Shantanu Rastogi's Bridge Page

issue 76 (April 3, 2000)

First Bridge Web Page From India

For your comments please e-mail to srastogi@lw1.vsnl.net.in Page updated on:April 8, 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.

UP state selection trials is in progress at Kanpur. following pairs have qualified for summer nationals. Kr Vijayanand Singh & Pradeep Singh (Varanasi), CL Arora & Manoj Garg (Dehradun), NP Srivastava & NN Rastogi (Lucknow). MM Nangia & G Rodericks (Lucknow) are reserve one.

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)).

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.

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 Lohia bridge tournament which took place at Ganges Club, Kanpur .

Dealer:North Vul:EW Lead:K	NORTH A 10 7 5 K J 9 8 A 4 Q 3 2
WEST 8 A Q 6 5 3 10 7 A J 9 6 4		EAST K Q J 6 4 3 10 4 2 9 10 8 7
	SOUTH 9 2 7 K Q J 8 6 5 3 2 K 5

Bidding

North	East	South	West
1	2	3	Pass
4	Pass	5	Pass
Pass	Pass

I'm back to my favourite topic. Fair Disclosures.

We were playing this deal in the duplicate league of Lohia Bridge tournament. I was sitting South.

My partner opened 1 as North which was prepared and promised 12-16 HCP.East overcalled 2 which was explained as below 15 HCP initially and when further asked about the lower limit of the bid a nod was given to opening values.I cued 3 my partner who was not clear if I'm promising 4 s or not responded 4 after which I closed the auction at 5 .

K was led. There were 10 top tricks. My partner didn't develop eleventh trick in s as he was expecting all the points with East. He went one shy.

If you see this deal it is clear that my partner didn't play this deal very cleverly. Irrespective of the explanation given he had to develop a trick in suit. Moot point is whether he should play low from dummy to King or Jack. Here both play score but what happens when A Q of are split ? But that is also not the whole point.

Is below 15 HCP a fair explanation ? When I found out at the end of the deal the East had 6 HCP only , I asked my partner to call the director. When director came I explained him the whole sequence of bidding and the fact that West had nodded to minimum opening values with East. Listening to this West vehemently protested that he had said only below 15 HCP and had never nodded to the minimum values.

Assuming the fact that West was correct and I made a mistake in interpreting, now the question comes what bidding system are EW following. West had good 11 HCP and a game was on with maximum with partner. How is EW going to decide when to bid a game and when not to bid a game ? Assuming West is very smart and with my 3 , he thinks partner should not have much values.The flaw is that when South in my place Non Vul against Vul makes a psych they would miss a game and chances of such psychs are low. Fair enough.

Now consider the fact that I'm playing against a team who is known to have this flaw - wouldn't I want to psych ? I would though I've strong aversion to psychs. For I've nothing to lose.

See when we play bridge in tournaments in India , rarely any team fills convention card. Rarely full explanations are given before bidding. In such situations I can not find out this flaw in the bidding system. Till then below 15 HCP is not at all fair explanation for me. The lower limit has to be explained clearly which effectively means that for long range overcalls actions over passed opponent has to be put on convention card.

We didn't press the issue with director because my partner perhaps felt that he didn't play the deal well. But are you guys listening ?

I think BFI should have a fair disclosure guideline as they have the alert guideline.

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