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. I try to update any new information on the existing cities as soon as I get them but as information collection is not perfected some of the information may be outdated or incomplete.Ever since inception of this webpage a few other Indian websites have also come up so if you are looking for more information on Indian bridge you may look at links section of this webpage and check out Indian websites.

Tournament News

In this section I would cover mostly tournaments happening in India and from perspective of performance of Indian & Uttar Pradesh bridge players. For an infrequent visitor of this website, the "new" things in this section are tournament reports of past six months though the reports of past one year are carried.The tournament report part of the news is in orange shade whereas tournament calender part of news is in green shade.

Summer Nationals at Pune 2009 Summer Nationals begun today ,April 19, and would continue till April 26. There are 31 teams taking part in this premier inter state duplicate event for TP Khosla trophy. They are divided into two groups of 16 & 15 teams each who would play full league of 15 rounds of 10 boards each after which 4 teams from each group would qualify for quarter finals. There are two UP teams taking part in the event. The SPSBA team from Kanpur , represented by KP Newatia, SK Kaushik, NN Rastogi, NP Srivastava, SK Richhariya & Cdr RP Srivastava, which has been fielded as it organized Winter Nationals in 2008 is in group A which have star studded teams like Railways, West Bengal B, two teams from Maharashtra, West Zone, Delhi, TamilNadu & Andhra Pradesh A amongst the 16.The UP regular team represented by RP Narain, RK Aneja, SQ Wajahat, BN Rastogi, B Prasad & RA Siddiqui is in Group B with 15 teams which includes West Bengal A & two teams from Maharashtra.Even if we leave the traditionally stronger West Bengal & Maharashtra teams the teams from Railways, Tamil Nadu, Delhi & West Zone have won TP Khosla trophy in the past few years indicating that Group A is much tougher. The fact that composition of the winning teams may not be same doesn't hold as a conclusion from winning team can be derived that teams from winning states generally tend to be stronger than others and hence need to be paired differently. At the end of 6 rounds on day one SPSBA has scored 90 and UP regular team has scored 114.The leaders after six rounds are: Group A - APSBA A (127), Railways (118), Maharashtra -Vidarbha (107), Chandigarh (107), West Bengal B (104). Group B - West Bengal A (120), UP (114), CCSCSB (111), Maharashtra S (103), South Zone (103). At the end of day two 13 rounds are completed. The leaders are: Group A - Railways (260), Maharashtra-Vidarbha (240), West Bengal B (231), APSBA A (218), Delhi (213). Group B - Maharashtra S (241), Maharashtra A (239), South Zone (229), Karnataka (227), CCSCSB (226). SPSBA is on 178 & UP has scored 211. After two rounds on day 3 following emerged as quarter final qualifiers: Group A - Railways (296), Maharashtra- Vidarbha (268), West Bengal B (259), Delhi (256). Group B- Maharashtra A (268), CCSCSB-Civil Services (266), Karnataka (266), Mahrashtra- Sponsored (257). UP team finished fifth in the group B with 251 (253 with 2 penalty) and couldn't qualify. SPSBA scored 198. The 3*10 quarter final would be played on day 3 along with one session of semi final. The quarter final lineup is 1 vs 4, 2 vs 3, 3 vs 2, 4 vs 1 between groups.All the three Maharashtra teams in the quarter finals along with CCSCSB have qualified for semi finals. Maharashtra- Sponsored caused upset by defeating fancied Railways team.A consolation event held was won by UP's RP Narain & RK Aneja. Its all Maharashtra final. In the 3*12 Semi Final Maharashtra-Vidarbha defeated Maharshtra A & Maharashtra-Sponsored defeated CCSSCB. The final of 4*14 is slated for day 5. Maharashtra-Vidarbha defeated much more fancied Maharashtra-Sponsored team to lift prestigious TP Khosla Trophy. Representing winners were C Bajaj, VJ Puranik, MK Chordiya, VK Saboo, RP Deshpande & AJ Puranik. Playing for Runners Up were Dipak Poddar, Jitu Solani, R Sridharan, Ajay Khare, Milind Athavale & Anand Samant. Agarwala IMP Pairs first elimination begins on day 4 afternoon.After 5 sessions of Agarwala pairs only one UP pair of RP Narain & RK Aneja (who got special permission as the fourth UP Pair) has got chance of playing the Semi Finals as they are Reserve 1.Having got a chance in Semi Finals as reserve pair RP Narain & RK Aneja have qualified for the 2 day finals of Agarwala Trophy on April 25 & 26.After 9 rounds on April 25 in the Agarwala pairs final RP Narain & RK Aneja are on 6th place with a score of 259.Anil Padhye & Kalpana Misra (Maharashtra) win Agarwala pairs on the final day where 6 more rounds were played. This is their second victory in Agarwala pairs which also completes a double win for Maharashtra state though Vidarbha fields a separate team. S Majumder & JN Roy (West Bengal) finished runners up. UP's & Lucknow's RP Narain & RK Aneja finished a very creditable third. The title was within grasp of Narain & Aneja as in the final round they missed a 28 hcp cold 3NT playing in part score and allowed their opponents to make one 2 Spade which was going down if defended properly.Both would have taken them past the winners as difference between them & winners was 16. Courtesy: Sri NN Rastogi on phone from Pune.Names of Winners & Runners Up of TP Khosla trophy and Agarwala Trophy SF & Final (9 rounds) Reports courtesy TC Pant.

