On the 2nd day of the 65th Winter Bridge Nationals, both Gold and Silver Swiss Leagues completed. In the Silver sections, the quarter finals were completed while the non-qualifiers played a Swiss pairs event. Read about all this and more as BridgeFromHome continues to bring you coverage of the event.
Ashok Ruia Gold Cup
At the end of day 1, Team Mavericks (Subodh Maskara, Subhash Gupta, Keyzad Anklesaria, Padmanabhan Shridharan, Jaggy Shivdasani, Sapan Desai) led the pack. Team Monica Jajoo (Monica Jajoo, Somesh Bhattacharjee, Sandeep Thakral, Sukamal Das, Binod Shaw and Sanjit Dey) finished in second place and Indian Railways A (Sumit Mukherjee, Debabrata Majumder, Gopinath Manna, Sandeep Datta, Sagnik Roy and Sayantan Kushari) were 3rd.
The 8th place qualifier Team Mohota (B K Mohota, Anurag Mohota, Dipak Poddar and Jitu Solani) finished with a total of 85.73 VPs, an average of around 10.6 VPs per match.
Click here for Final Swiss League Standings
In the quarter finals, Team Mavericks has picked Team Mohota, Team Monica Jajoo has picked Team Arun Jain, Team Indian Railways A has picked Team Tornatae and Team Ruia Blazers was matched up with Team Shree Cements. You can follow their progress live by clicking here
Ashok Ruia Silver Cup
At the end of the Swiss League, Team HBA (Sutanu Behuria, Rajesh Thakur, Hatindar Panwar, Mithun Biswas and Pradip Ghosh followed by Team Amanora (B. G. Daxindas, Aditi Sahasrabuddhe, Abhay Todankar and Anand Golwalkar). Team Deepadhar (Deepa Jacob, Prosenjit Manna, Babhrubahan Bose, Abhirum Ghosh and Pradip Dey) was in third place.
The 8th place Team Challengers (Jesal Dabriwal, Soumadeep Ghosh, Meenu Dugal and Surajit Bar) finished with a total of 90.88 VPs, an average of just above 11.25 VPs per match.
Click here for Final Swiss League Standings
In the quarter finals, Team HBA picked Borivali Sports Club (thanks to a handsome carry over), Amanora picked Challengers, Deepadhar picked Fighters and K2 was matched with Miracle.
In an exciting match, Borivali Sports club pippled HBA by a mere 3 imps. We will be covering that match in a little detail further on in the bulletin. Amanora beat Challengers by 23 imps. In another close match, Team Deepadhar pushed past Fighters by 7 imps. The fourth match, unfortunately was a one way ride for K2 who proceed to win by 63 imps.
Click here for Final Quarter Final Standings
In the Semi Finals, Team Borivali Sports Club meats Team K2 while Team Amanora squares of with Team Deepadhar
Click here for Live Semi Final Updates
HBA vs Borivali Sports Club (Silver Quarter Finals Segment 3)
While acknowledging that matches in the Gold Section would, on an average, have a better quality of bridge that the Silver section, we believe that an exciting match is an exciting match and hence, we opted to cover the match which was packed with action and drama.
As mentioned earlier, Team HBA picked up Team Borivali Sports Club primarily because of a handsome carry over of 9 imps that they were entitled to due to their performance in the Swiss Leage.
In the first Segment, Borivali Sports Club (BSC) wiped out the carry over and established a small lead of 10 imps. In the second segment, HBA pulled back 7 imps of that lead and the two teams went into the third segment with a small difference of 3 imps in favor of BSC.
The lead first changed hands on this board when NB Shinde and SG Surve elected to stop in 4♦.
At the other table, Mithun Biswas and Pradip Ghosh elected to bid on to the diamond game which made for 10 imps to team HBA
It is interesting to note that the optimiser suggests 5♣ as the optimal contract.
Nevertheless, with the lead so narrow, every board counted.
In the open room, Sutanu Behuria and Hatinder Panwar reached the fairly standard 4♠ contract which makes comfortably as the cards lie.
In the closed room, however, Stanley Nazareth and Asvin Ganger reached the rather unfortunate contract of 3NT.
