18th HCL International Bridge Championship Concludes

Given the encouraging response to the virtual format, we hope to host smaller championships at different points during the year. Mr. Sunit Choksi from Team Texan Aces, the winning team for Team of Four Gold event and Naresh Tandan trophy said, Thank you HCL and Kiran Nadar for supporting Bridge and organizing the HCL International Bridge tournament over the years.

• Team Texan Aces emerged as the winner of the Team of Four Gold • Team Dr. SSMC won the Team of Four Silver • Team Urbane Gaming won the Team of Four Bronze • The pair of Rajeshwar Tewari – Keyzad Anklesaria won the Open Pairs Gold event ​ ​HCL, a leading global conglomerate, today announced the winners of the 18th HCL International Bridge Championship. The nine-day tournament held from September 18th to 26th was hosted virtually on the Real Bridge platform. It witnessed participation from over 1100 players from 14 countries, who competed for the prize purse of Rs. 20 Lakhs. A total of 130 international players at the Championship represented countries including UK, Russia, Indonesia, Singapore, Bangladesh, UAE, Malaysia, Argentina, and Thailand. From India, players from 22 states participated in the Championship with 300 players from West Bengal, 180 from Maharashtra, 130 from Delhi, 90 from Karnataka, and 60 from Tamil Nadu.

The closing virtual ceremony was hosted in the presence of Mr. Shiv Nadar, Founder of HCL Group, and Mrs. Kiran Nadar, Director, HCL Corporation, an internationally renowned Bridge player, a 2018 Asian Games Medallis,t and Captain of Team Formidables. Like every year, the Championship was held under the auspices of the Bridge Federation of India.

Speaking during the virtual ceremony, Mrs. Kiran Nadar, Director, HCL Corporation, said, "Many congratulations to all the players for their outstanding performance in this Championship. While several sports came to a halt during the pandemic, Bridge witnessed a resurgence with players across geographies connecting online. Several youngsters also took to the sport online, finding in it a sense of motivation and inspiration during these tough times. We witnessed a similar response to the HCL International Bridge Championship with over 1100 participants. The Championship was organized with the best global standards and I want to thank the core organizing team including Mr. TC Pant, Mr. Sudhir Aggarwal, Mr. Sandeep Thakral for making it a success. Given the encouraging response to the virtual format, we hope to host smaller championships at different points during the year." Mr. Sunit Choksi from Team Texan Aces, the winning team for the Team of Four Gold event and Naresh Tandan trophy said, "Thank you HCL and Kiran Nadar for supporting Bridge and organizing the HCL International Bridge tournament over the years. It was a well-organized tournament and I hope that HCL will continue to extend their support to the game for several years to come. We played in the finals against Team Formidables and it was a tough match. I want to thank all my team members, who are playing so well that we could win the Championship." Winners and Runners-up at the 18th HCL International Bridge Championship are: Category Winner (Team Details and Prize money) 1st Runner up (Team Details and Prize money) Naresh Tandan Trophy for Team of Four Gold Texan Aces (Captained by Gopal Venkatesh. Other included – Sunit Choksi, Anil P Padhye, Padmanabhan Sridharan, S Sunderram, Ajay P Khare, Milind P Athavale and Raju Tolani) Formidables (Captained by Keyzad Anklesaria. Others included – Kiran Nadar, Bachiraju Satyanarayana, Rajeshwar Tewari, Sumit Mukherjee, Dbabrata Majumder, Jaggy B Shivdasani and Sandeep Thakral) Mohini Tandan Trophy for Team of Four Silver Dr. SSMC (Captained by Amiya Ranajn Das. Others included – Somnath Mitra, Shyama Prasad Chatterjee, Bikas Dutta, SuprataSadhukhan and Goutam Das) Ganga Gomti (Captained by B N Batra. Others included – Umesh Kumar Singh, G K Johri, Anil Kumar Srivastava, V K Rattan, S K Garg, Anoop Kumar and Anand Kumar Sivastava) HCL Rising Stars Trophy for Team of Four Bronze Urbane Gaming (Captained by Abhishek Sarkar. Others included – Akash Saha, Soham Chakraborty and Sanjay Chakravarty) Team Crackerjax (Captained by Pankaj Tanna. Others included – Madhuri Gokhale, Aswin Sanghavi, VireshKamdar, Shruti Paras Savla and Paras Pravin Savla) NeenaBonarji Trophy for Open Pairs - Gold event Rajeshwar Tewari and Keyzad Anklesaria Subhash Gupta and Sapan Desai Open Pairs – Silver event Swapan Some and Swapan Kumar De Sekhar K Bandopadhyay and J B Sengupta IMP Pairs Swetadri Saha and Krishna Das Chakraborty Paresh Gupta and Anukul Mandal Note to the Editor: About HCL Founded in 1976 as one of India's original IT garage start-ups, HCL is a pioneer of modern computing with many firsts to its credit, including the introduction of the 8-bit microprocessor-based computer in 1978 well before its global peers. Today, the HCL enterprise has a presence across varied sectors that include technology, healthcare, and talent management solutions and comprises three companies – HCL Infosystems, HCL Technologies, and HCL Healthcare. The enterprise generates annual revenues of over US $ 10.5 billion with more than 176,000 employees operating across 50 countries. For further information, visitwww.hcl.com