Shantanu Rastogi's Bridge Page

Bridge Facilities in India

In this section I would be putting together all the information regarding bridge facilities in the various cities in India. I try to update any new information on the existing cities as soon as I get them but as information collection is not perfected some of the information may be outdated or incomplete.Ever since inception of this webpage a few other Indian websites have also come up so if you are looking for more information on Indian bridge you may look at links section of this webpage and check out Indian websites.

Tournament News

In this section I would cover mostly tournaments happening in India and from perspective of performance of Indian & Uttar Pradesh bridge players. For an infrequent visitor of this website, the "new" things in this section are tournament reports of past six months though the reports of past one year are carried.The tournament report part of the news is in orange shade whereas tournament calender part of news is in green shade.

5th GSI-Lucknow Open Bridge Tournament at Lucknow 2010 5th Lucknow Open Bridge tournament took place at VKS Varadan auditorium, Geological Survey of India, Aliganj, Lucknow from August 21-22, 2010. 12 teams took part in the duplicate event and played full league of 11 rounds of 8 boards each to determine the winner. BN Rastogi, Lucknow (BN Rastogi, AK Sinha, Shantanu Rastogi, RP Narain, GN Mehrotra) won the KN Srivastava Trophy with a score of 237 VPs. Kaul, Lucknow (JS Kaul, S Lahiri, Mukul Gupta, SA Abbasi, SK Richhariya, Cdr RP Srivastava) finished runners up with 213 VPs. Mishra, GSI Lucknow (HP Mishra, AK Srivastava, VN Bajpai, IP Bajpai) was the best GSI team with 180 VPs. 30 pairs took part in the pairs event and played 15 rounds of scrambled mitchell movement of 30 boards. JS Kaul & S Lahiri won JR Singh memorial trophy with a score of 63.93%. BN Rastogi & AK Sinha with 62.02% and SH Zaheer & CP Gupta with 60.71% were other prize winners. The best GSI pair award went to VN Bajpai & IP Bajpai with a score of 60.48%.

40th UP State Championship at Allahabad 2010 40th UP State Championship took place at Railway Electrification Officer's Club, Allahabad from August 12-14, 2010. Allahabad was hosting the event after a long time and the orgnisers led by Sri IK Agarwal made superb arrangements but they were let down by low participation. Only 14 teams took part in the DN Rastogi Memorial Trophy duplicate event. On a personal note the disappointing fact was that no teams from Lucknow took part. The teams played 8 round of swiss league of 8 boards to determine semi finalists. Pankaj Mehta, Moradabad (Pankaj Mehta, Pradeep Singh, Kr Vijayanand Singh, JS Kaul) topped the league with 151 VPs. Agarwal, Allahabad (IK Agarwal, Sushil Agarwal, BN Rastogi, Govind Agarwal, AK Gupta) with 141, Hindalco, Renukoot (N Sen, DM Kar, Sanjay Amist, S Lahiri, Sanjeev Agarwal, RY Pathak) with 136 and NCL, Singrauli (Dr Sumit Dey, PP Agarwal, Ashok Dey, PK Chakraborty, JN Chatterjee, TK Bhattacharya) with 131 were the other qualifiers.In 2*10 SF Pankaj Mehta defeated NCL and Agarwal got the better of Hindalco. Agarwal & Hindalco was a close match with last deal deciding the match. In the 2*12 final Agarwal blanked Pankaj Mehta 98-15 winning second session 84-0 and thus crowned the champions nth time. Hindalco, Renukoot were surprise packet of the tournament.Their bridge has improved leaps and bounds. They had a tough match against Agarwal in the last round of swiss league which they lost 17-13. The losing margin would have been much more endangering their qualification had it not been for a brilliant lead by Sanjay Amist which resulted in game swing.for Hindalco. 26 pairs played first seession of pairs elimination and were joined by 6 losing SF in the second session. 14 pairs qualified were joined by 4 finalists pairs to make 18 pair 27 board scrambled mitchell pairs finals. Pintoo Bose & RK Shukla (Allahabad) won the JS Kothiwal Memorial Trophy with a score of 60.97%. Pankaj Mehta & Pradeep Singh ( Moradabad/ Varanasi) who were leading through out lost out on the last round to finish second with a score of 59.09%. The other prize winners were: Sanjay Amist & S Lahiri (Renukoot/ Kanpur) 56.17%, A Dey & PK Chakraborty (Singrauli) 55.62%, R Bhargava & VB Lal (Varanasi) 54.81%, N Sen & DM Kar (Renukoot) 54.25%. 15 teams played in GN Rastogi Memorial Trophy BAM event. Agarwal, Allahabad (IK Agarwal, Sushil Agarwal, Govind Agarwal, BN Rastogi) completed double by winning the event with a score of 101. A psych by RK Shukla resulting in score of 1 costed Rajjan, Allahabad (Rajjan Agarwal, Shankar Chatterjee, RK Shukla, Pintoo Bose) the trophy as they finished second with a score of 100. Hindalco, Renukoot (N Sen, DM Kar, Sanjay Amist, S Lahiri) finished third with a score of 98.