The auction must have gone 1NT-2♣-2♥-3NT. As per their methods, 3NT promises four spades. Stanley opted to stay and, against the natural lead of the ♣K (more likely ♣Q), couldn't do anything.
Another 12 imps to HBA who now led comfortably with just 5 imps to go.
Until the penultimate board came along.
In the open room, Hatinder Panwar opened with 3♣ and the auction proceeded
Had North led the ♦A and continued, there would have been no story to tell as South would ruff the second diamond and then the ♥A would provide the setting trick.
However, South led a club and now, with the heart loser out of the way, Surve elected to play ♠A, ♠K and a third spade, thus ensuring the contract for plus 850 to BSC. Note that it would not have cost him anything to now ruff a heart and play a spade towards the Jack!
In the Closed room, Stanley Nazareth elected to bid a more preemptive 5♣ and the auction progressed
We don't know the thought process behind Pradip Ghosh's bid of 6H and Mithun Biswas opting to pass the double of 6♥
But, after this rather bizarre auction sequence, Stanley led the ♠5. Declarer won in hand with the Jack and led the ♦K. Asvin Ganger, sitting North, won the ace and continued with a diamond which Stanley ruffed.
South now played the ♣K, which declarer won with the Ace and continued a club which he ruffed with the ♥Q.
Declarer now played a spade from dummy which was ruffed by South, who then returned the ♣Q and a 4th Club which declarer ruffed.
Declarer then played a small heart which South won with the ♥J and played yet another club for declarer to ruff. This now left him with one trump less than North who won two more tricks to set the contract by 5 tricks for 1400 imps to BSC
The single board gave BSC 20 Imps and resulted in the session ending square at 25 imps each and allowed BSC to win by a short head of 3 imps
For detailed scores of the set, click here
Swiss Pairs
A total of 44 Pairs from the eliminated teams participated in a Swiss Pairs event comprising of 5 rounds of 6 boards each. The event was won by S K Sharma and Rajib Rai with Goutam Das and Shyama Prasad Chatterjee in second place. S Iyer and S S Watwe took 3rd place.
Click here for the full result
Today's schedule
Today, the Gold Cup teams play the quarter finals, 4 sets of 14 boards each.
The Silver teams play the semi finals, 4 sets of 14 boards each.
The Elimination round of the Late Shri V.G. Quenim Memorial IMP Pairs will be played in 5 sessions of 10 boards each. There are a total of 9 sections in the field. (This is the latest update from the venue)
In Conclusion
We will attempt to continue this through the duration. We would welcome contributions in the form of any good hands or incidents that occur there. Those submitting hands are requested to submit details and not send me on a treasure hunt please.
All photographs are also welcome!
We hope you have enjoyed our coverage.
Please do share your comments in the space below.
Disclaimer : All opinions are entirely those of the author and are no reflection of the views of the BridgeFromHome Team.
Hi dear, no reporting about ups and down of gold group matches. lots of upsets and onsets have taken place. we were eagerly waiting waiting for your report who were not physically present there. I have something to say regarding format also 14*7. Basically I always have reservations in these 14 deals format. first of all teams are not facing enough numbers of teams of the total field. Secondly the advantage of getting good draws gives you certain undesired benefits. A glaring example is the Arun Jain team. With due appreciation of their glorious fight back, please note they got a bye in between and managed to qualify just by capitalising good draws. There is nothing wrong in getting rewarded for good play. But had there been more numbers of rounds other teams would have also get the same opportunity to face good and fair team. so 10*12 would have provide more equal level playing ground. Technical Committee may rethink on this. regards
My dear friend,
Thanks for writing in. I am constrained by the time I have at hand and the effort it takes to cover a match to just one match. If you have the time, please suggest me a set to cover this evening and the both of us can go through the set with your inputs as well. Happy to work with you.
Regarding the number of boards played per round, playing shorter matches reduces each match to a lottery as a single bad board can send the match helter skelter. So the number of boards played per round has pros and cons.
Regarding the number of rounds, you will be aware that 8 rounds is too many for a league with just 23 teams. The correct number of rounds as per formula would be 5. 6 if you want to be generous. Every league has its own share of luck. So good luck to whomsoever benefited from the draw.
Thanks Sukritji, we who could not take part in Nationals are getting a clear coverage from your writing. Thanks again.