Indian Open Team Selection Trials for Bermuda Bowl through BFAME at Chennai 2009 Indian selection trials for open team to represent India at Bermuda Bowl taking place at Sao Paulo, Brazil in August/September 2009 took place at Andhra Social Club, Chennai from March 16-21, 2009. The selected team would have to go through the BFAME zonal qualification before going to Bermuda Bowl. 5 teams took part in the event. Tolani Shipping - The Ruia trophy winners at winter nationals and Dhampur Sugar Mills - The Tolani Grand Prix winners got direct entry. 3 other teams Formidables, Texan Aces & H&R paid 1.5 lac to BFI to earn the right to play in the trials. They played a triple round robin of 14 boards each to select two teams to contest in 80 board final. Formidables (Mrs Kiran Nadar, B Satyanarayana, Subhash Gupta, Rajesh Dalal, Sunit Chokshi, KR Venkataraman) & Texan Aces (G Venkatesh, JM Shah, B Prabhakar, R Tewari, P Sridhar & S Sundarram) made it to finals. The final went to wire. After 80 boards both teams were tied at 138 IMPs (including a 3 IMP penalty on Formidables for keeping mobile switched on). Formidables won the 4 board tie-breaker 12-7 to earn the right to represent India at BFAME zonal trials . Courtesy: The Hindu Online & TC Pant

Smt Rama Jain Memorial Times Bridge Championship at Delhi 2009 Smt Rama Jain memorial bridge championship took place at DBA premises, Delhi from March 7-8, 2009. 28 pairs took part in this matchpoint pairs event. The event was won by Suhas Vaidya & Kaustabh Bendre.TC Pant , who helps in conduct of so many bridge events, & Namit Sharma finished runners up. The complete results are as follows: RamaJain Results Courtesy: TC Pant