BN Srivastava Memorial at Lucknow 2010 BN Srivastava Memorial Bridge Tournament took place at Club Orkide, Eldeco Greens, Gomti Nagar, Lucknow on August 8, 2010. It was a one session matchpoint pairs event which attracted 23 pairs which is good by Lucknow standards. Sri Devesh Srivastava , owner of Club Orkide, has held this event in memory of his father , who was into bridge, and has plans to make it a state level to all India level event. For a one session event the prize money was modest Rs 3600/- but organizers offered cocktails after the session.The pairs event was played in simple Mitchell movement of 24 boards with one half table.The prize winners are as follows: NS 1. HK Singh & Manish Jaiswal - 62.25% 2. AK Vashishtha & Mrs Shobha Vashishtha - 59.06% 3. JS Kaul & Sarfaraz Rizvi - 55.61% EW 1. MM Nangia & BD Sarkar - 68.70% 2. TP Khare & NC Bhattacharya - 57.40% 3. GN Mehrotra & Cdr RP Srivastava - 56.55% An interesting deal from defence perspective occurred. Dealer West NS Vul N S J5 H 94 D A106 C AK10765 S S Q9876 H Q D K932 C Q32 E S A H 108765 D QJ84 C J84 W S K10432 H AKJ32 D 75 C 9 Bidding went 1 S -2 C- X (negative) -2NT- 4H-P-P-5C-P-P-X-All Pass.Partner led Spade Ace I was West and I played Spade 2 playing attitude signals which meant looking at the dummy shift somehwhere. What should partner do ? Where should he shift. By bidding partner has promised only 4 cards of heart and I've jumped to 4 hearts after hearing 2NT from South knowing partner has thin values. Then my hearts should be good. Should partner read my spade 2 as suit preference for diamonds ? No as if I've Diamond Ace the diamond losers of declarer are not getting discarded anywhere looking at East cards. Partner played Diamond Q and we took the contract only one down where as two down would have given us cold top.

BP Halwasiya Memorial at Lucknow 2010 BP Halwasiya Memorial Bridge Tournament took place at MB Club, Lucknow on July 25, 2010. It was a one session matchpoint pairs event which attracted 28 pairs which is very good by Lucknow standards. Sri Sudhir Halwasiya holds this event annually in memory of his father , who was an accomplished rubber bridge player, in collaboration with MB Club. For a one session event the prize money was a very decent Rs 13000/-.The pairs event was played in simple Mitchell movement of 28 boards.The results were exciting as we had first time a women winner in Lucknow and both first places in each direction went to pairs who are infrequent competitive bridge players in the city. There were three women players also in the field who were given token prizes. The prize winners are as follows: NS 1. AK Vashishtha & Mrs Shobha Vashishtha - 57.14% 2. Pravin Agarwal & JN Bajpai - 57.04% 3. Shantanu Rastogi & RP Narain - 56.52% Best MB Club - Col Bhatia & Lt Col Rawat EW 1. Maj Gen Ratan & Illiyas - 58.04% 2. B Prasad & RA Siddiqui - 55.77% 3. HK Singh & Manish Jaiswal - 55.20% Best MB Club - Col Dutt & Col Sial An interesting deal from bidding perspective occurred. Dealer North None Vul N S AK10x H AK9x D xx C Q109 S S Qxx H Jx D xx C AK8xxx E S 9xxx H Qx D QJx C Jxxx W S Jx H 10xxxx D AK10xxx C - Bidding went 1 NT (15-17 hcp) -P-3 NT-4D- P-P-X- All Pass. I was South and I chose to double. As cards are 5 Club makes where as 4 Diamond double just drifted one down. There was a huge bidding problem for me. Partner's inability to double showed two definite losers in Diamonds and if he is minimum with AQ of Hearts, AK of Spades and Club Q there could be a heart loser as well as at this vulnerabilty 4 D bidder would be mad to bid with heart King going under probable finesse with North so the key card Heart King could be with East which made 5 C a bad proposition. Now the deal was played at 13 tables out of that at 7 tables 3 NT was allowed of which two EW took the contract down, at 3 tables 5 C was allowed, at two tables 4 D was doubled and at one tables NS made 4 S. At matchpoint pairs one looks for plus score whereas in duplicate I would have reluctantly tried 5 C but amazingly nobody tried to bid 5 D over 5 C which goes only two down doubled. Another point is that since in this deal 3NT goes down but 5 C makes should one in matchpoint pairs seek a minor suit game or slam bang into NT game. Perhaps those who play four suit transfers and are extremely cautious would try to show their club suit (normally 6 cards) and then can land into 5 C. In duplicate or IMP pairs the partnerships must find a way to 5 C even if they dont play four suit transfers more so if they are certain that their opponents would find fatal diamond lead.

