Junior Nationals Summary

This year we headed to the Junior Bridge Nationals at Mumbai with high spirits, as we were putting up our best team yet. Ashok, Prajwal, Guthi and I have been practicing hard and reading a lot this past year. Tota and Angad joined us at Mumbai and though they were out of touch they performed well enough.

The tournament turnout was disappointingly low; there were only 36 players from around the country. Guthi was not surprised, but I thought considering there were nearly 30 players at the first junior nationals at hyderabad three years ago, there should be a lot more now. And that 36 included six 10-12 year old kids from Salem. While I can understand CBA's sentiment in encouraging them, their presence totally messed up the scoresheets in the individual event and the pairs event. But it wasn't entirely their fault either that the above two events were not much fun; quite a lot of the players there were novices at the game. I had expected a significant number of people to be in the "intermediate" category, but what we got was a bunch of beginners, a contingent of six good players from west bengal, and another good team consisting of Aniket Sanghvi, Anurag Mohota, Soumya Das (dashu), Ayan Mandal, and a fifth player (Pravin) we didn't know from before.

In all, there were 7 teams for the team of four event, and immediately it was clear that the top three teams were way ahead of the field. We were informed that the top four teams would qualify for the superleagues, so for the top three teams it was a time of taking stock of the other two, and for the rest it was a race for fourth place. The other IIT Madras team from Tapti hostel narrowly missed qualifying, and it was a Mumbai team that made it. As for us, we lost by IMP margins of 10-11 to both the west bengal team and Aniket's team in the 8-board match.

The ostensible purpose of the superleagues was to decide who faces who in the semifinals (the winner gets to select the opponent), but they carried over the VPs from the leagues so Aniket's team was too far ahead to catch up even though we won all three league matches, getting the max 25 VPs two out of three times. So it was just play practice and gaining an understanding of the opponents' styles and systems. Also for us it was a morale booster, winning all matches comfortably, and beating the west bengal team soundly. Thus we had a psychological advantage going against them in the semifinals, once again winning by 25 VPs. Guthi and I had been playing really well from the superleague stage and we kept it up in the semifinals.

Then came the time of reckoning, but somehow we just found ourselves slipping in the finals, losing a few IMPs here and a few IMPs there to end up 24 IMPs down after 20 boards. In the final 10 boards, after no significant chance of gain after 6 boards I stopped concentrating and we slipped further to lose another 12 IMPs or so at the finish.

The good thing about the tournament was that we made a good impression by trouncing the west bengal team by 25 VPs twice and beating Aniket's team once (though Aniket himself missed that match). We didn't lose because they were better but because of the unpredictability inherent in bridge, and perhaps because we didn't handle our nerves as well as we should have in the finals. I hope at least a couple of us make it to the Indian Junior Bridge team this year, and we know we have a great shot at winning the JNs next year.

Cheers
Prashanth.