23rd Seth Srinivas Lohia Memorial Tournament at Kanpur 2009 Lohia memorial bridge tournament took place at Ganges Club, Kanpur from February 19-22, 2006. 44 teams took part in the duplicate event and played 9 rounds of swiss league of 10 boards each after which 7 top teams and one best local team qualified for the quarter finals. A heartening feature this year has been large scale participation of youngsters from IIT Kanpur (they fielded five teams) and also the fact that a 12 year old from Kolkata qualified for quarter finals. The teams which made it to last eight were: Dhampur Sugar Mills - 184, Kamlesh Gupta - 169, Col Sabharwal - 165, A Bannerjee's - 164, Koushik, Hyderabad - 164, Ranjit Bose - 160, Arun Jain - 158 & SPSBA, Kanpur (best local team) - 136. BB Lal, Lucknow (BB Lal, NP Srivastava, SK Richhariya, Cdr RP Srivastava, SA Abbasi) were very unlucky to not make it to the cut by 1 VP. Quarter final was played over 2*10 boards and the line up was 1 vs 8, 2 vs 7, 3 vs 6 & 4 vs 5. Dhampur, Kamlesh Gupta, Col Sabharwal & Koushik reached Semi Finals. Semi Final was played over 2*12 boards where Dhampur (Ashok Goel, Kamal Mukherjee, P Kushari, D Majumder, B Saha, Sumit Mukherjee) & Col Sabharwal (Prakash Bhandari, KK Sabharwal, SM Moin, Tapash Mukherjee) lost out.The final of 2*16 boards played between Kamlesh Gupta (Kamlesh Gupta, Kajal Das, Prabir Paul, Joy Roy, A Bhattacharya) & Koushik was won by Koushik (Alok Daga, Samir Basak, SP Ghosh, CS Majumdar, P Sudhakar Rao, A Subbaraju) . 39 teams took part in BAM elimination and 99 in pairs first elimination , the finals of both of which were played on last day. Dhampur Sugar Mills won the BAM event. Shree Cement finished second & Central Secretariat Club, Delhi finished third.Pairs event was won by Kingshuk Bhattacharya & PC Gupta. Prabir Paul & Aniruddha Bhattacharya were runners up. The UP pairs finishing in top Ten were: AK Garg & Om Hari Agarwal (5th), Arun Srivastava & Girish Kumar (7th), SK Bandopadhyay & Mahbudullah (9th) & Rajjan Agarwal & Sankar Chatterjee (10th). Courtesy(Other than Self): Hindustan Online,Dainik Jagran Online & Ranju Bhattacharya's Website

All India Power Corporation Bridge at Lucknow 2009 All India Power Corporation Bridge Championship took place at Oudh Gymkhana Club, Lucknow from February 11-13, 2009. 13 teams took part in the duplicate event and played 13 rounds (with one bye round) of 8 board full league to determine the winner. Maharashtra Genco with 220 VPs emerged winners and would represent Electricity Control Board in the Summer National at Pune. Maharashtra Discom with 219 VPs finished second and Orissa with 218 VPs finished third. 38 pairs took part in the pairs event and played 38 board with Scrambled Mitchell movement. Arun Srivastava & AK Garg of UPPCL emerged winners of pairs event.

Ahmedabad Cavendish 2009 A Cavendish tournament with IMP scoring took place from January 31- February 1, 2009 at Ahmedabad.32 pairs took part in the event.The event was won by Anand Samant & Milind Athavale with 108 IMPs. The lone UP pair of Pankaj Mehta & Pradeep Singh had a creditable joint 11th finish.It was surprising (as the prize money was close to 25 lacs) to note that no other player except Kamal Mukherjee from West Bengal ,where many top Indian players reside, took part in the event. The top half results are as follows - Name, Score, Rank (The results are courtesy N Sriram's website): Anand Samant & Milind Athavale , 108, 1 V. M. Lal & Raju Bhiwandkar, 104, 2 R. Sree Krishnan & R. Krishnan (Kista), 82, 3 Jaggy Shivdasani & Rajesh Dalal, 80, 4 Ajit Chakradeo & Janak Shah, 75, 5 Vinay Desai & Suhas Vaidya, 72, 6 R. A. Agarwal & Archie Sequeira, 51, 7 Joyjit Sen Sarma & Abinash Kumar Jha, 40, 8 Ariz Anklesaria & Parimal Vahalia, 23, 9 R. Venkatesh & Arvind Srinivasan, 20, 10 K. Krishnakumar & N. R. Kirubakara Moorthy, 11, 11 Pankaj Mehta & Pradeep Anand Singh, 11, 11 Sunit Chokshi & K. R. Venkatraman, 11, 11 Subhash Gupta & Rajeshwar Tiwari, 9, 14 Sapan Desai & Kaustubh Bendre, 8, 15 Arvind Vaidya & Prakash Hegde, 1, 16

