🧭 A Milestone in My Bridge Journey
After a packed spring with the NABC, China National Open, Hong Kong Yeh Cup, and Tokyo Invitational, I finally reached the biggest stage of the year — the APBF Championships.
This was more than just a tournament. It marked a milestone in my bridge career: 10 consecutive years on the national team, moving from women’s to mixed, and now debuting in the open category. It was also my first time competing alongside my life partner — a journey of growth, challenge, and breakthrough, facing Asia’s best together.
林國瑞、黃光輝、郭立翔、陳立錚
🧑🤝🧑 Twists of Fate: From Rivals to Teammates
It was truly unexpected to earn a spot on the national team this time. In the final of the Open team trials, we faced 聚仁, led by Coach Patrick Huang, and had already braced ourselves for defeat. But in bridge — as in battle — the outcome is never certain until the very end, and the tides can turn when least expected.
After the trials, two of our original teammates were unable to attend the APBF. The rest of us unanimously decided to invite Coach Patrick Huang to join us. We assumed the proposal would be a long shot, but to our surprise, he agreed without hesitation — instantly transforming our team from a shaky mid-tier squad into a serious medal contender.
📌Dual Mission: Reach the Podium &
Earn a Ticket to the World Championship📌
🗂️How It Works: Double Round-Robin
& Tickets to the World Championship
This year’s APBF Open category followed the familiar double round-robin format, with 13 teams playing 24 matches over seven days to determine who would reach the podium. The winning team not only took home the gold but also claimed the first ticket to the World Championship in Denmark this August.
However, APBF rankings and World Championship qualifications aren’t entirely the same. While final standings are set after the round-robin, the remaining two spots for the World Championship are decided through a knockout playoff.
These three qualification spots are reserved for Zone 6 (Asia Pacific). Although 13 countries participated, teams from Australia and New Zealand (Zone 7) and India (Zone 4) belong to different WBF zones and will compete for World Championship berths through their own regional quotas. As such, they were not involved in the Zone 6 qualification race.
Zone 6 countries: Chinese Taipei, China, Korea, Thailand, Japan, Indonesia, Hong Kong, Singapore, Macau, and the Philippines.
Knockout schedule:
Day 8:
2nd place vs. 3rd place
4th place vs. 5th place
→ The winner of 2 vs. 3 directly qualifies for the second World Championship spot.
→ Both winners advance to the next round.
Day 9:
→ The loser of 2 vs. 3 faces the winner of 4 vs. 5.
→ The winner of this match earns the third and final ticket.
This format gives lower-ranked teams a fighting chance — a bit more complex, perhaps, but it certainly adds tension and drama to the endgame. All we could do was stay steady, play sharp, and take on this nine-day marathon (hopefully wrapped in seven 😝) head-on.
⚠️Day 1：Shaky Start, Points by Luck
Our first-day opponents were Thailand, Macau, and Indonesia. We scored two wins and one loss, earning 7.56, 14.85, and 17.19 VPs respectively — a total of 39.6 VPs, putting us in 4th place for the day.
Though we scored a big win against Indonesia and barely hit our target VP total, the board content was… hard to watch 🫣. The lopsided result came mostly thanks to our opponents misreading ♦ as ♥ and misbidding two vulnerable games — letting us walk away with a beautiful-looking score we honestly didn’t deserve.
With the Indonesia Women's Team
💫 Featured Deal
Here’s a deal from our second round against Macau — technically sound, yet still frustrating.
As dummy came down, I couldn’t help but admire my partner’s boldness — bidding game with a minimum hand and not even an Ace, perfectly embodying the belief that “Never miss a vulnerable game.” With just 20 HCP, this looked like a sure score.
But confidence can be dangerous. East had shown five hearts, and looked like the one with short spades. To guard against a possible singleton ♠A in East, I carefully played a club with the plan of playing spades from dummy... and ended up with the only minus score on the board 😒. In hindsight, I could’ve just played a low spade and been done with it. Our opponents stopped at 2♠ as expected, while we went down in game — not just a 7-IMP loss, but a 17-IMP swing from what could’ve been a clear win. A painful 2.92 VPs 😢.
