KARACHI, Oct 8: Abedies with 184 Victory Points (VP) clinched the inaugural Stratified Bridge tournament which concluded at Aslam Memorial Hall of National Stadium Sunday.
Abedies, taken over the command after allocation of the Handicap Points before the third round, played too cautiously against equal as well as superior sides.
Starting their march to victory stand with a deficit score against Candyland, Abedies collected 12 conceding 18.
Abedies comprising Iqbal Abedi, Jawad Abedi, Nuri Pasha, Anwer Kizilbash supported by Farhat and Mushtaq then had a close edge over Sultan 16-14, then lost to Chandna 14-16.
However, in the last match they faced Mahmood IV and netted winning swings to win by the maximum 25 VP Abedies thus finishing on the top with 187 VP.
Candyland (Z) finished runners-up with 176 VP after winning eight out of nine matches in three days contest, giving excellent display of their team work comprising Ziaullah Baig, Hasan Askari and brothers Hamid and Khalid Mohiuddin.
It was a tiring ordeal, but all the four young players netted winning swings in the last four rounds against Abedies 18-12, Jannat 25-5, SSS 15- 15 and finally Sultan 16-14 V.P.
SSS, a team of six senior bridge enthusiasts like Rehana Saigol, Shakeel Saigol, Samia Rashid, Shirin Bokhari, Shameem Akhtar and Saeed Akhtar gave excellent account of their craftsmanship when they outpaced much senior side Spectrum in the last round with 55 IMP, thus conceding them 2 and collecting 25 V.P.
Earlier SSS had defeated Azmat 18-12 and draw level against Chandna and Candyland.
Pakistan Bridge Federation in view to promote duplicate bridge programmed had arranged first Stratified Duplicate Bridge, which proved to be a major success.
Giving prizes to the eight top teams, Khurshid Hadi vowed to introduce more such programs to inspire young bridge players to take up duplicate bridge, a mind game, more seriously.
Pakistan has a lot of talents and it requires only the concerted efforts to work on correct lines.
Following are the top eight teams: 1. Abedies (187) 2. Candyland Z (176), 3. SSS 175 4. Chandna 174 5. Sultan 168 6. Waqar (165) 7. Amin (161) 8. Attackers 157 VP.—APP