Asfandyar, Tahir lead in World-wide Bridge

Pakistan's teenage-star Asfandyar Hussain pairing with national star Tahir Abbas carved history in Pakistan to achieve the distinction of heading second day in the World-wide Bridge, Pakistan Mind Sports Association (SMAP) announced on Monday.
Nineteen-year old Asfandyar and Tahir Abbas contesting from the Bridge Playing arena of Royal Palm in the World-wide Bridge contest, played superbly in the event held simultaneously on June 1-2 at 336 bridge playing centres around the world with participation of 4,673 pairs from 40 countries. Tahir-Asfandyar, secured the top position at the world level with 71.32 percent. Along the way they also topped at the club, national level and at Zonal level which includes Jordan and India.
At the world level the winners were Asfandyar and Tahir Abbas (Pakistan) and runners-up was the pair of De Masi Maurizi and Ponzio Elisabet (Italy) followed by Kamal Agarwal and G.N. Mehrotra (India), Mironov Sergey and Yakobson Lila (Russia), Nikos Voukoutis and Kostas Panoulos (Greece) and Bella Ionis and Roger Maurer (USA).
According to the playing format of the World-wide Bridge, the beauty of this form of play is that each pair competes against its opponents from all world centres and evaluation is made possible through the ECats System with results available as soon as the competition concludes and these results indicate a participating pairs standing at the club, national level, zonal and world level.
"I am delighted, I started playing bridge at the age of 13 and though I have acquired successes, this is a great moment in my bridge playing career. "I was in Pakistan on a vacation from my University studies in John Hopkins University in Baltimore, USA and the big break has come". He attributed the success to hard work, devoted coaching by his father, Mirza Shauq and mother, Fehmina who are national level bridge players.
As for Tahir Abbas, he has been playing bridge for over 25 years and attributed the victory to the brilliance of Asfandyar. "This youngster is unrattled by the big occasion and nothing can distract him when he is playing bridge: Tahir Abbas, who led Pakistan in last year's Bermuda Bowl World Bridge Championship held in the Netherlands, said.