Kolkata, Dec 10 (IANS) Rajeshwar Tiwari & Shubham Acharya led the field with 1505.06 Match Points (MPs) and are followed by Sayantan Kushari & Sagnik Roy (1452.87 MPs) at the end of 20 out of total 25 preliminary rounds of Mall of the Millenium Match Point Pairs Competition (Ranking Event) of Ashok Ruia Memorial Winter National Bridge Championship being held at Biswa Bangla Convention Centre in New Town here on Wednesday.
Out of the sixty pairs playing now, the top 26 will compete in the final round to be held along with the Seniors Pairs Event (for 60 years and above) on the concluding day on Thursday.
Other pairs out of the top ten (the end of the 20th round) are: 3. Joyrup Mullick & Pranab Roy (1422.34), 4. Bhaskar Sarkar & Sukanta Das (1391.27), 5. Sandip Dutta & Gopinath Manna (1376 40), 6. Souvik Kar & Pritam Das (1370.15), 7.S R Dutta & S C Sarkar (2362.77), 8. Ramkrishna Majumder & Swapan Kumar Ghosh (1362.18), 9. Prasun Mukherjee & Ajay Bagaria (1362.18), 10. Goutam Pore & Amitava Ghosh (1351.88).
Earlier, displaying superb form, Mohota represented by Anurag Mohota, Basanta Mohota, Biswajit Poddar and Sambhunath Ghosh, all greenhorns, won the prestigious Ruia Gold Cup defeating seasoned campaigner Hemant Jalan, consisted of Sandeep Thukral and Subhash Gupta, both world cuppers, Hemant Jalan, Ashish Malhotra and Vikrant Mehta, by 144.90–123 Victory Points ( VPs) in the title clash of the event in the Ashok Ruia Memorial Winter National Bridge Championship at Biswa Bangla Convention Centre in New Town here Tuesday. This is Mohota`s first victory in any national event so far.
In the final played on Tuesday, Mohota started well, bagging 56.5 VPs against 25 by Hemant Jalan in the first segment. The second segment saw the Mohotas buttressing their lead to 110–60 VPs.
In the third segment, they scored 22 VPs against 13 by Hemant Jalan to take their total to 132.5=-73 VPs. Stung by the reverse, Hemant Jalan pulled up their socks to put up a good fight, scoring 50 VPs against 12.40 by Mohota. But that was not enough as Mohota scored a four-segment total of 144.90 against 123 by Hemant Jalan to clinch the issue in their favour.
