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.