42nd UP State Bridge Championship at Noida 2012

Mrs Jaya Jain Memorial 42nd UP State Bridge Championship took place at Arun Vihar Institute Club, Noida from August 17-19, 2012. Noida Bridge Association has made superb arrangements and the Noida Bridge Association officials led by Sri GN Mehra - ex Chief Secretary UP, Sri Mahesh Gupta, Col Sabharwal , Sri Pradeep Prakash & Sri NK Jain left no stoned unturned in making the championship a grand success. They also had a generous sponsors in Sri Umang Jain & Sri Vivek Jain who sponsored the event in memory of their mother Mrs Jaya Jain, a bridge player herself who unfortunately passed away this year . Though Bridge association (UP) keeps entry fee of the events low , the organisers provided Breakfast, Lunch, Evening Tea on all the three days apart from Cocktails and Dinner on first two days. The food was lavish and so was hospitality. All the particiants got a gift from organisers as well. The event was also put on BBO and recorded around 700 hits during some time. The BBO work was done through untiring efforts of Sri Bharat (Buddy) Shah who was ably assisted by Ms Meenal Thakur. The Techincal management was in able hands of Sri TC Pant. Sri NK Jain was CTD who was assisted by Sri Kamal Agarwal & Major Iyer. Cash prizes of Rs 120000 were given

This year the UP State championship was made open to neighbouring states inviting 1-2 teams. Noida being part of NCR mroe teams from Delhi were permitted. Teams from Delhi, Chandigarh, Punjab, Uttarakhand & Bihar came to particiapte making championship a great success.

Duplicate DN Rastogi Memorial Trophy

27 teams took part in the event. This is a record for past 10-15 years. They played 8 rounds of swiss league of 8 boards each. Top four tables were playing common boards and top table was on BBO. 6 top teams from swiss league qualified to play a super league of 5 round of 10 boards each to determine winners. RS Misra, Allahabad (RS Misra, OP Tiwari, SP Sharma, AP Singh, Jitendra Pandey) topped the swiss league with 148 VPs. The other qualifiers were Sonchel, Delhi (Mukesh Shivdasani, Madhu Sharma, Yogesh Tiwari, Sandip Narang, Dr Asha Surana, RS Jasuja) - 144, Pradeep's, Varanasi (Kr Vijayanand Singh, Pradeep Singh, Vinod Sharma, Ashok Goyal, RK Aneja) - 137, Rajjan's, Allahabad (BK Agarwal, SP Srivastava, Dipak Chatterjee, Shankar Chatterjee, Pintoo Bose) - 135, Punjab Bridge Association (Col Anand, SK Agarwal, KR Lakhanpal, RP Misra, SR Malhotra, Sq Ldr SK Syal) -134 & Ganges, Kanpur (BN Batra, SK Kaushik, HS Dua, Vikas Mohan Gupta) - 132. After super league Ganges Kanpur emerged winners with 91 VPs. They were followed by RS Misra with 83 VPs. Pradeep's were third with 81VPs, Rajjan 4th with 74 VPs, Sonchel 5th with 65 VPs and Punjab were 6th with 50 VPs.

This is the first UP State trophy for all the Kanpur team members. And a humble Sri HS Dua calls himself a novice.

Matchpoint Pairs JS Kothiwal Memorial Trophy

64 pairs took part in the event. The event was played over four sessions with no final. The first two sesions were of 18 boards and were played on day 2. The super league teams joined on session 3 & 4 on day 3 with 20th position scores. Session 3 & 4 were of 22 boards each.

The results are as follows:

1. Pintoo Bose & Shankar Chatterjee ( Allahabad) - 1263.03
2. A Mandal & RC Counsal (Delhi) - 1253.83
3. AK Sinha & BN Rastogi (Lucknow) - 1216.37
4. Kr Vijayanand Singh & Pradeep Singh (Varanasi) - 1182.86
5. NK Malhotra & SK Mittal (Dehradun) - 1174.3
6. Jitendra Pandey & Dipak Chatterjee (Allahabad) - 1154.35

The winners also get a chance to represent UP in Rama Jain pairs event in Delhi.

Bridge Association (UP) has decided to felicitate UP players who have grossed highest masterpoints in a calender year with the criterion that the players should be interested in playing for UP and have UP registration number and should normally be residing in the state. VK Chaube , an eminent bridge administrator of Lucknow and a retired GM of Railways who passed away recently, family has come forward and has decided to donate a trophy in his memory to be given to the highest masterpoint winner in a calendar year from UP. The trophy and cash prize of Rs 5000 for 2011 went to Pradeep Singh of Varanasi. The second highest grosser Kr Vijayanand Singh got a prize of Rs 3000. The third highest grosser AK Sinha of Lucknow got Rs 2000. This felicitation also took place during prize distribution and Praddep Singh got the trophy from Smt Chaube.