92 pairs participated in the Sudhir Chokshi Memorial Swiss Pairs. 9 qualifying rounds cleaved the field into 32 pairs playing the Gold Final and the remaining pairs playing the Silver Final.
Ashok Goel and K R Venkataraman won the Gold scoring 122.2 VPs. Recovering from a first round loss, they went from strength to strength to build up a commanding lead.
Debabrata Majumdar and Sumit Mukherjee finished second with 112.95 VPs. Sumit Saha and Swapan Sardar were third with 112.53 VPs. Carryover from the qualifying rounds nudged Majumdar and Mukherjee to second place in this close contest.
The trio of Kaustabh Nandi, Kaustabh Bendre, and Sayantan Kushari won the Silver with 111.83 VPs. Rana Roy and Abhijit Chakraborty came in second with 111.68 VPs. Arvind Srinivasan and R Venkatesh finished third with 110.74 VPs.
The top seven finishers in Silver were closely clustered in VP scores. The difference between 1st and 2nd place was 0.15 VPs; between 3rd and 4th, just 0.02 VPs!
In the Gold, only five out of sixteen pairs bid the cold slam on board 4. In the context of a weak hand facing a strong hand, the East hand has a lot more than its expectation. Bidding slam was a question of whether East could convey this to West. Both Goel-Venkataraman (right) and Majumdar-Mukherjee (below) bid the slam.
With only your side vulnerable, you hold ♠ KJ87 ♥ AJ7 ♦ -- ♣ KQ7642. What do you call when the auction begins 1♠ Pass to you.
Players faced with this decision made different choices, including 2♣, 2NT
Jacoby, and 4♠ splinter. The problem with these actions is that they are vulnerable to pre-emption by the opponents. Anal Shah and Sumit Mukherjee got straight to the point with 5♦ Exclusion RKC, and bid the grand easily.
After the auction began 1♠ - 2♣, Sumit Saha pre-empted 5♦, and Srinivasan pre-empted 4♦ raised by his partner, Rajeev Khandelwal, to 6♦. After these auctions, the opening side was forced to guess the right action. Kudos to the aforementioned players for being difficult opponents.
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