Quarter Final Results
Rampage and Parting Gift, the two dominant leaders overnight comfortably won their matches. Poddar Housing, ceded their match after session 3, figuring the led of 66 imps was too large to overcome in 12 deals.
Aristos pulled up their socks in session 3 and won it handsomely 41-8 to take a lead of 6 points going to the final session. But, in a tightly fought last session, where both teams played excellent bridge (only 22 imps changed hands), DSM picked up 19 of these to emerge over all winners by 10 imps.
The tightest match, Samadhan and Texan aces promised to go right down to the wire. Starting the day with a deficit of 12 imps, Samadhan bid an unanswered slam in the last deal of session three to go almost neck and neck into session 4 with a deficit of 4 imps.
They erased in the lead and nosed ahead in the first couple of deals itself. In deal 39 disaster struck Texan Aces when Kista and Honey Prabhakar bid an aggressive four hearts. As one of their opponents was holding holding all the missing trumps, he was only too happy to double and collect 800 points and 12 imps. Not much happened for the next few deals. Then, in deal 43, Priya decided to conceal his heart suit and paid the price by going down 2 in 3NT. In the other room Anil Padhye chose to show his heart suit and, once the club ace was right, overcame the 4-1 trump break to narrow the deficit down to 7 points.
Two boards later, however, Samadhan claimed back the board when Pramod Joshi, in the North seat Pramod opened a precision 1 Diamond. East, holding 6 diamonds and four hearts over called 1 Heart. Pramod's partner, C P Deshpande doubled to show 4 or 5 spades and the parternship reached 3NT. Venkatesh (Texan) chose to first continue with diamonds after partner denied the jack. Then, on the run of the spades, he preferred to hang on to his diamonds rather consider the possibility of 3 heart tricks. In the other room, Kista bid a standard 1 Club. On the 1 Diamond overcall, Honey had a stand out 1 Spade bid and the partnership duly reached 4 spades. However, 9 tricks is the limit of the hand in spades.
However, that was not the end of Texan Aces agony. In the penultimate board, Pramod and CP (as he is fondly known) reached an aggressive 3NT with Venkatesh (Texan) doubled for a spade lead. Anil duly obliged and also signaled interest in diamonds. However, after cashing 3 spade tricks, Texan chose to attempt to set up his spades and that was the end of the defence. In the other room, Kista and Honey quietly allowed Mini Naidoo to play in 2S for -1.
The above boards saw Samadhan emerge deserving winners by 31 imps.
We wish them all the best for the semi finals.
Click here for detailed results.
Ravi Raman, Captain Samadhan
A few words about the captain of the Samadhan team definitely must be said. Ravi Raman has been doing yeoman work for the promotion of bridge for the past several years. For several years before the shut down, he was running Samadhan Bridge Academy an institution which used to conduct live coaching in the city of Mumbai.
From January 2021, he has been running the Bridge Pathshala, which has been doing a lot of work for the promotion of bridge and has, by now, featured all the stalwarts of the fraternity sharing their insights on various aspects of the game.
We at BridgeFromHome take this opportunity to congratulate his team on the win yesterday and wish him all success, not only in this event, but in all his endeavors to popularize bridge.
Program for the day
Today, the semifinals start at 600 pm. Two legs of the semi finals, which consist of 2 rounds of 12 boards each will be played today and the remaining two tomorrow. The line up is as below
Arrangements have been made for kibitzers to see a delayed broadcast of the same.