India enter finals of all three categories of BFAME C'ship

Continuing their winning run, Indian card players advanced to the finals of all three categories of the 17th Bridge Federation of Asia and Middle East champion here today.
All the Indian teams by virtue of reaching the finals have also qualified to play for World Championship to be held in Bali, Indonesia later this year.
In the finals, India's seniors will take on their counterparts from Bangladesh, while the women team will face their traditional rivals Pakistan.
The title clash in the Open category of the meet will see the hosts locking horns with Bahrain.
The Indian seniors -- Ashok Kumar Goel, Vinod Sharma, Kamal Krishna Mukherjee, Alok Sadhu, R Sridharan and Sunil Machhar, put up a commendable show to finish at the top with 224 VPs.

After defeating Sri Lanka by 21-9, they outplayed Bangladesh by 24-6 VPs. India in the final would be meeting Bangladesh who finished second with 176 VPs and were followed by Sri Lanka (168,5) and Pakistan (150.5).

Like the seniors, Indian women team, comprising Hema Deora, Bharati Dey, Rita Choksi, Marrianne Karmarkar, Asha Surana and tutu Narula, kept their cool and played well to win both their round robin matches and qualify for the title clash ending second to Pakistan with 205.5 VPs.
Pakistan who have already assured their place in the final yesterday, took the top spot of the league table with 213.5 VPs.

In the first session of the Open category semi-final between India and UAE, the former represented by Ms Kiran Nadar, Sunit Choksi, Satyanarayana Bachiraju, K R Venkatraman, Balakrishnan Prabhakar and Rajeshwar Tewari started well to total 45 international Match Points (IMPs).
The second session saw the hosts buttress their lead having a total of 111 IMPs against 33 by the emirates.
Stung by the reverse, UAE shook off their lethargy and bagged 50 IMPs against 25 by India to narrow down their margin to 83-116 which, however, was not enough as the home side totaled 177 agaianst 100 IMPs by UAE.

The other semi final saw Bahrain, with Wael Basiony, Theodoras Maci, Imran Ali Abedi, Meir Nonoo and Mahesh Lakhani in their fold, taking command from the beginning and beating Bangladesh by 175-134 IMPs.