July Swiss IMP Pairs at HAL, Lucknow 2010 Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) Officer's Club Lucknow organised a Swiss IMP Pairs event on July 11, 2010. Software developed by HAL was used for scoring. Computer dealt boards were played and deal records were provided.15 pairs took part in the event and played swiss league of 5 rounds of 8 boards each. Maximum/ Minimum score obtained each round was +25/ -25 with maximum swing on each deal being 17 IMPs. HK Singh & Manish Jaiswal won the event with a score of 87. The other prize winners were Shantanu Rastogi & RP Narain (56), GN Mehrotra & SA Abbasi (21), MM Nangia & BD Sarkar and Deepak Srivastava & BB Lal (10 each). An interesting deal occurred in round 2 more from bidding perspective. None Vul Dealer East bidding went 2H (weak) - 3D-4H-X-P-P-XX-P-P-5D-X-All Pass. East S 8763 H 108542 D- C AKJ10 West S AKJ2 H K73 D K64 C Q94 North 105 H AQJ96 D 872 C 632 South S Q94 H - D AQJ10953 C 875. I was South and had good practice against bad pre-empts. For purist east's 2H opening is yuk. Even his partner was deceived and reached 4 H which goes down against 3 NT which is cold. Partner had visions of juicy penalty and doubled but when it was redoubled I chickened out and went 4 down as west didnt lead hearts which would have led to only 3 down. But should partner double ? I'm not sure about this. We are not making anything so taking 4 heart down when they are cold for 3 NT would give decent score anyway. Since we were not playing leaping Micheals I can also stretch to bid 4 Diamonds. We lost 10 IMPs on the deal but still scored 23 in the round against maximum of 25.

