Shri. Murli Deora Memorial Bridge Tournament

Every year, close to the birth anniversary of her husband, Mrs. Hema Deora hosts a tournament in the memory of her beloved husband, the late Shri Murli Deora.

A whole lot of nice things have been said about him previously on BridgeFromHome as well. This year, we are going to let people do the talking!

But, first of all, let us take a look at the glittering trophies for the winner

 

You can see the main trophy with the individual pieces resting by their side against the back drop of the genial Shri Deora. Anybody who has played bridge with him will remember his larger than life guffawing at his famous, Saturday afternoon bridge tables. I remember visiting his house as a virtual nobody in those days, primarily going there to be a fourth.

I can assure you those afternoons are truly treasurable memories for me

 

At any rate, participation in this event was great fun as well. As a participant, I was not able to write get a bird's eye view of the goings on, so I am going to let Some videos I have taken do the talking. Please forgive the amateurish quality of the videos.

First off, we are going to start with a video of the inauguration. It sort of took me by surprise, but, for what it is worth, here is what I managed to capture

As mentioned earlier, I was unable to capture this from the start, so I later compensated by getting a personal message from Hemaji which is below

 

We also managed to capture some videos of  the players in action.

Here is one of the BCBA President, Mr. Sukhu Nayyar and his partner Uttara Bhandare in action against veteran experts Mr. V. M. Lal and Mr. Anand Samant. This video is courtesy our scorer, Shri Vishwanath Bediya. We thank him for the same.

 

At the end of the first session, Dhiraj Mahtaney and Kamna Sharma had a fairly comfortable lead of over 22 imps over second placed Ravi Raman and Ivan Alphonso. MBA President Deven Doshi and Dr. Rajul Dalal were lying in third place.

The complete result at the end of session one can be seen by clicking here.

After a sumptuous lunch, the participants got together again and battled it out for another 22 boards. We managed to get a video of the session leaders playing against Shri Deepak Parikh and Nerio Vakil, both extremely close friends of Shri Deora. You can watch Dhiraj conducting a 3 Clubs contract which he cross ruffed successfully to make 11 tricks conceding a diamond and a spade. While the club game is unstoppable, it was, unfortunately, not biddable and nobody reached that game.

We apologise for being unable to rotate the video. Would be grateful for directions on how one could do so.

The tournament went on till the end and while Deven Doshi and Dr. Rajul Dalal maintained their third place, there was a tie for the top place between the first two ranks at the end of session one!

While the tie was being broken, the Deora family proceeded to thank all the participants for their participation and the Chief Guest, Mr. Deepak Parekh invoked some wonderful memories of Shri Deora. Then, some special awards given by Mrs. Deora to some very senior players namely, Mr.Bipin Patel, who is all of 96 years young, Mr. Maneck Hiranandani, who recently completed 90 years of age and Mrs. Syloo Mathai.

To return to the results, detailed result is available here. Experts had to be consulted about the methodology of tie breaking and, eventually, the result ended in favor of the first session leaders Dhiraj Mahtaney and Kamna Sharma. While we hold both Ravi Raman and Ivan Alphonso in the highest regard, we must say that we are thrilled to see somebody who is not on the tournament circuit, so to speak, lift the honors ahead of many renowned stalwarts.

We also managed to capture the prize distribution ceremony for your viewing

There were four additional prizes given by random draw to the lucky winners who were Jawahar Rocha and Arvind Paranjpe, Rajesh and Anant Somani, Manek Hiranandani and Rustom Thanawala and last, but not least, Mr. Sukhu Nayyar and Ms. Uttara Bhandare.

In the end, we have to thank Mrs. Deora for organizing a fabulous event, indeed, one which I would love to be invited to year after year. Thanks also to Anant Somani for ensuring that everything went on smoothly and without any issues.

 

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Disclaimer : All opinions are entirely those of the author and are no reflection of the views of the BridgeFromHome Team.