The All India Shree Cement Bridge Championship started yesterday with the Swiss Teams event.
Before that, the Championships were inaugurated at the hands of Mr. Debashis Sen, Chairman and Managing Director HIDCO. Unfortunately, Mr. Bangur could not grace the event with his presence as he was urgently required to be some place else
The tournament kicked off with the Swiss Teams event as 56 teams commenced battle over 8 rounds of 10 boards each. After 6 rounds, team Hope n Prey (Shambhu Ghosh, Joy Narayan Roy, Sukanta Das and Bhaskar Sarkar) were leading the field, narowly ahead of team Mohota (Anurag and Basant Mohata with Pradeep and Vijay Anand Singh, two father son pairs). In third place were teams Maya Meera Sneha (Subrata Saha, Sukamal Das, Binod Shaw, Sanjit Day, Pronob Roy and Biswajit Poddar). The scores of the top 8 teams is posted alongside. The full Swiss League result can be seen here.
The above scores suggest that a score of around 98 VPs would be needed to qualify. This would imply that one of the top teams in the country, Formidables, would indeed have a formidable task ahead of them. They are currently lying 25th with a score of 63.55 VPs. Another top class team with a similar challenge is Bangur Cement. They are currently 21st with a score of 64.53 VPs. The India Mixed Team for the Asian Games is marginally behind them. Unfortunately, travelers are not available to figure out interesting hands or more meaningful analysis.
The quarterfinals will be broadcast on BBO. BridgeFromHome will try and report on the same. As always, we wish all teams the very best of luck.