Summer Nationals at Chennai 2010 Summer Nationals in a new format took place at Andhra Cultural & Social Club, Chennai from June 17-20, 2010. BFI initiative of Summer Nationals in a new format of swiss league instead of full league and IMP Pairs finals in new format so that costs could be kept down for players by compressing the playing days can be termed as success. But there were hiccups. Speaking for myself I had to spend just three days of hotel room but had to spend a lot on local travelling as Chennai auto (taxi) wallahs ,also suffering as others due to steep food prices and high inflation, were charging quite a bit for 1-1.5 km distance from hotel to venue. Organizers didnt provide any food and tea /coffee just twice a day and one failed to understand why the entry fee then was so high. Lunch provided on payment was good but then the menu could have been clipped to provide working lunch and hence costs could be kept down. The biggest let down was not providing tea/coffee through out the day. As for the format- swiss league is played in winter nationals also and there are so many prize money tournaments that lure of prize money for summer nationals is incomprehensible. It is the pride for bringing laurels to your state which drives players to Summer Nationals. If you have same format for prestigious tournaments like summer & winter nationals the participation eventually would decline. Pairs event was open to everyone and the finals were made open to a large number of players instead of all play all 14 or 16 pairs. It is difficult to see particiaption in just pairs event from far flung places as again there is no pride for playing for state in an open event. Now If I've so many problems with the format and other things why I call it a success. It is mainly because technically it was the best tournament organized in India so far. There were common boards in the duplicate event and deal records were provided. Same was the case in pairs event. The venue was excellent and host TNBA did organize the event fairly well. Duplicate Event 29 teams took part in duplicate event and played swiss league of 8 rounds of 10 boards each. The qualifying was just 1 VP more than average of 16 which is quite low as normally one needs around 17 VP average or more to qualify for last 8. The reson could be common boards. The qualifiers for last 8 were West Bengal A - 163, Tamil Nadu A - 159, Gujarat - 140, Maharshtra V - 136, West Bengal B - 136, Uttarakhand - 135, Kerala - 129, Mharashtra DP - 129. The surprises were Gujarat (Sunit Chokshi, Keyzad Anklesaria, PV Vahalia, Ariz Anklesaria) , Uttarakhand (RM Gupta, Jus BP Singh, CP Agarwal, RP Bhatnagar, CL Arora & partner) & Kerala (S Mathew, M Chandy, NC John, S Rajeev, PR Nair, George Mohan). Gujarat had seasoned pair of Sunit Chokshi & Keyzad Anklesaria, Uttarakhand had half players who play in UP. So Congratulations to surprise packets. The biggest omission was Indian Railways. Maharshtra V (BK Mohota, G Sundermurthy, S Chhajed, VW Deshpande) lost to West Bengal B (Bhabesh Saha, SP Ghosh, K Nandi, S Basak, HK Jalan, A Malhotra), West Bengal A defeated Maharashtra DP (DIpak Poddar, Jitu Solani, RA Agarwal, KS Samant), Tamil Nadu A defeated Kerala & Gujarat won against Uttarakhand. In SF two West Bengal teams played each other & Gujarat played Tamil Nadu A. TamilNadu A (NR Kirubakara Moorthy, B Prabhakar, P Sridhar, S Sundarram, R Krishnan, KR Venkataraman) won the trophy defeating West Bengal A (CV Rao, Badal Das, Aloke Sadhu, S de Sarkar, Pranab Bardhan, Parthasarthy Mukherjee). Basically Swiss league is a cruel format as it allows low ranking teams playing against weak teams to qualify just on basis of one good last round. Strong teams playing against stronger teams at higher tables may get eliminated just because of one bad round. Agarwala Pairs Over 100 pairs took part in the event who played two eliminations to make a 56 pairs 54 board finals with IMP scoring. D Vijay & SK Chari of TamilNadu won the event. PV Vahalia & Ariz Anklesaria of Gujarat came second and third place went to Sumit Mukherjee & D Majumder of Railways. Maneesh Bahuguna & S Sadhukhan were fourth. An interesting deal occurred in first elimination session 2 of the pairs event. I was playing against Gopinath Manna & Varsha Jain from Mumbai where Varsha came up with a nice bit of deception. South Dealer/ None Vul bidding went P-1 C (16+hcp) -P-1S- P-2C-P-3C-P-3H (cue bid not necessarily having 4 hearts)-P-3S (cue bid)-P-5C- All Pass. This was the full deal North S J974 H Q9863 D A72 C 5 South S 1083 H 4 D K9653 C 9742 East S KQ632 H J102 D Q8 C KQ3 West S A H AK75 D J104 C AJ1086. I was west and received Diamond 2 lead from Manna who checked that our bidding revealed no diamond control. Varsha took her King and shifted to heart 4 which looks like a normal shift as with diamond control with north his heart king must be released. Can you spot this as devilish singleton ? I won with Ace of heart and cashed spade Ace and she played spade 10 on this. My folly was I was assured of a place in elimination 2 and didnt bother to check what spade 10 was. Totally underestimating her and assuming that she was showing doubleton. I thought if clubs are breaking badly two heart losers can not be thrown on dummy's spades if spades are 5-2. So I thought I would give up diamond discard a heart on diamond J ruff a heart high draw trumps and claim. But when I gave up diamond she gleefully ruffed the heart and I went down in otherwise simple contract. She defended well. When I complimented her the next day she said she doesnt remember the deal :-).

