All India Shree Cements Open – Day 4

Team Fenesta lifts Shree Cements Trophy

 

Team Fenesta (Richa Shriram, Ranjan Bhattacharya, Badal Das, Koushik Mukherjee, Kachchu and Bardhan) won the 2022 edition of the All India Shree Cements Bridge Championships beating team Hope n Prey (Shambhu Ghosh, Joy Narayan Roy, Sukanta Das and Bhaskar Sarkar) in a closely fought finals.

To understand how close it was, it actually took a disaster on the penultimate board to seal the match in favor of the eventual victors

Each session was closely fought. We shall present a few boards from the session which, in our opinion were critical to the match.

Hope n Prey drew first blood on Board 5. Both teams played in 4 S.  The play to the first 4 tricks on both boards was identical. West led his singleton heart which East won and backed the Heart Queen. West ruffed and backed a diamond which declarer won with the Ace.

After this Bardhan drew trumps starting with the Spade Ace and went down after the vile break in diamonds. At the other table, Shambhu took a different line. After drawing one trump with the spade king, he pulled a small diamond from dummy! East ruffed and declarer over ruffed. He then drew the last trump, cashed the diamond king, pitching a heart and then the diamond jack pitching his last heart. When East refused to cover, he made his 3 trumps separately for 10 tricks and 12 Imps. Hope n Prey won the session 18-13

The second session was also closely contested with team Hope n Prey pulling out 2 Imps more despite a cheeky 22 HCP 3NT bid on Board 22 by Badal and Koushik.

After winning the club jack lead, Koushik played the spade 8 from hand. North covered (else declarer would have run it) and then passed the heart 8 around. North won with the ace and played a low club, but declarer won with the club 9 and then had another entry to enjoy the hearts after the hearts broke and were duly cleared. At the other table, South went for -2 in 3 diamonds.

In session 3, Sukanta and Bhaskar had a disastrous two boards. In Board 26, they over reached for an unmakeable slam. On the very next board, Sukanta, holding the East cards overcalled 4 diamonds on North's 3NT and then landed in 4 Hearts which went for 1100.

The would have been one of the unforced errors which eventually cost Hope N Prey the title.

 

On Board 31, Team Fenesta did well to stay out of a game and went for -2 on a 3 Spades contract. Shambhu and JN Roy reached 4 Spades and were inevitably doubled and went for 800 with a 5-0 trump break. At the end of session 3, Team Fenesta was up 77-59, conceding 25 Imps overall in the set.

In the last session, Hope N Prey fought fiercely with Shambhu and J N Roy managing to get away with a 5 H sacrifice on Board 7 and a gambling 3NT converted to 4 Clubs on Board 9 where a game in either major was available to East-West. With 1 board to go, Team Fenesta was up by a single IMP.

This was the last board. The bidding was an absolute tragicomedy. After three routine bids, Bhaskar stepped in with an egregious 1NT. While it may appear pretty clear in hindsight that the redouble was SOS, the match conditions i.e. the fatigue of playing as a 4 member team, the fact that you were down 18 imps at the start and nothing dramatic has occurred at your table and the chance for glory may have led Sukanta into maintaining it. By the time the spades were cleared, declarer managed to squeeze himself out of 1 more trick going for -2800.

At the other table North opened 2 Hearts and East's 3NT never got doubled. They played in 5 Diamonds doubled going for 500. This caper cost Hope N Prey 20 Imps.

Nevertheless, Hope N Prey played extremely good bridge to finish where and how they did. We should not forget that this was a 4 member team; of which one partnership has been fairly recent. Sukanta and Bhaskar have been performing pretty steadily as a pair since before the pandemic and this outing would have lent them tremendous confidence for the future. Their youth will be another factor in their favor. At the risk of sounding outrageous, I would suggest to them to focus a little bit on physical fitness as a complement to their bridge preparations as well. The number of times we have heard of fatigue playing an important part in losing a match is too numerous for bridge players to ignore this any more. Remember that physical fitness is also an important part of a chess player's routine as well.

Match Point Pairs

In the match point pairs, Keyzad and Rajesh, along with Sumit and Laltu stamped their class over the event. The young pair of Prosenjit Manna and Joyrup Mallick were third. Prosenjit is another young player who has been performing very consistently since before the lock down and we hope to see a lot more of him in the future.

 

 

 

 

 

 

IMP Pairs

The Imp Pairs event was won by Ritabrata Datta and Sanjeeb Basak with a total score of 80 Imps. The second spot was shared by Anant and Rajesh Somani with D N Lenka and P K Mishra with a score of 75 Imps with Ravi Raman and Jenish Shah a close 4th (73 Imps).

It is again very nice to see fresh names at the top of the leaderboard. One thing which the pandemic has done has raised bridge standards within the country which can only augur well for India

Images from the Event

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A final thank you

This bulletin would not be complete, indeed would not have started even were it not for our sponsor, Mr Bangur.

He is seen here enjoying a game at the event.

Thank you sir for your generous sponsorship and hope for your continued patronage.

 

 

We would also like to thank Arnab Guha who has been consistently helping us with obtaining results and excellent photographs that have gone a long way to making this bulletin attractive to you, gentle readers.

Finally, we acknowledge all errors as ours and request your forgiveness as you always have for accepting the bulletins without demur.