Senior Bowl (bridge)

The d'Orsi Senior Bowl, or Senior Bowl or d'Orsi Bowl, is a biennial world championship contract bridge tournament for national teams of "Seniors", players age 60 and older. It is contested every odd-number year under the auspices of the World Bridge Federation (WBF), alongside the Bermuda Bowl (Open) and Venice Cup (Women). Entries formally represent WBF Zones as well as nations so it is also known as the "World Zonal Senior Team Championship", one of three "World Zonal Team Championships". It became an official world championship event in 2001 following a successful exhibition in 2000.

Alternatively, the d'Orsi Senior Bowl is the trophy awarded to the winning team. It was donated at the 2009 tournament in Brazil by former WBF President Ernesto d'Orsi, and the tournament was renamed at that time.

France won its first title in the 6th Senior Bowl tournament, October 2011 in Veldhoven, Netherlands. USA 2 and Poland placed second and third.

In the 2013 tournament, held in Bali, Indonesia, the original winners were Germany, with USA2 second and Poland third. Two members of the Germany team were later found to be cheating and the WBF awarded USA 2 first, Poland second and France third. The 2015 championship, held in Chennai, India, was won by USA1 ahead of Sweden, with Poland third.

The zonal quotas and structures are now identical for the Open, Women, and Seniors flights of Zonal Teams, and the three tournaments are concurrent. There are 22 teams —1 from the host country, 6 from Europe, and so on— each four to six players and a captain who may be one of the players. They compete as teams-of-four with scoring by International Match Points (IMP).

For one week everyone plays round-robin matches of 16 deals, three daily matches (21 in all) with IMP margins converted to Victory Points (VP). Teams who draw get 15 points each, up to 25 for the winner and down to 0 for the loser.

The eight round-robin leaders continue in long knockout matches, 96 deals in two days (except 128 in three days for the Open final), with carryover as much as 16 IMP from the short matches between the same teams. The World Transnational Open Teams Championship begins after most teams are eliminated from the three major events; players on all but the four semifinalist teams in each flight are welcome to enter the Transnational.

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