World Wide Bridge Contest 2010 World Wide Bridge Contest took place on June 4-5, 2010. Friday, June 4, 2010 4741 pairs from 272 Clubs across 32 Countries took part in the event worldwide.In India 171 pairs from 7 Centres (Kolkata - two sections - 48 pairs, Mumbai - 34 pairs, Delhi - 29 pairs, Bengaluru - 26 pairs, Lucknow - 10 pairs, Nainital - 14 pairs, JDBA - 10 pairs) took part in the event. The event was won by Moreilly Fabrigio & Bastardini Elvio of Bridge Boridighera, Italy with 78.43% score. Amongst Indian pairs Kapil Bhalla & Uttam Gupta of KSBA, Bengaluru came first with a score of 64.19% giving them 134th overall rank.Lucknow results as per global ranks are as follows : 1. Pravin Agarwal & JN Bajpai 58.49% 614 rank 2. MM Nangia & BD Sarkar 57.2% 827 rank 3. BN Rastogi & AK Sinha 55.85% 1062 rank Saturday, June 5, 2010 4894 pairs from 240 Clubs across 28 Countries took part in the event worldwide.In India 171 pairs from 7 Centres (Kolkata - two sections - 50 pairs, Mumbai - 30 pairs, Delhi - 31 pairs, Bengaluru - 26 pairs, Lucknow - 11 pairs, Nainital - 10 pairs, JDBA - 10 pairs) took part in the event. The event was won by John Currie & Virginia Giza of Halfax Bridge World, Canada with 74.64% score. Amongst Indian pairs Baneet Malhotra & Bhabesh Saha of Calcutta Club B (Kolkata) came first with a score of 72.42% giving them 2nd rank overall . This is an incredible result for Indian Bridge. Their overall score is 7% more than their local score and they played all 36 boards. Hearty congratulations to them. Bhabesh is well known on Indian Bridge Circuit being part of Dhampur Sugar Mills team but Baneet is virtually unknown. Come on Baneet you have done us proud so we should see more of you outside Kolkata.Lucknow results as per global rank are as follows : 1. SA Abbasi & Dr DC Gupta 60.08% 383 rank 2. Shantanu Rastogi & RP Narain 58.49% 590 rank 3. BN Rastogi & AK Sinha 58.48% 592 rank Courtesy: www.ecatsbridge.com as on 11/6/10 13:30 hrs India Time

DN Rastogi Memorial Bridge Tournament at Lucknow 2010 DN Rastogi Memorial Bridge Tournament took place at Bridge Hall, Lucknow Club, Lucknow on May 1 & 2 , 2010. This is a premier state level pair event modelled on erstwhile Agarwala Trophy finals.. The event had a field of 16 pairs out of which half were invited from places outside Lucknow. The 16 pairs played 15 rounds of all play all of 8 boards each to determine winner. The maximum/minimum scored in one round was +25/-25 IMPs with maximum in one deal being 17 IMPs.The prizes were given to top six pairs. This year the event was scored by a software developed by HAL Lucknow. Due to the software instantaneous results were produced and displayed to participants on a LCD TV screen at the end of each round. This is perhaps the first time this has been done in India.The event is sponsored by UPs top bridge player BN Rastogi in memory of his father who was also a competent.bridge player. The event was won by BK Agarwal & SP Srivastava from Allahabad who scored 127 points. The other prize winners were: 2. RP Narain & RK Aneja - Lucknow- 94 3. BN Rastogi & AK Sinha - Lucknow- 70 4. IK Agarwal & Govind Agarwal - Allahabad- 36 5. SK Bandopadhyay & Deepak Chatterjee - Allahabad - 34 6. Kr Vijayanand Singh & Pradeep Singh - Varanasi - 28

GM Modi Memorial Bridge Tournament would take place at Boat House Club, Nainital from September 16-19, 2010.

Lokmanya Seva Sangh Silver Jubilee Duplicate Bridge Tournament would take place at Lokmanya Seva Sangh, Vile Parle (E), Mumbai from September 24-26, 2010. Prize Money Rs 2.5 L +, Entry Fee Rs 3000.

3rd Commonwealth Bridge Tournament would take place at Cabana Apartments, Shipra Mall, Indirapuram, Ghaziabad (near Delhi) from October 24-29, 2010.

HCL Bridge Tournament would take place at Hotel Radisson, Noida from October 30- November 2, 2010.

Delhi Gymkhana Bridge Tournament would take place at Delhi Gymkhana, Delhi from November 26-28, 2010.

52nd Winter Nationals would take place at Kolkata from December 10-17, 2010.

Lucknow Results

The scoring for five & a half table or more is done through American Contract Bridge League (ACBL) software ACBL Score provided by Sri Gajendra Singh of Kanpur.My sincere thanks to both ACBL & Gajendra for promoting cleaner & accurate bridge.Whenever tables are five or less the scoring is done manually and hence "Latest Full Result" is not updated for that day. From February 2010 onwards on the last Tuesday & last Friday of the month computer dealt deals are played, the software for which is kindly provided by Sri TC Pant of Delhi.

Latest Full Result

2010

2009

Bridge Links

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Previous Issues

These pertain to times when I used to report a deal a week or longer time. If you like Law of total tricks there are some interesting deals. Some of the earlier deals were reported in the process of my evolvement as a bridge player.Some of deals are from ACBL NABCs & WBF tournaments. Also there are some interesting deals on bridge ethics that senior bridge players should have for youngsters. I discontinued this section as I was not finding enough interesting deals in Lucknow.