With the tournament directors
🌸Day 2：Taking Down Giants, Blooming with Slams
Day 2 brought a gauntlet of tough opponents — Korea, New Zealand, and the tournament favorite, China. After a shaky start the day before, we entered with caution, knowing that any misstep could send us tumbling. But to our surprise, the results far exceeded expectations: we scored three straight wins, earning 13.96, 13.96, and 15.46 VPs — including a satisfying high score against powerhouse China. It was the boost we needed.
Against Korea, the match opened with a slam and ended with another — a rare victory where skill and luck walked hand in hand.
💫 Featured Deal
The show began with a borderline slam.
Our opponents struggled through the auction but stopped at 4♥. When they saw hearts break nicely, all they could do was sigh and say, “Always 🙃.”
Meanwhile, our teammates boldly bid the slightly-better-than-50% 6♥ contract — and it came home cleanly for a 13-IMP gain.
First on the scoreboard: 郭騰凱（left）、黃有章（right）
💫 Featured Deal
The final slam decision was not to be missed.
In natural systems, it’s easy to land in the nine-card heart fit early on — and miss the club fit entirely. Out of 12 tables, 8 played in a heart contract, and only 2 found the optimal 7♣.
We were playing Precision. Sitting South with 25 HCP, I asked and found out that partner held 8–10 points, five clubs, four hearts, and no ♥Q. Clearly, the right contract wasn’t going to be 6♥ or 7♥ — but choosing between 7♣ and 7N gave me a real headache, especially after the cryptic 6N. Was that seriously where this deal was heading?
The choice between 7♣ and 7N hinged on the quality of North’s club suit. Without the benefit of psychic powers, I had no way of knowing whether partner held the ♣J. If 7♣ ran into a 4–1 split while 7♥ made on a 2–2 break, that would’ve been a heartbreaking loss. After weighing the odds, I went with 7N — hoping one of the suits would run, and that the ♠J or a well-timed squeeze would deliver the 13th trick.
With the clock ticking down, tension was high — but squeeze play is Kuo Li-Hsiang’s specialty. With no spade lead from the defense, he executed a smooth double squeeze and brought home the board for +11 IMPs — the perfect finish to a dramatic battle.
郭立翔（左）、蘇皓沂（右）夫婦搭檔
💫 Featured Deal
Just after wrapping up a nerve-wracking grand slam decision, we were immediately thrown into another one — this time against China.
It was a straightforward auction — 8 out of 12 tables reached the grand slam with no trouble.
With standard agreements like [2♠-2N-3♠] or [3♠-3N] followed by Texas Transfers (4♦=♥, 4♥=♠), this board was about as easy as they come.
The only catch? We had a last-minute lineup change after the trials, and ours was the only pair in the team that had this sequence properly agreed 🤪. Thankfully, with Captain Kuo Li-Hsiang’s brilliant lineup decisions, we didn’t blow the very first board against powerhouse China.
💥 Day 3：Bizarre Boards, Back-to-Back Blows
Our opponents for Day 3 were Japan, Hong Kong, the Philippines, and Singapore. Based on pre-match expectations, this lineup looked less threatening than the previous day — but we stumbled hard against both Hong Kong and Singapore, scoring 10.33, 7.03, 15.66, and 5.81 VPs.
We sat out the match against Hong Kong. The Singapore match, however, hit us with a double blow: first, they found a one-of-a-kind, perfectly timed sacrifice; then, they boldly chose a line completely against the odds — and were rewarded with a lucky drop on a singleton queen, landing 3N. Both boards were outliers — unique across all tables — and left us with no way to recover.
wide arena
💫 Featured Deal
The most thrilling board of the day came during our sit-out match against Hong Kong, where both teams leapt boldly to grand slams. Our teammates, however, pulled off a brilliant triple squeeze — crushing Hong Kong’s hopes of dealing us a heavy blow.
A top Hong Kong player watching the broadcast commented:
“That completely shattered my understanding of bridge…🫨”
Totally agree — lucky I was just watching 🤣
🎯 Day 4：First Round Complete — Sitting at the Top
The first two matches of the day closed out the first round-robin, with India and Australia — then ranked 2nd and 3rd — as our opponents. We took a bit of a meteor hit mid-match 🫨, but still came away with two wins, earning 12.44 and 13.48 VPs. The direct hit on Australia helped us finish the first round with a 9–3 record and the top spot.
