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The race for getting into the top eight bracket has truly begun. Evidence of this came out clearly from the continuing efforts of teams to push up and leads kept changing as fifteen rounds were completed in the Bermuda Bowl, Venice Cup and d’Órsi trophy events in the HCL-World bridge championship here on Thursday.
Both the Indian teams, in the Bermuda and d’Órsi events are out of the top eight now as hardened competition began to tell on the home skills.
However in the morning, India seemed on course to recovery in the open event after the last round turmoil on Wednesday when it was badly beaten by Sweden. It was different today in the 13th round. Debarata Majumdar and Sumit Mukherjee (E-W) open room and Amarnath Banerjee and Rana Roy (N-S) in the closed room tackled the Australians well though it was a case of climbing back from arrears. Ten IMPs swing in the eighth board pushed the Indians into a good lead and victory followed. The Indians won by 48-31 IMPs (14.39-5.61 VPs).
However in round-14, Brazil had the better of India, carving out a 34-4 IMPs (16.73-3.27 VPs) win. The same earlier round pairs in reverse order played for India which placed 12th with 145.33 VPs. In the 15th round India comfortably beat Singapore by 52-23 IMPs (16.58-3.42 VPs) but the ranking did not improve as it was placed 11th position with a score of 161.91 VPs.
There was no change in the Indian Women’s fortunes in Venice Cup. Losing by 5-86 IMPs (0-20 VPs) in their round-13 match against Italy, the team went down thereafter to lowly ranked South Africa in round -14 by 14-40 IMPs (3.91-16.09 VPs) to remain rooted at the bottom. Adding misery was the 15th round which they lost to Egypt by 40-50 IMPs (7.20-12.80 VPs).
The seniors had a bad day in the d’Orsi cup, losing both the opening rounds of the day. Krishnan and Sunil (E-W) in open and Badal Chandra Das and Aloke Sadhu (N-S) in closed fell to the Polish by 33-41 IMPs (7.71-12.29 VPs). Again in the next round, Badal and Aloke (N_S) in the open and Ashok Kumar Goel and K.R. Venkataraman (E-W) could do little against Bulgaria, losing 26-38 IMPs (6.72-12.28 VPs). In the 15th round, India narrowly won against Egypt by 42-39 IMPs (10.91-9.09 VPs) to be at the 10th place with 170.80
The rankings (after 15 rounds): Bermuda Bowl: 1. Poland (194.87 VPs) 2. China (186.57) 3. England (185.54) 4. France (183.94) 5. Bulgaria (180.82) 6. Brazil (179.93) 7. USA1 (176.64) 8. Sweden (175.44)
Venice Cup: 1. USA2 (215.52 VPs) 2. Denmark (213.48) 3. USA1 (212.32) 4. Netherlands (206.62) 5. Italy (205.60) 6. China (204.36) 7. France (198.37) 8. Poland (189.29)
d’Orsi trophy: 1. Australia (219.53 VPs) 2. USA1 (200.12) 3. Norway (195.07) 4. USA2 (194.90) 5. Austria (191.75)6. Ireland (190.05) 7. Poland (183.48) 8. England (177.42)
