2015 Bay Area Intercollegiate Bridge Championship

Stanford vs. Cal - The Big Game of Bridge - Rev Murthy Cup

UC Berkeley beat Stanford in the 2nd Annual Bay Area Interollegiate Bridge Championship match to secure the Rev Murthy Cup. Stanford won this event in 2014. Over 300 kibitzers watched the game on BBO Vugraph.

Read about Last year's championship.

The UC Berkeley team was comprised of Kevin Rosenberg/Entong Lu and Becca Wernis/Zhenyang Zhang. Entong Lu, who was on the 3rd place ACBL Collegiate Bowl team in Chicago this past summer, filled in for Isha Thapa, who is on UC Berkeley Team 1 for the 2016 national collegiate competition, who could not make it.

The Stanford team was Adam Kaplan/Edward Yang and Joshua Wang/Ling-Ling Zhang. All four of the Stanford players were on the 2nd place ACBL Collegiate Bowl team this past summer.

A choice of bridge book was offered as a gift to each participant. In addition, each member of the winning team was awarded a 1-year subscription to The Bridge World magazine, donated by Kevin Schoenfeld.

Recap

The match got off to an exciting start on board 1 when the Stanford pair in the open room made 4H and UC Berkeley in the closed room fumbled the ball and went down 1 losing 10 Imps. Berkeley quickly recovered 9 Imps when 4S was bid in the open room and in the closed room the Stanford pair took a conservative view and failed to reach the making game. On the very next board Stanford recovered 8 Imps when in the closed room they stopped in 3H and made when North judged well that hearts were 4-1 with the HJ protected. In the closed room the Berkeley pair faced an opening 3C preempt and, after an off-shape double by North, reached 4H and went down two.

Then along came board 8. The Stanford pair reached 3NT with South as declarer and West got off to an excellent D10 lead which set the contract 2. In the closed room, the Berkeley pair bid 3NT form the North side and East led a heart; the contract could be set 1 with this lead but the defense was now hard to find and North rolled home 9 tricks gaining 11 imps. From this point on Berkeley led throughout. The match was close at the dinner break, 40-26, and the final score was Berkeley 62 - Stanford 36.

Read the BridgeWinners article | Session 1 Vugraph | Session 2 Vugraph

Result: Berkeley 62, Stanford 36

Murthy Cup Presentation

On December 10th, 2015, SiVY co-founders Mukund Thapa and Debbie Rosenberg, who both happen to be Cal parents, visited the UC Berkeley bridge club to present the Rev Murthy Cup to the winning team. The trophy had been engraved with the names of the winning 2015 team - Entong Lu, Kevin Rosenberg, Rebecca Wernis, and Zhengyang Zhang.

Mukund's daughter, Isha Thapa, is president of the active bridge club, which meets regularly Thursday evenings. Isha, now a senior, has been building up the bridge club since freshman year, in part by teaching a for-credit bridge class. Though Isha was not able to play in the Big Game this year, she threw this pizza party to celebrate the team's win over Stanford. About 25 people attended.

Accompanying Mukund and Debbie that evening, were Lynn Shannon and Michael Rosenberg. Lynn is a SiVY volunteer. who designed the trophy, and also happens to be a Cal parent. Michael is a world champion bridge player, Kevin Rosenberg's dad, and organizer of the United States Bridge Federation Online Junior Training program. Some of the Berkeley students in attendance were already participants in that program, and got to meet Michael in person for the first time. Others chatted with him about joining the program.

Congratulations to Cal!