UP State Summer National Selection Trial at Lucknow 2009 6 teams took part in the UP State Selection trials which took place on January 25, 2009 at Lucknow Club, Lucknow. They played a full league of 5 rounds of 10 boards each after which top two teams played final of 16 boards to determine the winner. Narain, Lucknow (RP Narain, RK Aneja, Arun Srivastava, SQ Wajahat) topped the league with 98 VPs and played Pankaj Mehta, Moradabad (Pankaj Mehta, Pradeep Singh, Kr Vijayanand Singh, JS Kaul) ,who were runners up in the league with 82 VPs, in the final. Narain's team continued their fabulous form and won the final with 1 IMP (10-27,21-3 in two sets of 8 boards) to earn the right to represent UP in the Summer Nationals at Pune. Favourites Maheshwari, Allahabad (IK Agarwal, Govind Agarwal, AK Gupta, BN Rastogi & AK Sinha) couldn't reach finals. Pairs trial took place on January 26, 2008. 17 Pairs took part in the event which was played in two sessions of all play all of 17 & 34 boards with one round as bye, the scoring was IMP. The results are as follows: 1. SK Richhariya & Cdr RP Srivastava (Lucknow) - 47 2. B Prasad & RA Siddiqui (Lucknow) - 44 3. OP Tiwari & BG Verma (Allahabad) - 42 4. Shantanu Rastogi & Mahendra Singh (Lucknow) - 39 5. Amitabh Tayal & AK Sinha (Lucknow) - 31 6. NP Srivastava & NN Rastogi (Lucknow) - 20 UP has quota of three pairs in Agarwala pairs hence 4th,5th & 6th placed pairs are reserve pairs.

Eldeco Club Orkide Pairs at Lucknow 2008 Eldeco Club Orkide matchpoint pairs tournament took place at Eldeco Club Orkide, Eldeco Greens, Lucknow on Decmeber 21, 2008. 20 pairs took part in the event. They played 9 rounds of 3 boards each of Scrambled Mitchell movement. The event was won by GN Mehrotra & KN Jaiswal with 61.31% score. BN Rastogi & AK Sinha with 60.16% finished runners up. The third place went to Shantanu Rastogi & Mahendra Singh with 55.3% score. The other prize winners were B Prasad & RA Siddiqui (54.95%), Mukul Gupta & SA Abbasi (54.72%) & MM Nangia & Arun Srivastava (50.67%). The host Eldeco Club Orkide made perfect arrangements and it didn't show that if it was the first Bridge event that they were hosting.

