Today was the last day of the 18th HCL International Bridge Championship and all the three Pair finals were played today.
1. MATCH POINT PAIRS GOLD FINAL:
The main and most important event was the final of MATCH POINT PAIRS GOLD EVENT for Neena Bonarjee Trophy.
The TOP 28 pairs qualified from elimination-3 round, played an all play all 27 rounds (each of 2 boards each) in the GOLD final, which was played in 3 sessions of 18 boards each.
The pair of Rajeshwar Tewari – Keyzad Anklesaria with a score of 345.15 MPs took an early lead and were leading after the 1st session of 18 boards, followed by Puneet Gangal – Satyabrata Mukherjee with a score of 300.03.
Rajeshwar Tewari – Keyzad Anklesaria continued their good show in the 2nd session as well and was leading the field with a score of 615.9 MPs out of a possible 934 MPs. However the 2nd place had changed hands and was taken by the veteran Indian player Subhash Gupta partnering Sapan Desai with a score of 586.9 MPs. The famous bridge couple of India Rajeev & Himani Khandelwal was in 3rd position with 562.6 MPs.
As expected, Rajeshwar Tewari – Keyzad Anklesaria won the GOLD MP Pairs by a commanding lead over all other participants. Their score of 876.94 MPs out of a possible score of 1404 MPs was way ahead to the 2nd position holder Subhash Gupta – Sapan Desai, who had scored 813.9 MPs. Congratulations to Rajeshwar Tewari – Keyzad Anklesaria for winning the coveted Neena Bonarjee Trophy and a prize of Rs. 80,000. The 2nd ranked pair of Subhash Gupta – Sapan Desai won a prize of Rs. 60,000. The final result of top rank holders was:
2. MATCH POINT PAIRS SILVER FINAL:
The pairs ranked 28-55 in the elimination-3 round, played an all play all 27 rounds (each of 2 boards each) in the SILVER final, which was again played in 3 sessions of 18 boards each.
The pair of Anil Kumar Srivastava - Umesh Kumar Singh with a score of 322.55 MPs was the leader after the 1st session of 18 boards, followed by Paban Agarwal - Pranab Roy with a score of 293.06.
Another famous couple of Indian Bridge, Sandeep & Marianne Karmarkar led the Silver event after 2nd session with a score of 599.9 out of a possible 934 MPs. The 2nd place also changed hands with Sekhar K. Bandopadhyay – J.B. Sengupta taking the slot with a score of 551.9 MPs.
The Silver Pairs event was finally won by Swapan Some * Swapan Kumar De. Heartiest congratulations to them for winning the 1st prize of Rs. 15,000. The runners-up Sekhar K. Bandopadhyay – J B Sengupta won a prize of Rs. 12,000. The final result of top rank holders in the Silver MP Pairs event was:
3. IMP PAIRS EVENT:
The IMP pairs final which had 90 pairs was also played in 3 sessions of 18 boards each (54 boards). Nilanjan Ghosh - Raj Kumar Mukherjee with 49.91 IMPs and Abhishek Mitra - Arup Banerjee with 40.48 IMs were in the top positions after Session-1.
At the end of 2nd session in the IMP Pairs final, the pair of Levy Stern – Lior Urman from Israel took the top spot with a score of 57.63 IMPs. Abhijit Chakraborty – Samir Basak were in 2nd place with score of 54.85 IMPs.
In the last session, Swetadri Saha – Krishna Das Chakraborty & the pair of Paresh Gupta – Anukul Mandal came from behind to take the 1st & 2nd positions in the IMP Pairs final. Congratulations to Swetadri Saha – Krishna Das Chakraborty for winning the 1st prize of Rs. 40,000 and o Paresh Gupta – Anukul mandal for winning Rs. 30,000 prize money. The top rankers list is as follows:
In the virtual closing Ceremony function, Mrs. Kiran Nadar thanked all the organizers, participants, directors & tournament officials and hoped that we can have the next 2022 edition of HCL live.
By T.C. Pant