1974 Bermuda Bowl The scoring; in the 1974 match the pre-1987 scoring was used. The main difference from today is that the penalty for non-vulnerable undertricks was lighter: 100-300-500-700 and so on. In our presentation the modern scoring is used to score the individual boards but the carry-over reflects the actual score of the match. The 1974 BB final was held in Venice between Italy (the holders) and North America over 96 boards. Both teams had qualified via a double round robin of 32-board matches and a semi final of 64 boards. The round robin was topped by Italy with North America coming second followed by Brazil, Indonesia, France and New Zealand. The semifinals were easy wins for Italy against Indonesia and North America against Brazil. In the Final, Italy used only their big four of Garozzo/Belladonna and Forquet/Bianchi; these four had routed the Aces in the 1973 final. North America were strengthed from the previous year's Aces team by the addition of the strong Canadian pair EricMurray/ SammyKehela. In the final Murray/Kehela played five out of six segments as did Hamman/Wolff. The third pair Goldman/Blumenthal just played two segments. The first 64 boards were dominated by Italy who built up a lead of 48 IMPs with just 32 boards to go. However in the 5th segment North America fought back strongly and with 22 boards left had reduced the deficit to only 5 Imps. Italy then recovered a little and by the end of the 5th segment had increased their lead to 17 IMPs. The killer for North America came early in the last Segment - at board 83 Hamman/Wolff bid to a game in 4 spades making 11 tricks; in the other room Forquet/Bianchi found the double fit and bid the small slam in clubs to gain a further 12 IMPS. After a hard fought final segment Italy were the winners by 29 IMPs (195 - 166). Italy v North America