The BPCL KBA Open Bridge Championship came to an end today with the MP pairs and IMP pairs events and a well attended prize distribution presided by George Thomas, Chief General Manager, BPCL.
It was a pleasure listening to him speak, particularly because he has not only been a sportsman (National Badminton Champion, 1990), but also has been a sports organizer and was truly appreciative of the challenges faced in organizing events of this sort of scale.
The tournament committee also made it a point to felicitate the Puducherry Boys team, which had an S. Roshan, an 8 year old and S. Krishan, an 11 year old playing in it. The both of them are brothers and they were playing with their cousins, Vigneshwaran B and Bhuvaneshwaran B. Vigneshwaran has represented India Under 21, in the recently concluded Junior World Bridge Championships at Veldhoven, Netherlands. We have to all salute them and encourage more players like them to play.
Before we go to our report of the events, here is a video of the prize distribution. The tournament committee has given so many prizes that it was not possible to cover them all. However, first, let us see this interview withwith Asantha De Mel, who has played both Bridge and Cricket for Sri Lanka (ABC, if you will).
We follow this with another video of the prize distribution ceremony!
Match Point Pairs
24 pairs contested the Match Point Pairs finals. After two sessions of 46 boards, Binod Shaw and Sanjit Dey lifted the match point pairs championship trophy finishing just about 3 match points ahead of the runners up R Sreekrishnan and V Kumar.
In third place we Saswata Bhattacharya and Pranay Majumder.
The complete result can be seen here.
IMP Pairs
The IMP pairs event had 23 participants. After two sessions of 44 boards P Sajan and A Mohan came up trumps with a score of 68 imps. Just one imp behind, in second place were Koushik Mukherjee and B Seenivasagan.
K Subramanian and R Ramesh were third with a score of 60 imps.
The complete results can be seen here.
The top 20 pairs qualified for the second elimination where MV Rao and Rajgopalan repeated their performance and led the field into the finals ahead of Guru Sham Sundar and Ajit Saldhana. The top 12 qualified for the finals where they will be joined by 12 pairs from the Super League qualifiers. The complete results can be seen here
15 pairs played in the MP Consolation event where Captain Paul Abraham and V N Ramamoorthy finished first ahead of Sreekumar and Sumathi Iyer.
The complete results can be seen here. This is the same link as the 2nd elimination result with this event showing on a different tab.
Today's schedule
Today will see 24 pairs contesting the MP Pairs finals. The non qualifiers can register for the IMP pairs event.
We wish all participants the very best of luck