Shantanu Rastogi's Bridge Page

issue 75 (March 27, 2000)

For your comments please e-mail to srastogi@lw1.vsnl.net.in Page updated on:March 30, 2000

Bridge Facilities in India

In this section I would be putting together all the information regarding bridge facilities in the various cities in India.The information may be sketchy at present but would be made comprehensive in future.

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Tournament News

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.

Rossel Tea bridge tournament concluded at Delhi Gymkhana on 26th March, 2000. Vijay Jolly, Delhi (Vijay Jolly, A Bedi, R Chakravorty, R Nanda, BS Gupta, V Pandey) won the duplicate event amongst 24 teams defeating Delhi Gymkhana. Formidables which has won Indian selection trials for Olympiad at Mastricht was the notable loser in the semi finals.Formidables was playing without Rajesh Dalal, Rajeshwar Tewari & Mrs Kiran Nadar. NK Gupta & B Satyanarayna won the pairs event.

All India Lohia memorial bridge tournament concluded at Ganges Club, Kanpur on March 12, 2000. S Roy Choudhary's team from Calcutta won the duplicate event amongst 45 teams defeating Prahladka, Kanpur. Jaiswal, Lucknow won board a match event and the pairs trophy went to RP Narain & A Ray. Organizers also held 5 consolation pairs event to keep all the participants engaged.

National Pairs at Home took place on February 27, 2000 at many centres in India.The general standard of deals were quite good especially those played in second session. There is definitely an improvement in the deals over past few years. There were good mix of deals on bidding, card play and defence without making too much fuss about the complex things of bridge. These were real life problems which occurr in high percentage of deals. There were a few murmurs of protest over the scoring of a few deals in Lucknow and this is one area the organizers should look to improve upon. The high scores at Lucknow were:

First Session: NS - 1398 (58.3%) EW - 1557 (64.9%)
Second Session: NS - 1475 (61.4%) EW - 1290 (53.7%)

There ia already a protest in the Sunday Times of India column (Mrach 12, 2000) of Dr. Prakash Paranjape about the scoring of deal 36. It is very surprising that someone as knowledgeble as Dr. Paranjape has chosen to comment that way in a national daily. To me scoring of deal 36 has no flaw and the criticism appears unjustified. I'm forced to write here as I got no reply from Dr. Paranjpe till now. The deal booklet says about deal 36 "If you are looking for a catch in this deal, there was none!". When you set deals for a tournament like Ubhayakar where deals are supposed to have catch , it is prudent to mix certain deals which have no catch just to test the judgement of the good players. This deal was straight forward 3 NT if you don't take risks. But if you are an expert and think of a catch in this deal a finesse of 9 against J10xx of was available. You can make 5 NT this way but as finesse doesn't work you may go down. So it is likely that many looking for a catch may go down in this deal, so even making 3 NT is sufficient to get a good score. I think Dr. Paranjape didn't look at the deal in the totality.

2nd All India Jagdish Agarwal Memorial Oudh Bridge Championship concluded at Oudh Gymkhana, Lucknow Oudh Gymakhana, Lucknow on February 14, 2000. There was a low participation this year with 24 teams taking part in the duplicate event. Pals, Delhi (DK Tewari,PC Gupta,MM Chopra,Ajay Sinha,Anand Bhatia) Duplicate Winners won the duplicate event defeating Jaguar, Kanpur. DK Tewari & PC Gupta also won pairs event. AK Ganguly's team from Calcutta won board a match event. They were perhaps the strongest team of the championship with Manas Mukherji, Rana Roy & AN Bannerji playing for them but got knocked out in quarter finals to a scratch combination. A photograph of prize distribution function.(Sri- NC Rai, BB Lal, Kr Vijayanand Singh, AP Verma (Chief Guest), VK Chaube, Manoj Agarwal (Sponsor)).

Delhi State Summer National selection trials would take place at DBA premises on April 1-2, 2000.

UP State Summer National selection trials would take place at Kanpur from April 7-9, 2000.

A Prize Money Bridge Tournament would take place at Golf Course, Sector-38, NOIDA, UP from April 14-16, 2000. Organizers request confirmation by 31st March, 2000 at 4526857 (Alok Sinha-Chief Coordinator), 4512470 (NK Jain).The prize money is Rs. 1 Lac.

Summer Nationals would take place at Sanawar, HP from April 21 -29, 2000.

Herman De Wael's Fifth Friday Championship would take place on Fifth Friday of March, 31st March 2000 at various clubs across the world. In India at present the event takes place at Lucknow only.

WBF World Wide Simultaneous Pairs event (formerly known as EPSON) would take place on June 2 & June 3 , 2000. The scoring of this event would be done on internet.

WBF is organising Mind Sports Organization's Worldwide Simultaneous Pairs on August 22 and August 23, 2000. It would be on the lines of Fifth Friday Championship organised by Herman De Wael. The magnitude of the championship would be higher with about 10000 tables results being compiled together.

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Deal of the Week

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 Rossel Tea bridge tournament which took place at Delhi Gymkhana recently.

Dealer:North Vul:None Lead:K	NORTH K 10 Q J 9 8 6 5 4 - A K 8 7
WEST A 7 5 7 3 2 A 6 5 Q J 9 5		EAST Q J 9 8 6 4 3 - K J 7 2 10 2
	SOUTH 2 A K 10 Q 10 9 8 4 3 6 4 3

Bidding

North	East	South	West
1	4	5	5
X	Pass	Pass	Pass

I don't want to inform the whole world the weakness of an Indian team which is going to represent India in Olympiad at Mastricht. But it would interesting to receive feedback from anyone out of India about the flaw that I'm reporting.

We were playing Formidables in the round 6 of this tournament. NK Gupta,B Satyanaryana, Subhash Gupta of the original team were joined by Vijay Goenka & S Bannerji for this tournament. At our table NK Gupta & B Satyanarayna were playing as EW.

I opened 1 as North and NK Gupta sitting as East came in with 4 .My partner came in with 5 , Satya who was sitting West thought for while before bidding 5 .I doubled and that is where contract stayed.

The later story is very short. I got two tricks in s and a trick in .The contract went one down.It was a normal contract.We played all the deals and since it was last round I went away without looking at the scores.

Next morning I found that we had got 4 VP in that round. I checked with my partner and found that our partners had given too many deals at their table and it so happened in this deal also our partners had allowed opponents to play in 5 contract which made six. My partner told me that I should have bid 6 . I told him six doesn't make. But he said lead Q, upon which two club ruffs can be taken in dummy and contract scores. But I said NK Gupta would never lead Q, he would lead a and contract would not make as s can then be played two rounds to prevent two ruffs. And I decided to check with him.

NK Gupta is quite senior player and has won many tournaments. When I told him about the deal and said suppose I bid 6 s, what would he do ? He said he would make a non penalty double and since his partner had two Aces he would pass. The next question was- what would he lead ? The reply astonished me- he said he won't do any antics and lead Q!!!!!

So I could have made 6 s doubled contract against Formidables.NK Gupta had made a bad lead.

The reasons of finding lead are not hard to find. In this auction it is very unlikely that there is a trick available. Partner is promising at least one Ace somewhere. So it makes sense to develop trick in side suit. suit lead is passive so it is correct to attack s. It is most unlikely that East is going to lead to AQ of s as then sensible bidders should not be playing six level contract. Q of can be in dummy and to protect for that best lead was J .

What do you think ?

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