In this section I would be putting together all the information regarding bridge facilites in the various cities in India.The information may be sketchy at present but would be made comprehensive in future.
Lucknow Allahabad Varanasi Meerut Dehradun Ghaziabad Kanpur Moradabad Delhi Chandigarh Jaipur Mumbai Pune Asansol Durgapur Bangalore Chennai Ranchi
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.
Winter Nationals are taking place at Lal Bahadur Shastri Stadium , Hyderabad from Dec 4- 14 , 1999.
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 from Fifth Friday Simultaneous Pairs Championship which took place in an around October 29, 1999.
| Dealer:North Vul:NS Lead:- | NORTH 10 - A J 9 7 4 3 A K 9 8 6 5 | |
| WESTA Q 8 6 23 210 8Q J 10 7 | EASTJ 7 4A Q J 9 8 7 6K 23 | |
| SOUTHK 95 3K 10 5 4Q 6 54 2 |
| South | West | North | East |
Fifth Friday Simultaneous Pairs Championship is a pioneering concept introduced by Herman De Wael. A native of Belgium , he is an international tournament director. He holds a simultaneous pairs championship every month which has five Fridays. The championship is in line with the Worldwide Simultaneous Pairs Championship which some time back was sponsored by EPSON. The key difference is that there is no instant matchpointing. In this age of internet and cyber connectivity instant matchpointing has no relevance. The results of the pairs event is sent to Herman by e-mail. He collates all the results and prepares an overall ranking. So you actually get to know how the whole field played the deals and deficiencies of local field doesn't get too much imporatnce in the overall results. For example in our local results the pair which finished second in NS with 53.5 % score became first in the global results with 58.5 % score.
This year the event took place for the first time in India at Lucknow. Overall 33 bridge Clubs in 13 countries organised this Fifth Friday Championship and 554 pairs played between 20 to 33 of the 40 set deals. About similar number of pairs take part in instant match point pairs event ,National Pairs at Home, which is organised all over India by BFI. So for Indian players it is a good exposure of how bridge is played across the world. As this is a pioneering concept Herman is flexible in terms of number of tables, movement & number of deals played in the championship at a particular center. These things are much more rigid in EPSON championship for example.
This week's deal is an interesing deal from the set of deals played in this Fifth Friday Championship.
If you look at the deal the par contract in this deal is 5 Heart doubled by EW 3 down as 5 Diamond by NS is foolproof. But the card play requires a lot of adroitness.
On double dummy basis it is easy to make the contract on any lead but in actual table play declarer has to guess the location of the Diamond King. If declarer places Diamond King correct, the contract would always score. For example if declarer receives a lead of small Spade West would win and switch to Diamonds, now if declarer takes finesse he is one down. But if declarer goes up with Diamond Ace the contract scores. Similarly on Club lead also if declerer gives a ruff initially , East would switch to Spade and again would switch to Diamonds - declarer can score the contract by going up with Ace.
Perhaps the best lead to defeat the contract is small Diamond from East. If declarer fails to playy second round of trumps and tries to ruff Clubs in dummy the contract would go down as East would ruff switch to Spade which West would win and switch to Diamond to take contract down.
In the sample making this contract was a whopping 90% score for NS and any plus score was above average which means that many declarers went down in Five Diamonds.