Kodaikanal Bridge Club conducted its annual bridge tournament after a gap of 3 years. I was somehow attracted to this event, primarily because I had never visited the hill station before. I also found in Raghu, who has slowly become a good friend of mine a great companion to share this journey with. We played the teams event to pay homage to bridge and then spent Sunday around the city.
Here are a few thoughts (all my own work)
The organization and conduction of the event was smooth and super efficient. The hospitality was also tremendous. Having said that, let me move on to a few aspects of the event that stood out.
First of all, as pointed out by fellow blogger V N Ramamurthy, there were a lot of newcomers (again a majority of whom were women) participating. Credit for this must go to Naryayan Iyer who has been unstintingly training beginners for a long long time.
Secondly, the winning team, TVS Mobility, had the two young girls, Kalpana Gurjar and Vidya. To win their first teams tournament in the open arena at such a young age will, no doubt, spur them to greater laurels.
A third emerging woman player at the event was Uma Rajesh. Her team finished second in the event and she also secured 3rd place in the pairs event. Her team mates very proudly pointed out that their team secured thumping wins in every round she played, while barely managing to eke out wins when she didn't.
The sponsor of the TVS Mobility team, Srinath Rajam, is also developing a junior team which will have two additional pairs along with Vidya and Kalpan. We are extremely grateful to him for this junior initiative and hope that more such sponsors build more such teams.
All in all, it was a great event and, personally for me, an extremely gratifying journey in more ways than one.
We look forward to more events like this going forward
Request to BFI
While the event itself was absolutely brilliant, we would like to bring one matter to the notice of the Bridge Federation of India. During the pandemic, when events were being conducted on our website, all super leagues were being conducted without carry over. The last few events which had super leagues (Madhya Pradesh, FNCC and Kodai) all had carry overs. Super leagues conducted in Maharashtra do not have carry overs. We would request the BFI to advise whether carry overs are mandatory, optional or should not be given. This is in the interest of Indian Bridge without being critical of anybody whomsoever.
Kalpana and Vidya are from Gujarat, Ahmedabad and excellent young players. They are trained from initial stage by Mr vahlia from Ahmedabad and I have opportunity to play with them several time . They have also represented India in junior category.
I am happy to learn their victory in Kodai canal bridge tournament. Unfortunately, Ahmedabad is not having many young players now a days.
Wish them all the best.
Knaves from Kerala was the only team that beat Nest In in the 11 rounds played at the Kodai Club tournament. In the 4th round of the finals Knaves won by 9 imps. Uma and Sridhar played the round. So it is not factually correct that in all rounds where Uma played the team won.
This does not detract from Uma Rajesh’s performance in the least.
Let us cheer her on!