LAHORE, March 20: The Indian pair of Subhash Gupta-Venkaatraman led the first session with 386 Match Points (MPs) on the first day of the 8th Balijee memorial bridge tournament at Lahore Gymkhana on Sunday. The visitors faced serious fight from Pakistani pair of Rashid Jaffer-Sultan Siddiqui who were at the second position with 355 MPs.

Rashid and Sultan had finished 36th at the Pairs Bridge Olympiad at Montreal a couple of years back.

The top 20 pairs have 11 Pakistanis and nine Indians. Tournament director Ihsan Qadir said that in all 76 pairs were placed in two sections, one named Iqbal House and the other Ajaz House.

India have fielded more than 30 pairs, which also include their national team headed by Kiran Nadir.

Results:

K R Venkatraman-Subhash Gupta 386(India), Sultan Siddiqui-Rashid Jafer 355.5 (Pak), Anwer Gheewala-A K Bhurgri 344.5 (Pak), Sudhir-Aggarwal 340.5 (India), Zia Hassan 324.5 (Pak), Qamar Kiani-Asif Ali 322.5 (Pak), Kamaljit-Deepak Parkash 321 (India), Javaid Khalid-Rita Choksi 320 (India-Pak), Anand Virmani-Ravi Batra 319 (India), A L Suri-Shyam Sharma 318 (India), Shoaib Bokhari-Saeed Shah 316 (Pak), Pervaiz Mirza-Gulzar Bilal 314 (Pak), Dr Singh K C Pant 313.5 (India) Mazhar Tariq 312 (Pak), Nasir Reza Abdul Khaliq 311 (Pak), Omar Zuberi 310.5 (Pak), Noshin-Khalida 309.5 (Pak), Tahir Masud-Munir Ataullah 308 (Pak) and Ashok Singh Ravi Sawhney 304 (India).