Manyawar (Pankaj Doshi, Ajay Khare, Raju Tolani, Anil Padhye, and Choti Hegde) won the Malabar Hill Club Championship with a score of 71.22 VPs. They finished comfortably ahead of second placed Mavericks (Subodh Maskara, Anal Shah, Jaggy Shivdasani, Sandeep Thakral, Keyzad Anklesaria and Debabrata Mazumder) who secured 63.63 VPs.
A special mention must be made of Team Blitz which eventually finished 4th in the event. The team consisted of Amod Rele, Vikrant Mehta, Kaustubh Bendre and the young Anshul Bhatt. Playing as a 4 member team, this team topped the Swiss League (Swiss Leagure Results). We hope to see Anshul go on to greater laurels.
IMP Pairs
Veterans Finton Lewis and Ivan Alphonso won the IMP pairs event with a score of 103 IMPs, just pipping Arun Bapat and Joyrup Mullick by 2 IMPs. The 3rd placed pair of R Anbazhagan and Madhav Kshirsagar were quite far away with 73 IMPs. (Click here for the full result) For some reason, it is not possible to directly sort the pairs by the result. We are consulting with Bridgewebs on the issue and hope to have a solution for this soon. We are also sorry to not have a photograph of the pairs winners receiving their prize.
Observations
It was a bit disappointing to see only 17 teams register for this event which had substantial prize money on offer. As somebody remarked, "The casual teams, which play for the fun of participation, were conspicuous by their absence". There was also an entry by a ladies team which did not play the event.Even the pairs event attracted only 37 entries.
Having said that, this is only a precursor of things to come as people are chary about traveling, especially when they can get their daily dose of bridge, as it were, from the comfort of their home.
For now, there is the Shri Murli Deora Memorial 2023which is being held tomorrow. The prize money for this single session event is Rs. 10,000. Request all those interested in playing to register soon.
The next major physical event in Mumbai is the The Willingdon Sports Club Annual Bridge Tournament with prize money over Rs. 6 Lakhs. As of date, there are 50 entries for the event. Previous editions of the event have attracted around 100 entries. We hope that this event is attended well this year as well.