The Kr. Murli Manohar National Masters started yesterday. The field saw a participation of 29 teams, which is the largest number seen in this event for a few years. Clearly, the ability to play from a place of comfort, as well reduced expenses of travel and stay, has increased the level of participation in the event that is supposed to show case the best players in the country.
Standings
At the end of the day, after 5 rounds, the field was led by Rampage, one of the top teams in the country. They hold a clear lead of over 8 VPs from second placed Mohotas, a team which has consistently done well over the entire lock down period. As another example of online tournaments increasing the width and depth of participation, the pair of Arun Puranik and S Chchajed, has shone for this team. I don't remember seeing either of these players at a top national championship for a couple of years before the lock down (I may be wrong, but I think not).
In third place, another 6 VPs behind is the team of Poddar Housing. This team, over the last year appears to be undergoing a transformation. In this event, we are seeing two pairs normally never associated with this team in the form of MJR Vasudevan and Cool Vijay and the irrepressible Puneet Gangal with Dhruba.
In case you are wondering why I am going into the details of the second and third placed teams rather than giving that honor to the leaders, my objective is to bring to you, dear reader, the names of lesser known players and increase the width of your awareness of Indian bridge.
The complete results after 5 rounds, along with the team rosters and other details, can be seen here.
Interesting Hand
The National Masters actually started with a bang with a grand slam coming up on the very first board. While almost everybody bid it, a few managed to go down on a hand which is cold using very simple technique.
At almost all tables, North was declarer and received a trump lead with West following. Apart from the finesses, it is easy to see that the slam is cold as long as the spade king comes down in 4 rounds. If it doesn't, you have no choice but to fall back on the club finesse. However, in order to be able to enjoy the fifth spade, you need to have 3 entries to hand other than the spade ace.
The simplest way to do this is to win trick one in dummy, spade to the Ace, ruff in dummy, enter hand twice with trumps and the third time with the diamond king to chuck the Club Jack on the fifth spade. However, if you do wish to win the first trick in hand, the way to ensure a third entry to hand is to preserve the 2 of hearts in dummy. It is a very reasonable assumption that trumps will break 2-1 as no East will want to lead the heart Jack from JT3 as it could be a possible trick.
There was at least one more deal where a grand slam was possible. However, only 4 pairs in the field opted to bid it. One of them was fortunate enough to be doubled and would have been laughing all the way to the bank.
Most pairs played in the little slam with one of them even managing to make just 12 tricks.
Three pairs did not even consider bidding past game, something that must have had partners glaring suspiciously at each other.
However, the most ironic result on the board was 2HX - 2 by North, going just -2 for 300! We can only imagine the time East West must have had explaining this result to their team!
Program for the day
Today features 3 more rounds of Swiss League, at the end of which 8 teams will qualify for the quarter finals.
The quarter finals, which consist of 4 rounds of 12 boards each, get under way at 5:15 pm. Two sessions will be played today and the remaining two on Monday. Arrangements have been made for kibitzers to see a delayed broadcast of the same.
We expect the cut off to lie around 90-92 VPs for the 8th place basis the scores of today. We wish the participants all the best.