LAHORE: The 16th Balijee International Bridge Championship went off to a majestic start on Friday at 10.00 am after Ijaz Ahmed of Yummy Milk Products and Tahira Nasir, both son and daughter of Mohammad Iqbal, popularly known as Balijee to the bridge playing community, declared the championship open. After the well nurtured opening moments, the finest of Pakistan’s bridge stars got engrossed and engaged on the bridge tables of Lahore Gymkhana for intelligence related application of bridge playing skills. The first day of this four days championship was reserved for the pairs’ event, which in bridge is like the Twenty20 game in cricket. And during the first session and 24 Boards visible throughout the competition was flow of commendable moves by the masters which resulted in the pair of Arsalan Mansoor and Maj Hasnat Mehmood (North South section) rallying to the front with a score of 63.28. The remaining boards will be played on Saturday (today) and the pairs’ event will conclude around mid-day. Other pairs in North South section who performed admirably were Hamed Mohiuddin and Hassan Askari and this managed a score of 59.38. At a score of 59..27 was the pair of Anwer Gheewala and Ghulam Mohammad. A few more also looked imposing and they were Humayun Khan and Qasim Qureshi (57.83), Hasan Akhter Zaidi and Javed Ahmed Miran (57.81), Preeti Nihalani and Rekha Desai (55.15). And a most lively aspect of the situation was that international players of significance like Kemal Shoaib, Khurshid, Ahsan Javed Qureshi, Tehseen Gheewala, Mirza Shauq Hussain were lagging behind but can emerge in front through forceful play. A total of 116 players divided into 58 pairs are vying for top positions in the Pairs Event which will come to a conclusion today at midday. And in this race, the fancied ones in the East West Section are Asha Sharma and Avijit Chakvaborty (65.55), Fatima Raza and Rubinna Agha (61.88), Javed Khalid and Saeed Akhter (61.55), Anisurrehman and Anwar Mumtaz Kizilbash (60.24) and Yousaf Jan Mohammed and Imran Abedi (59.20). From the numbers angle, the Karachi teams are well represented and so are teams from Lahore, Islamabad, Hyderabad and Abbotabad. At around mid-day today the team event will commence to be played over two and a half days. Another special feature of this championship is the application of the Bridgemate Technology which immensely facilitates recording of scores and the final results are available as soon as the play ends. Published in Daily Times, March 24th 2018.