Shantanu Rastogi's Bridge Page

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.

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 took place at Kanpur. Following pairs have qualified for summer nationals at Sanawar:Kr Vijayanand Singh & Pradeep Singh (Varanasi), CL Arora & Manoj Garg (Dehradun), NP Srivastava & NN Rastogi (Lucknow). MM Nangia & G Rodericks (Lucknow) are reserve one.Maheshwari (Allahabad) won the duplicate event and would be represnting UP at summer nationals. Indresh Agarwal, Sushil Agarwal, Govind Agarwal, A K sinha & B N Rastogi were playing for Maheshwari team.

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.

Summer Nationals would take place at Som Dutt Sports Complex, Lawrence School, 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.

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 on gambling 3NT.

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

This week's deal is from Rossel Tea sponsored bridge championship which took place at Delhi Gymkhana recently. The layout of this deal is approximate but is lucid enough to explain things.

My partner dealt and opened 3 NT. East asked me about the bid. I explained "should be gambling". The bid got pass around and my partner was now playing 3 NT. Few tricks were played and then suddenly East remarked that 3 NT is not gambling as my partner had shown too many points for bid to be gambling 3 NT. And he called the director. Director told us to finish the deal. At the end of which he asked me about 3 NT bid.

I told him that I informed East of what I understood (We were playing 1(17+ HCP)-1(0-7 HCP)-3 NT as 24+ HCP and clearly my partner had forgotten this). Before director could say anything East insisted that if 3 NT was gambling then I should have corrected the bid to 4 as I didn't have sufficient values. Incidently East was also a member of appeals committee.

Do you think East's argument has any merit ?

Over gambling 3 NT I'm not liable to bid anything. It is unlikely that I would go down more than six tricks and if that happens opponents should be making their game. So I don't lose anything by not correcting the bid. I would correct the bid with this type of cards only when West doubles and East passes. My other actions over gambling 3 NT would be when I want to bid game in minor suit or when I want to bid slam or grand slam. I'm liable to pass on anyother cards. With this treatment I may give 2-5 IMP away when we are Vul against Non Vul opponents when they are game and we go down five or six tricks undoubled.But that is acceptable risk (if you don't want to risk anything , simply don't bid gambling 3 NT on wrong vulnerability).

Director seemed happy with my explanation and score remained the way it was.I don't know whether an appeal was made or not but clearly East had never come across this treatment of gambling 3 NT.

If you're an appeal committee member then you should show better judgement than what was shown by East who was insisting on a correction.

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