A couple of Salt Lake residents have returned from an international bridge tournament with the runners-up trophy. Suvankar Basu of BJ Block and Sudip Pandit of CG Block were partners, and part of the six-member KKK Bridge Lovers team at the EA International Bridge Championships 2025 in Chennai.
“We played in the ‘silver event’, and defeated teams of Thailand, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, but in the finals lost out to another team from Calcutta. The ‘gold event’, that is of the highest level, was won by Poland,” says Basu.
Basu, in his 40s, learnt auction bridge while still in school, by playing with friends behind BJ Market. “Back in the day, boys from many blocks would meet there for adda and cards. No one has the time to come now, but I graduated to contract bridge, which is tougher,” he says.
Contract bridge is a card game played by four participants in two partnerships. Players bid to declare a contract and then attempt to win tricks to fulfil it. “People generalise success in card games as being a matter of luck, but that does not apply for bridge. This is a game of skill, logic and knowledge. We have to pore over many books to master it,” adds Pandit.
The duo found the level of the international players very high. “It boils down to practice,” says Basu. “In developed countries, those who form teams pay players to practise round the clock. Bridge is their bread-and-butter so players can devote themselves entirely to the game. We have day jobs to sustain,” says the man who runs a sports goods store on Mahatma Gandhi Road. And no, he does not sell any equipment related to bridge. “Those have to be procured from the Bridge Federation of India or West Bengal Bridge Association.”
Pandit adds that in European countries, the game is a subject from school level to sharpen children’s minds. “But when it comes to cerebral games, chess hogs the limelight as, unlike bridge, chess is a spectator sport,” rues Pandit, an IT professional in his 40s. “Still, in the Indian circuit, Bengalis dominate the game. In our category of this tournament, everyone in the winning and runners -up teams – a combined 12 people – were Bengalis.”
He cites how Shibnath De Sarkar and Pranab Bardhan won gold in the 2018 Asian Games, and Bardhan and Badal Das were part of the team that won silver in the 2023 Bridge World Games. “They are all our mentors now and are trying to promote the game in our state,” says Pandit.
Neighbours are delighted with the success of the players. Basu, who is also a member of BJ Block’s puja committee, was felicitated for his feat during the festival.