Kolkata, Dec 5 Usha Kabra & Gopinath Manna produced fine form to win the Phoenix Mixed Pairs title with 82.78 International Match Points (IMPs) in the ongoing 67th Ashok Ruia Memorial Winter National Bridge Championship being played at the Biswa Bangla Convention Centre in New Town in Kolkata.
The event saw Deepa Jacob & Prosenjit Manna taking the runners-up position, collecting 64.34 IMPs out of a total of 55 pairs vying for the top honours.
Others among the top ten finishers after the final round are -- Aditi Javeri & Biswajit Poddar in third, Ramani Menon & Jenish Shah fourth, Monica Jajoo & Sumit Mukherjee 5th, Soham Sarkar & Kalpana Gurjar in sixth position, Kamna Sharma & Abhijit Pal in 7th spot, Kiran Nadar & Buchiraju Satyanarayana eighth, Keyzad Anklesaria & Vidhya Patel in ninth, and Madhur (Daisy Singh) & Badal Das in the 10th position.
Meanwhile, the Open Team Event for the Ashok Ruia Memorial Gold Cup, known as the most prestigious team event competition in the country, along with the Silver Cup category for the lesser-ranked players, began on Friday.
Out of the 28 top teams in the fray for the title, Team Mohota, represented by Anurag Mohota, Basant Mohota, Biswajit Poddar, and Sambhunath Ghosh, is leading the field with 56.65 Victory Points (VPs) at the end of the third round.
A total of eight rounds will be held before the 16 top teams qualify for the knock-out stages.
The first Winter National Championship was held in 1959 in Bombay with the Ruia Trophy and Holkar Open Pairs.
The Ruia Trophy, considered a symbol of bridge supremacy in India, started in 1959 in memory of Late Shri Ram Niwas Ruia. It is a running trophy given to the Team of Four champions in the Winter National Bridge Championship. The winner and runners-up get an entry to the Indian Selection Trials. Since 2005, the trophy has been called the Ruia Gold Trophy. Nowadays, two events for Team of Four are held simultaneously, with an additional trophy - the Ruia Silver Trophy.
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