Lahore - The 16th Balijee Bridge Championship went off to a majestic start on Friday after Ijaz Ahmed of Yummy Milk Products and Tahira Nasir, both son and daughter of M Iqbal, popularly known as Balijee to the bridge playing community, declared the championship opened.

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-day 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 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 Mohammed. A few more also look imposing and they are Humayun Khan and Qasim Qureshi (57.83), Maj (R) Hasan Akhter Zaidi and Javed Ahmed Miran (57.81) and Preeti Nihalani and Rekha Desai (55.15).

In this race, the fancied ones in the East West Section were 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).