50th Winter Nationals at Kanpur 2008 50th Winter Nationals took place at Kamla Nagar, Kanpur from November 12-21, 2008.This is Bridge Federation of India's major open bridge event which is held once a year. This time it is organized by Kailshpat Singhania Sports Foundation under the auspices of UPBA & Kanpur Bridge Association.The event was well organised except for minor hitches like lack of appeal forms & the toilets being far off from venue (There should also be separate toilet for ladies - Not sure if there was one at the venue). Some UP players got agitated and wanted to withdraw from Nationals after an appeal of one of their team was rejected. They had to be pacified. If proper appeal forms were there may be their case would have been more properly presented.I overheard a conversation between UPBA president & an appeal commitee member who seem to suggest that appeal was not properly written. I want to ask relatively how many players know how to write appeals. The relatively newer players dont even know rules properly, forget about writing appeals. The directors should be helping out the players in writing appeals if any such case arises. Due to the appeal pre quarter final league was delayed and teams had to play 72 boards in a day which is too many. In my opinion any National or International event should not have more than 60 boards a day as we must assess quality of play not quantity.Entry Fee became reasonable after organizers reduced Holkar pairs entry fee.Food arrangements were included in the entry fee and the food though typically North Indian was good.There were many side events for non qualifiers of the main events.Bulletins courtsey TC Pant were published every day and Semi Finals & Finals were on BBO viewgraph courtsey Bharat Shah & Mahesh Rohera.Gajendra Singh & his team did scoring efficiently. The sponsors JK group should be thanked for keeping the flame of bridge alive in this part of India. Duplicate Ruia Trophy Report 127 teams took part in the duplicate Ruia Trophy event which included a team from Sri Lanka. They were divided into two groups of 64 & 63 where they played 15 rounds of Swiss League of 10 boards each after which 16 top teams each from both groups were selected to play 32 team pre quarter final swiss league of 8 rounds of 12 boards each from where 8 teams were selected for knock out quarter finals. From Group A following teams qualified - Gurukripa (288), India Blues (261), Dhampur Sugar Mills (261), Alok Daga (261), Maya Mira (259), CV Rao (252), Pankaj Mehta (Only pure UP Team-Pankaj Mehta, Pradeep Singh, Indresh Agarwal, Kr Vijayanand Singh, BN Rastogi, AK Sinha- 250), Indian Railways (250), NIC & ED (249), ACLA-Asansol (247), Farias (245), Formidables (245), Arnab's IV (243), Mangal Moorthi (243), Mukund-Lucknow (242), Khandelwal (242). From Group B following teams qualified - Dr PK Bera (289), Railways-A (269), Tolani Shipping (266), Arun Jain (259), Poddar (258), NALCO (257), Arun Bhar-IV (253), Bimal Sicka (252), Manyawar (251), Bannerjee's IV (249), Nagbagan Card Club (247), BDBU-B (245), Tata Steel (244), Transparent (243), Basu Mazumder- IV (243), Pritha (243). After pre quarter final league following teams went through - India Blues- 155 (Ashok Ruia, JM Shah, R Krishnan, Sandeep Karmakar, Ravi Dudhane, SK Iyenger), Indian Railways A- 153 (Manas Mukherjee, Rana Roy, Sumit Mukherjee, Amar Nath Banerjee, Debabrata Majumder, Subir Majumder), Tolani Shipping- 152 (RA Agarwal, Arun Bapat, Sunil Machhar, PG Hegde, Arvind Vaidya), Khandelwal- 147 (Raju Khandelwal, Himani Khandelwal, NK Gupta, Vinod Sharma, VM Lal, Raju Bhiwandkar), Arun Jain- 139 (Arun Jain, Sunil Bhatia, K Krishnakumar, NR Kirubakara Moorthy, AK Jha, Joyjit Sen Sharma), Bimal Sicka- 139 (Bimal Sicka, TK Roy, Swapan Some, Jagdish Biswas, Sandip Datta), Formidables- 137 (Kiran Nadar, B Satyanaryana, Rajesh Dalal, Subhash Gupta, Sunit Chokshi, KR Venkatraman), Gurukripa- 135 (Aloke Sadhu, Keyzad Anklesaria, Joy Roy, Sanat Saha, SR Bhattacharya, RS Gupta) India Blues lost to Bimal Sicka, India Railways A defeated Arun Jain, Tolani Shipping defeated Gurukripa & Formidables defeated Khandelwal in 10*3 quarter finals to reach Semi Finals.Formidables defeated Bimal Sicka by 65 IMPs & Tolani Shipping beat Indian Railways A by 24 IMPs in 12*3 Semi Finals. Tolani Shipping defeated Formidables 136-115 in 16*4 Finals to win coveted Ruia Trophy. Well Done. Formidables -the number one seed, defending champions and the most experienced Indian international team- had to contend with runners up BM Malani Trophy. MNC Trophy & Kamlakar Trophy Report For the non qualifiers of duplicate event there is an option of playing IMP pairs event. 174 pairs took part in the event. They were divided into 6 groups. Group ABC & DEF played separately 18*5 boards and the highest scorer was declared winner. The MNC Trophy was won by B Dey & TK Roy of ABC group with 134 IMPs , B Singha Roy & S Singha Roy of DEF group won runners up Kamlakar Trophy with 116 IMPs. Mohan Sicka Trophy Board A Match Report 54 teams took part in BAM event and played two eliminations after which 20 teams qualified for final. They were joined by duplicate event finalist for 22 team final.Indian Railways won the event. Formidables finished runners up yet again.Alok Daga was third. Siddiqui, Lucknow (RA Siddiqui, B Prasad, NC Bhattacharya, TP Khare) were the only pure UP team in the finals but they couldn't fare too well. Holkar Trophy Matchpoint Pairs Report The most coveted matchpoint event in Indian bridge is Holkar Trophy but only 108 pairs took part in the first elimination of the event (This number should be around 150-200 as more than that field doesn't remain stable and the luck factor increases. Also in stable field steady play is more important as there are more pairs who can take rather than those who would give). The 72 qualifiers of first elimination were joined by 8 pairs of Semi Finalists and Finalists for second elimination from where 44 pairs went into third elimination from where 28 pairs were selected for Finals. All play all 54 pre dealt boards final was played over two sessions of 28 boards & 26 boards with screens and bidding boxes.Subhash Gupta & Raju Tolani should thank their stars as they won the event after getting eliminated in the second elimination. They got in as a reserve pair as Finton Lewis & Ivan Alphonso's auto took them all over Kanpur. As the players stay in hotels all over the city and the city is new directors should be considerate if they are informed about late arrival.Ashim Mukherjee & Hasibul Hasan were runners up and the bronze went to NK Gupta & Vinod Sharma.Lone UP pair of Shantanu Rastogi & Kalika Prasad finished 17th improving their qualifying position of 24. Categorised pair - a matchpoint event reserved for non life masters - title came to UP where BN Batra (Kanpur) & RS Misra (Allahabad) won the event.

