Kolkata: Defending champions Formidables successfully retained their team title, defeating Mavericks with a convincing 159–97 win on International Match Points (IMPs) at the 8th All India Shree Cement Bridge Championship organised by the Corporate Bridge Association of India in the final held on Sunday.

In the match point pairs event, the duo of Pinaki Prasad Khan and Satyabrata Mukherjee emerged victorious.

Pairs event winners Pinaki Prasad Khara & Satyabrata Mukherjee with their trophies. Photo Courtsey: Prosenjit Samanta

The Formidables team comprised Rajeshwar Tewari, Sumit Mukherjee, Kaustabh Nandi, Sagnik Roy, and Sayantan Kushari.

Formidables, consisting of players, all of whom have represented the country in international meets earlier, justified their top billing and improved their performance as the tournament progressed and became richer by Rs 1,20,000.00 which was the winner's stake.

Mavericks, represented by three foreign players – Heral Eide from Norway, Oren Toledano and Ami Zamir from Israel, alongside Indians – Subodh Maskara, Aniruddha Bhattacharjee and veteran Keyzadd Anklesaria – fought hard but had to remain content with Rs 80,000.00, which was the prize for the runners-up.

Players of the Formidables will represent India in the forthcoming Bridge World Championship to be held in Denmark during August next.

Rampage finished third in the team defeating  Team Monica Jajoo.

Earlier in the semi-finals, Formidables started on a strong note and took a lead of 59 points during the first two of the total four rounds against Team Monica Jajoo, scoring 57 and 15 against the latter's 6 and 7.

Though Team Monica Jajoo fought back strongly to win the next two rounds, scoring 37 and 20 against 13 and 18 by their rivals, that was not enough to surpass the total score of the Formidables, who won the match by 102–70 IMPs.

In similar fashion Mavericks also moved to the title clash, defeating Rampage by a total score of 79-65 IMPs. 

Mavericks bagged the first two rounds, scoring 30 and 18 against 3 and 14 by Rampage. Rampage won the remaining two rounds, scoring 24 and 24 against 10 and 21 by Mavericks, however it was too late to change the result.

In the Match Point Pairs event, Pinaki and Satyabrata, who scored 77 and 2.95 match points, were followed by Raju Tolani & Vinay Desai737.68 ) and Biswajit Poddar & Sambhunath Ghosh (736.28).

Bridge Federation of India Secretary Debasish Ray presented the trophies and prizes to all the winners.