Tolani Summer Nationals - Starting soon
The 10th Tolani Summer Nationals tournament starts off in a couple of days. While the levels of participation have certainly picked up over the past couple of days, it is still short of the levels seen in the Winter Nationals.
The Tolani Gold Teams event has 31 teams registered till the time of writing. We had seen 38 teams participate for the Ashok Ruia Trophy. We hope to see the gap filled and overtaken over the coming 48 hours before close of entries.
The Tolani Silver Event has attracted 32 entries. While it is not fair to compare this number with the Winter Nationals participation of 72 teams, we believe that quite a few more teams are in the pipeline. We hope to see more teams register here as well.
Beginner's Events
The beginner's pairs event has also attracted quite a few entries. However, it has been noted by the tournament committee that a few of the entrants have been playing bridge for several years and have also participated in National Level tournaments in the past.
Participation of NRIs / OCI
The significant NRI / OCI contingent has expressed its thanks to the BFI for having considered their representation about their being allowed to participate in the finals of major events and also be eligible for receiving prizes.
Silver Skies - An event for the lay public
- Sukrit Vijayakar
BridgeFromHome conducted the Silver Skies tournament last weekend where, in the Swiss Teams event no team was allowed to have more than two players of the rank of National Master and above. Further these masters could not play together as a pair.
BridgeFromHome's rationale for conducting this event was to shift the focus from the known and accepted luminaries of bridge to good players who have not yet crossed the threshold of National Master. It was also to recognize the achievements of such players and reward them for their performance without their being under the shadows of their more illustrious counterparts. It also provided participants an opportunity to practice for the nationals and win prizes while doing so.
18 teams participated in the Swiss Teams event. After 6 rounds of Swiss League, 6 teams qualified for a Super League.
The winner of this event, by a large margin, was Team Anoop Dhawan consisting of Anoop Dhawan, Shambhu Ghosh, Arnab Basu Roy, Abhirup Ghosh, Arnab Ghosh and Babrubahan Bose. We would like to congratulate Anoopji on his decision to encourage youngsters and playing with them.
Team Saila Das, a team consisting of the foursome of Sailaranjan Das, Sankar Narayan Ghosh, Saswata Bhattachary and Swapan Some finished in second place. The complete result can be seen here
50 pairs participated in the match point pairs event which was open to all. The top spot was extremely hard fought for between Sowmik Das and Joy Narayan Roy, the eventual winners and B K Mohota and son Anurag. Both pairs exchanged the top spot for several rounds with the former just pipping the latter to the post. In third place were the unheralded pair of Arup Hudait and Animesh Majumder, players who we hope to see a lot more of in future. The complete result of the pairs event can be seen here