 2000.