The 17th Bridge Federation of Asia and Middle East Championship got off to a fine start with the duo of Vinay Desai and Swapan Desai winning the Friedship Pair event at Hotel Hyatt, here today.
They were followed by Keyzad Ankelsaria/J M Shah and Kiran Nadar/Satyanarayn Bachiraju. This event was held as a curtain raiser for the main championship which starts tomorrow.
Champions Indian women will meet Sri Lanka in their opening match tomorrow while runners-up India take on the Islanders in their first outing in the Open category the same day.
Out of 16 BFAME championships held earlier, Indian women have a fine record of finishing among top two teams and thus qualify for the World Bridge championship for Venice Cup 14 times so far.
Commenting on tomorrow's match, Marrianne Karmarkar, one of the players of the six-member Indian women's team said, "We are looking forward to this match. Hopefully we would be able to live up to the expectation and put up a good show tomorrow."
Another member of the team, Bharati Dey who was part of the Indian women's squad that qualified for the World Championship in 2011, echoed Karmarkar's view and added, "We hope to qualify for the world championship this time also."
For the Indian Open team, Pakistan who over took India to emerge champions in the 16th BFAME at Chennai during 2011, will be the strongest opponent. But India, who finished at the top for consecutive five BFAME meets earlier and played at the World championship a total of 12 times, are no push over and will go all out to regain their supremacy among the Asian and Middle East countries in the casrd game.
Earlier, eight-time World Billiards champion Geet Sethi along with BFAME Vice Presidents M Azwerul Haque from Pakistan, Bridge Federation of India President N R Kirubakara Moorthy, President of Sri Lanka Bridge Federation Lalith Ganlath and organising secretary of the tournament Sunit Choksi lighted the sacred lamp to mark the formal inauguration of the tournament.
