All India Bridge C'ship: Mavericks, Formidables, Rampage, Team Monica Jajoo in semis

Kolkata, May 3 (IANS) Mavericks represented by three foreign players stormed into the semifinal of the team event along with title holders Formidabls, Rampage, and Team Monica Jajoo in the 8th All India Shree Cement Bridge Championship at Biswa Bangla Convention Centre here on Saturday.

Team Mavericks is made up of Herald Eide from Norway, Oren Toledano, and Amir Zamir from Israel beside Subodh Maskara, Aniruddha Bhattacharjee, and India international Kezad Anklesaria and came up with a fine performance on the penultimate day of the event.

During the three-round quarterfinals held on Friday evening and Saturday morning, Mavericks put up a superlative performance against Team Arun Jain, winning all the rounds comfortably with a total score of 104–43 International Match Points (IMPs), 49-27, 30-12 and 25-4.

In the other quarterfinals, favourites Formidables put up a fine show in the first two rounds against strong contender Dhampur Sugar Mills, led by former India captain veteran Ashok Kumar Goel, to win 26-5 and 33-20.

Dhampur, though, came back strongly in the final round scoring a 20–3 win. However, it was not enough and they lost by a total score of 45-68 IMPs.

Like Formidables, Rampage also surged to a considerable lead against Chefs Table, winning the first two rounds 41-4 and 20–15 Chefs Table scored 39-17 in the last round only to lose the match by 58-78 IMPs.

As in the league stage and then in the Round of 16, Team Monica Jajoo had to struggle hard to edge past E. A. Bridge 54-47 IMPs (18 -33, 29-8, and 7-6) in the quarterfinals.

In the last four stage, Mavericks will play against Rampage while Formidables will take on Team Monica Jajoo. Till the filing of this report, Formidables and Mavericks are leading by 72-13 and 48–17 IMPs respectively at the end of two of the total four rounds.

Meanwhile, the Match Point Pairs event of the championship was started on Saturday. The leading pairs at the end of the first session are: 1. Pinaki Prasad & Satyabrata Mukherjee (793.27 Points), 2. Suvbhajit Chowdhury & Souvik Kar (782.77), 3. Abhijit Pal & Mrs Kamna Sharma (751.23). A k Guha & Biplan, 4. Parthasarathi & Subir Majumdar (737.23), 5. A k Guha & Biplab Dawn (727.23), 6. Bhola Nath Ghosh & Dipak Kumar Paul (722.77).

--IANS

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