Chennai hosted the second edition of the EA Bridge International Bridge Championships from September 7 to 13, 2026, at the Central Atrium of the Express Avenue Mall. Organised by EA Bridge (Express Infrastructure Pvt. Ltd.) under the aegis of the Bridge Federation of India and in association with the Tamil Nadu Bridge Association, the week carried an overall prize pool of INR 1.5 crore (about USD 150,000) spread across eight separate competitions, building on the momentum of last year’s inaugural edition.
Gold Teams: Team Gromov’s Late Surge
Thirty-seven teams contested the flagship Gold Teams event, run as a round-robin qualifying phase followed by a 16-team knockout. EA Bridge, the host club’s own team — fielding tournament chairperson Kavita Singhania alongside American internationals Brad Moss and Joe Grue, plus Robert Brady and Gopinath Manna — set the pace throughout qualifying, finishing well clear of the field. Their run ended in a tense quarterfinal, decided by just 3 IMPs in favor of Team Gromov of Russia, and only after EA Bridge had come within a whisker of survival with a spectacular final-segment rally.
Team Gromov carried that momentum forward. Trailing Mavericks by more than 37 IMPs after three semifinal segments, the Russian team produced a comeback of more than 50 IMPs in the last segment — including a single board worth 17 IMPs — to win 117-103.33. In the final, Team Gromov built an early lead and held off a late fightback from Formidables, one of India’s leading teams, to prevail 143-107. S D Associates beat Mavericks 96.6-75 in the third-place playoff.
Final standings:
- Team Gromov (Russia) — Andrey Gromov, Dmitry Rogov, Maxim Semisoshenko, Yuri Khokhlov, Vadim Kholomeev, Anna Gulevich
- Formidables (India) — Kiran Nadar, Bachiraju Satyanarayana, Sumit Mukherjee, Rajeshwar Tewari, Kaustabh Nandi, Sagnik Roy
- S D Associates (India) — Keshav Sakharam Samant, Vijay R. Phatarphekar, Mukund Jagannathan, Vivek Bhand, R. Sridharan, T. V. Ramani
- Mavericks (India) — Subodh Maskara, Dominic Filopowicz, Oren Toledano, Ami Zamir, Keyzad Anklesaria, Aniruddha Bhattacharya
Silver Teams: Team Kabra’s Fightback
In the 53-team Silver Teams event, Team Kabra overturned a 27-IMP deficit against Paas Four in the final, closing with a string of strong segments to win 145-135. Zenith beat Chefs Table 131.5-53 for third place.
Final standings:
- Team Kabra — Karmal Kabra, Indranil Chakraborty, Subrata Chakraborty, Ramprosad Das, V. Ravindran, Arabinda Kumar Mishra
- Paas Four — Pranay Majumder, Animesh Majumder, Saswata Bhattacharya, Arup Kumar Hudait
- Zenith — Bulu Saha, Sayantan Konar, Biswadip Roy, Sujit Sadhak, Sukanta Das, Pujah S. Jhunjhunwala
- Chefs Table — Meenu Dugal, Swapan Sardar, Goutam Pore, Amitava Ghosh, Saptarshi Chanda, Vivekananda Ghosh
Away from the two knockout finals, three further results caught the eye this week. EA Bridge’s own team, denied in the Gold Teams quarterfinal by the narrowest of margins, went on to win the championship’s separate Swiss Teams event outright, topping a 54-team field with 98.85 VP ahead of Shree Cement (89.69) and Sahyadri (85.70) — a strong finish after their early exit from the knockout stage.
In the pairs events, Sayantan Kushari and Kaustubh Bendre won both the Match Point Pairs (680.07, more than 71 points clear of the field) and the Swiss Match Point Pairs (735.08) — two separate titles for the same partnership within a single championship.
And Asha Sharma completed a double of her own with two different partners: having won the Women’s Pairs alongside Devi Muthu Bhatnagar (101.00 IMPs), she went on to take the Mixed Pairs title — a 71-pair field that included entries from across India and abroad — with Namit Sharma (93.77), both partnerships from Delhi.
Final Results at a Glance
- Gold Teams: 1. Team Gromov (Russia), 2. Formidables, 3. S D Associates, 4. Mavericks
- Silver Teams: 1. Team Kabra, 2. Paas Four, 3. Zenith, 4. Chefs Table
- Match Point Pairs: 1. Sayantan Kushari & Kaustubh Bendre, 2. Sandeep Thakral & Vikrant Mehta, 3. Anil P. Padhye & Rajesh A. Dalal
- IMP Pairs: 1. C N Anand & Naresh Mehta, 2. S Raghuraman & Raghunath Ramanathan, 3. Kamna Sharma & Abhijit Pal
- Swiss IMP Pairs: 1. Sambuddha Deb & Sanat Kumar Saha, 2. Rajath Shourie & Stephen Thorpe, 3. Abhijit Pal & Kamna Sharma
- Women’s Pairs: 1. Devi Muthu Bhatnagar & Asha Sharma, 2. Bindiya Naidoo & Vasanti Shah, 3. Nikita Kamal & Sujata Puranik Rakhra
- EA Bridge Swiss Teams: 1. EA Bridge, 2. Shree Cement, 3. Sahyadri
- Swiss Match Point Pairs: 1. Sayantan Kushari & Kaustubh Bendre, 2. Md. Zahid Hossain & Shah Zia-Ul Haque, 3. Raghunath P. Tripathi & Pradip Mondal
- Mixed Pairs: 1. Namit Sharma & Asha Sharma, 2. Arun Kumar Sinha & Nikita Kamal, 3. Priya Ranjan Sinha & Bindiya Naidoo