DN Rastogi Memorial tournament would take place at Lucknow Club, Lucknow from May 9-10, 2009.

National Pairs at Home for Ubhayakar Trophy would take place at registered centres on May 31, 2009.Circular

Worldwide Simultaneous Pairs would take place on June 5 & 6 , 2009.

Madhav Prasad Memorial Bridge Tournament would take place at Garjia (Corbett Park) from July 2-5, 2009.

All India Hindalco Bridge Tournament would take place at Renukoot from July 24-26, 2009.

HCL Bridge Tournament would take place at NOIDA from August 13-16, 2009.

All India GM Modi Memorial Bridge Tournament would take place at Nainital from September 17-20, 2009.

Tolani Grand Prix would take place at Mumbai from October 3-6, 2009.

51st Winter Nationals would take place at Bengaluru from December 2-13, 2009.

Lucknow Results

The scoring for five & a half table or more is done through American Contract Bridge League (ACBL) software ACBL Score provided by Sri Gajendra Singh of Kanpur.My sincere thanks to both ACBL & Gajendra for promoting cleaner & accurate bridge.Whenever tables are five or less the scoring is done manually and hence "Latest Full Result" is not updated for that day.

Latest Full Result

2009

2008

2007

2006

2005

2004

2003

Bridge Links

You would like to visit these sites frequently.

Previous Issues

These pertain to times when I used to report a deal a week or longer time. If you like Law of total tricks there are some interesting deals. Some of the earlier deals were reported in the process of my evolvement as a bridge player.Some of deals are from ACBL NABCs & WBF tournaments. Also there are some interesting deals on bridge ethics that senior bridge players should have for youngsters. I discontinued this section as I was not finding enough interesting deals in Lucknow.