KARACHI, June 4: Pakistan’s teenage-star Asfandyar Hussain, pairing with national star Tahir Abbas, created history to achieve the distinction of heading the second successive day in the Worldwide Bridge, the Mind Sports Association of Pakistan (MSAP) announced here on Monday.

The 19-year-old Asfandyar and Tahir Abbas, contesting from the bridge playing arena of Royal Palm in the Worldwide Bridge contest, played superbly in the event held simultaneously at 336 bridge playing centres around the world with participation of 4,673 pairs from 40 countries.

Tahir-Asfandyar pair secured the top position at the world level with 71.32 per cent score. Along the way they also topped at the club, national level and the zonal level which includes Jordan and India.

At the world level, the winners were Asfandyar and Tahir Abbas (Pakistan) and runners-up were the pair of De Masi Maurizi and Ponzio Elisabet (Italy) followed by Kamal Agarwal and G.N.Mehrotra (India), Mironov Sergey and Yakobson Lila (Russia), Nikos Voukoutis and Kostas Panoulos (Greece) and Bella Ionis and Roger Maurer(USA).

According to the playing format of the Worldwide Bridge, the beauty of this form of play is that each pair competes against its opponents from all world centres and evaluation is made possible through the ECats System with results available as soon as the competition concludes and these results indicate a participating pairs standing at the club, national level, zonal and world level.

“I am delighted, I started playing bridge at the age of 13 and though I have acquired successes, this is a great moment in my bridge playing career,” said Asfandyar.

“I was in Pakistan on a vacation from John Hopkins University in Baltimore, USA, and the big break has come.”

He attributed the success to hard work, devoted coaching by his father Mirza Shauq and mother Fehmina who are national-level bridge players.

As for his partner Tahir Abbas, he has been playing bridge for over 25 years and attributed the victory to the brilliance of Asfandyar.—APP