The Hindu : Sport / Bridge : Nail-biting finish in store

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Tuesday, Nov 18, 2008
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Sport - Bridge

Nail-biting finish in store

R. Jayaram

Kanpur: A nail-biting finish is in store in the finals of the Ashok Ruia Trophy in the 50th winter National bridge championships in progress here on Monday.

Tolani Shipping (R.A. Agarwal, Arun Bapat, Sunil Macchar, P.G. Hegde and Arvind Vaidya) has established a lead of just 4 IMPs over title holder, Formidables (Kiran Nadar, Subhash Gupta, Rajesh Dalal, Bachiraju Satyanarayana, K.R. Venkataraman and Sunit Chokshi) at the end of the third segment of the four segment, 64-board final.

After a sloppy start in the initial league stages, Formidables seemed to be in a hurry to retain the Ruia Trophy that it first won in the 49th edition of the Nationals early this year, after having been finalist five times earlier.

It followed its big win in the quarterfinals on Sunday morning by another huge win in the semifinals against giant killer Bimal Sicka’s team by 102-37 IMPs, in the afternoon.

Strong comeback

In the finals against Tolani Shipping, at the half-way stage it was in front by over 30 IMPs. The Tolani team came back strongly in segment three and wiped off the deficit to go into the lead 92-88.

Four more boards have been played in the last segment and Tolani side is still in front by just two IMPs.

Late on Sunday evening, segment 2 of both semifinals decided the fate of Indian Railways and Sicka’s team. While the Railways team lost 43 IMPs to Tolani Shipping, the Sicka team lost 47 IMPs to Formidables, after which there was no recovery.

Tolani Shipping won its semifinal by a comfortable 24 IMPs.

Early elimination rounds in the Board-a-match Mohan Sicka Trophy and Holkar Pirs event have commenced.

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