The Final Countdown!
Swiss Teams
The quarter finals saw some tremendous bridge being played.
At the top table, Tornatae (Bhabesh Saha - Gopinath Manna - Monica Jajoo - NRK Moorthy - Prasad Keni - Uttam Gupta) had to stave off a determined fight from Kohinoor (Binod Shaw - Biswadip Roy - Jibak Tewary - Mithun Mukherjee - Partha Saha - Prabir Das - P S Roy). While Tornatae pulled out a 13 imp lead at the end of set 1, Kohinoor fought back determinedly to bring the gap down to 2 imps at the end of the second. The last set was closely fought, with no big swings going either way. Tornatae, won the session by 7 IMPs to emerge victors.
The next match was between Bindiya Chamkegi (Bindiya Naidoo - Karthik Srinivasan - Koushik Mukherjee - Priya Ranjan Sinha - R.Venkatesh - Sanjay Sondhi - Soumalya Ghosh - Subhransu Patnaik) and Poddar Housing (Afshar Majeed - Anurag Mohota - Basant Mohota - Vijayraghavan S - D. Vijay - Dipak Poddar - Jitu Solani - Nirmal Kumar Jain). The former got off to a flying start when the Poddar pairs missed bidding 2 games on the first two boards. On board 3, Subhransu Sondhi and Sanjay Sondhi bid a beautiful 6 Diamonds which was not found in the other room. With 30 imps from the first 4 boards and a carry over of 7.5 imps, one can be excused for thinking that Bindiya Chamkegi was through to the semis.
And indeed, it seemed that way until the last two boards. On board 29, at the Bindiya Chamkegi table, Nirmal Jain made the simple lead of the spade 10 after Vijayraghvan bid 1S. Vijay cashed the Spade Ace King and cleared the spades. Priya Ranjan Sinha then attempted the failing club finesse which was followed by the diamond ace and the rest of the spades for 2 down. At the Poddar table, Soumalya Ghosh preferred to pass the East hand. With nothing for inspiration, RV led his 4th best club into declarer's teance. At trick 2, the declarer, Jitu Solani went about clearing the diamond ace. and collected 11 tricks for 13 IMPs. On the last board Bindiya Naidoo elected to preempt 4 spades, which the Poddar pair doubled to collect 300. At the other table Dipak Poddar made a milder preempt of 3 spades. When this was doubled by RV, his partner converted it to 4 Hearts which had absolutely no chance.
A heartbreaking loss for Bindiya Chamkegi, but a brilliantly fought win for Poddar Housing.
At the third table, Jhontu (Bijan Kumar Mondal - Dipak Paul - Sailen Das - Subhasis Roy - Swarup Ghosh - Tapan Kumar Roy) fought hard in the first session to eke out a lead of 3 IMPs. However, Dhampur Sugar Mills (Anindya Bhattacharya - Ashok Kumar Goel - Kaustabh - Kaustubh Bendre - Sagnik Roy - Sayantan Kushari - Somesh Bhattacharya - Vinay Desai) just steam rolled their opponents in the next 2 sets to win by 60 imps.
The fourth table had Setu (Prasanta Bera - Priyotosh Sarkar - Saurendranath Chakrabarti - Sujit Bhattacharyya - Swapan Some) pitted against the star studded Texan Aces (Ajay Khare - Anil Padhye - Gopal Venkatesh - Prakash Hegde - Rajeev Gulavani - Rajesh Dalal - Raju Tolani). Setu carried on playing the same level of bridge which brought them to the quarter finals. They won the first two session in style, before losing the 3rd set by 4 imps to emerge clear victors notwithstanding a 5 imp carry over. Hearty congratulations to Setu, who would hope to do as well in the next stage of the game.
Click here for the full result
Today, Tornatae takes on Setu, while Poddar Housing play DSM. We wish them all the best.
While we have requested a broadcast, it may start a bit late. So please bear with us if it takes a while.
IMP Pairs
The first session of the IMP Pairs started with 62 pairs. We are extremely pleased to not that the top 3 places have been taken by 3 relatively unknown pairs. Tapan Kumar Sen and Dinesh Sinha lead the pack with 44.56 imps. In second place are Deepa Jacob and Sharon George. We are positively thrilled to see this pair as Deepa is a relative newcomer to bridge. These ladies from Coonoor first caught the writer's eye some 18 months ago in a ladies championship and we are please to see them do well in the open field as well.
Click here for the full result
The second session starts at 10:30 am today. A total of 65 pairs should be playing today. 28 Pairs will Qualify for the finals, which starts in the afternoon. The drop ins will be awarded a carry over of the 14th ranked pair.
We wish the contestants all the best for today.