China and hosts India put up a fine show as the league stages of the Bonus 5th Asia Cup Bridge Championship concluded at Taj Cidade de Goa Horizon, Dona Paula on Thursday. The semi-finals will be played on Friday
India’s ‘B’ team for the Seniors event represented by Hemant K Jalan, Sukamal Das, Rajesh Dalal, Jitendra Solani, Anil Padhye and Raju Tolani reached the semis, topping the Swiss League format with 188.78 Victory Points (VPs). The hosts’ ‘A’ men’s team consisting Subhas Gupta, Sandeep Thakral, Sumit Mukherjee, Rajeshwar Tiwari, Sagnik Roy and Kaustabh Nandi also made it to the last-four stage collecting 186. 47 VPs remaining at the third position.
The Chinese men’s team, true to the expectation, finished at the top of league chart with 218.31 VPs and was followed by Hong Kong China ‘A’ ( 196.72 VPs). Bangladesh ‘B’ also went to the semi-final being at 4th position with 174.24 VPs. Indian ‘B’ team could not make the cut scoring 170.45 VPs.
In the seniors event beside India ‘B’ , Australia (166.99 VPs), Japan (146.94) and Chinese Taipei (146.60 VPs) completed the semi-finals line-up. India ‘A’ ended at the 6th place with 139.75 VPs.
The Mixed event was dominated by China as both their A and B teams entered the knock-out stage taking first and second position with 169.23 and 163.92 VPs respectively.
The other two semi-finalists in this section are Hong Kong China (155.43 VPs) and Australia (141. 14 VPs). India ‘B’ narrowly missed the target as they could gather 135. 90 VPs to finish at the 5th position. India ‘A’ was at the 11th place with 113 . 77 VPs. All the semi-finals would be held tomorrow. The semis would consist of three rounds of 16 boards.
