The Hindu : Sport / Bridge : BFAME championships begins today

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Saturday, May 12, 2007
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Sport - Bridge

BFAME championships begins today

R. Jayaram

Karachi: The 14th Bridge Federation of Asia and the Middle East (BFAME) Championships, hosted by the Pakistan Bridge Federation, gets underway on Saturday.

Confirmation of participation from different countries of the Asian and Middle East regions are still being received for the nine-day long championships.

The three main events are the Open Teams event for the Adamjee Trophy, the Ladies' Teams event for the Vinodini Goenka Trophy and the Seniors Teams event for the Jordan Trophy. The top two teams in each category automatically qualify to play in the World Championships to be held in Shanghai in September.

The first session of the Friendship Pairs will flag off the BFAME tournament. Ton Kooijman of The Netherlands, the operations director of the World Bridge Federation, is the chief tournament director and he will be supported by Ihsan Qadir of Pakistan, the only Asian to have officiated in World Bridge Championships.

Teams from India have been performing excellently in BFAME Championships. Both the Open and Ladies teams have recorded a hat-trick of trophy wins in 2001, 2003 and 2005. This time around, India has a strong presence in the seniors event as well.

Mukul Chatterjee and Arijit Guha are the two Bridge Federation of India officials accompanying the teams.

The teams: Open Team: Ashok Goel, Kamal Mukherjee, Debasish Roy, Pritish Kushari, Kamal Roy and Alok Sadhu.

Ladies Team: Rita Choksi, Lina Mayadas, Hema Deora, Sheilu Thadani, Usha Kabra and Promila Shivdasani.

Seniors Team: J.P. Goenka, Ashok Ruia, Subhash Gupta, Archie Sequeira, Saroj Bhattacharjee and Alok Sadhu.

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