In this section I would be putting together all the information regarding bridge facilites in the various cities in India.The information may be sketchy at present but would be made comprehensive in future.
Lucknow Allahabad Varanasi Meerut Dehradun Ghaziabad Kanpur Moradabad Delhi Chandigarh Jaipur Mumbai Pune Asansol Bangalore Chennai
In this section I would cover tournaments happening in India and more so the tournaments happening in Northern part of India and in the state of Uttar Pradesh.
Amity Bridge Championship took place at Golf course NOIDA from April 2 - 4 1999. The tournament was sponsored by Amity Bridge Club of Amity Business School. Amity Business School intend to introduce Bridge in the curriculum, this is something unheard of in India.
World Wide Simultaneous Pairs Championship scheduled to be held on June 4 & 5, 1999 has been cancelled by WBF.
The tournament ,which is still known by its first sponsors Epson, didn't take place in India in 1998 also due to
non-participation by BFI.
Dehradun holds two state level tournaments every year during this time of the year. This year only one tournament is expected to be held.
In this section I would cover one good deal which appeared in the Weekly Bridge Tournaments at Lucknow or in a recent tournament with explanations.
This week's deal is from the 1999 National Pairs At Home for NP Ubhayakar trophy.
| Dealer: North Vul: None Lead:  K | NORTHK Q 9 3 J 8 5 4 9 8 K 9 5 | |
| WEST6A KA J 10 6 4 3A 6 4 3 | EASTA 10 7 5 4 2Q 2K Q 7J 10 | |
| SOUTHJ 810 9 7 6 35 2Q 8 7 2 |
| North | East | South | West |
| Pass | 1Pass | 2 | |
| Pass | 2 | Pass | 3 |
| Pass | 3 | Pass | 4 NT |
| Pass | 5 | Pass | 6 |
| Pass | Pass | Pass |
This week's deal is deal 33 from 1999 National Pairs At Home. This deal was played in the second session.
East opens bidding with 1 Spade after North passes and EW end up playing 6 Diamonds after West has asked Aces via Simple Blackwood.
The main problem in the deal is-What to Lead ?
If you lead anything other than trumps in this deal West would be able to score the contract.
Trump lead on slam!!! They are rarity. This is one such deal which shows importance of leading trumps.
Writes Robert B. Ewen in his classic book Opening Leads on page 132 "Trump leads are rarely advisable against small slams, for the defense is unlikely to have enough entries to repeat the process often enough to annoy declarer."
But adds "However, you should lead a trump if the bidding strongly indicates that declarer will need ruffs in dummy;dummy is likely to be fairly short in trumps, and your holding is safe to lead from (such as two or three small)." He doesn't give any example of such deal in his book but the above mentioned deal is a very good example.
West has bid Diamonds and Clubs showing 5-4, 6-4 or 5-5 pattern. North has a sure trick of Clubs till dummy is singleton. East has made delayed support of Diamonds so should not have more than three diamonds. West should also be short in Spades though there is no surity. North's trumps are two small and are not going to cost a trick if they are led. West would have to ruff in dummy to set up the Club suit.So almost every thing pointing to trump lead.
However, at 10 tables in Lucknow only one was able to lead a trump where contract was defeated everyone else ,as exemplified by the table mentioned above, didn't lead a trump.
Apparent reason being that very few persons actually work out the lead. They more so go by the dictums which in this case is "Trump leads are rarely advisable against small slams."
Anyway the scoring in these set of deals were not very appreciative. If you look at this deal anybody playing this contract in 3 NT would be able to score 10 tricks at the drop of hat. Now for that effort 73% score should not be given. You would have scored 96% for scoring the slam but there is no gain to bid 6 Diamonds as opponents do not score badly for not leading a trump.
Dr. Prakash Paranjpe in his website http://www.demicoma.com has also made a huge hue and cry about Ubhayakar scoring.
So the scoring ,which hopefully would be better in future National Pairs At Home, and the movement goof in the first session at Lucknow didn't make Ubhayakar this year a very enjoyable experience.