We sat out the opening match of the second round-robin. From here, our schedule would go in reverse ranking order — facing teams from the bottom up to second place. For a team like ours, famously bad at crushing weaker teams in true Chinese Taipei tradition, it was shaping up to be a tough slog 🫠
With the Thailand Open Team
We battled all the way to the final day
chasing the last World Championship ticket. 🥲
💫 Featured Deal
One of today’s most memorable boards was the result of perfectly judged competitive bidding — executed in sync with our Australian counterparts.
The aggressive auction made defense straightforward. Sitting East, Kuo Li-Hsiang confidently led the ♦A, then returned a diamond for me to ruff — making ours one of only two tables where North–South were held to just 10 tricks in a spade contract. 😎
Worth noting: 5♠ by South was actually makable. Unfortunately, South’s hand was too weak to raise directly over 3♠ — otherwise, with the right system agreement, Australia could have stolen the declarer seat and scored a big win on this board.
With the Australian Mixed Pair
🧮 Results Recap: Neck and Neck, Every Team a Contender
First Round-Robin: 9 wins, 3 losses
Total: 159.23 VPs
Average: 12.27 VPs
First round-robin standings:
Top 10 teams all above 132 VPs.
Even 11th place was just below average.
A tight race across the board.
Pair Datum
Kuo-So: 7th +0.69 IMPs
Huang-Chen: 14th +0.294 IMPs
⚔️ Day 5：A Brief Reign, Revenge on the Board
Our Day 5 opponents were lower-ranked teams — Macau, Hong Kong, New Zealand, and Singapore. We scored 17.19, 8.42, 9.67, and 19.18 VPs respectively. Two big wins and two small losses made for a decent day overall.
However, China — only 6th at the end of the first round — suddenly awakened like a tiger unleashed. They devoured six teams in a row, averaging a monstrous 17.23 VPs per match. Just yesterday, they trailed us by 14 VPs; today, they surged ahead by 12.
Australia wasn’t far behind either, surging with an average of 15.29 VPs. And just like that, our brief moment at the top was gone — slipping to 3rd place 😢.
💫 Featured Deal
Our revenge match against Singapore was a brutal fight from the start, and we soon faced a key decision:
If East held a 4-4-1-4 or even a 5-3-1-4 distribution, the score from 4♦x would likely fall short compared to 4♠=. In the worst-case scenario, 4♦x might even make — a nightmare result.
But bridge is a game of probabilities, and long-term success comes from consistently choosing the best expected value.
Pass — a calm, calculated decision that earned us 8 IMPs and marked the start of our comeback.
The grand and elegant vugraph table
💫 Featured Deal
It was a similar situation — but this time, the decision was my partner’s to make. He held strong trumps, though the seat was less favorable. The level was slightly lower, but the potential cost was still significant.
In reality, it may not have been such a hard choice. At the table, 8 out of 12 pairs ended up with the same result. The auctions were likely similar across the board, each side settling for -300.
💫 Featured Deal
A seemingly ordinary weak no trump sparked sudden fireworks. North–South might have had slightly different views on the strength of their hands — but Kuo Li-Hsiang wasted no time seizing the opportunity. Ruthless and precise, he doubled the contract without hesitation. A calmly ducked ♦A lured declarer into a misguess, compounding the disaster.
The result: 3Nx-4 for +800 and a sweet 13-IMP gain.
Perhaps shaken by this string of heavy blows, our opponents seemed to lose their fighting spirit. In the following boards, they quietly let us buy two deals at 3♦ and 2♦ despite holding 9-card ♥ fits, and even sold us 4♥ when they had a 10-card ♠ fit. Silenced and subdued, they stopped bidding altogether — and we gladly took back 19.18 VPs with interest.
Venue: Fengda International Hotel, Hefei, China
🧨 Day 6：Final Stretch — The Streak Ends
As the round-robin neared its end, our opponents were Korea, Indonesia, China, and Thailand. We scored 10.33, 9.67, 14.64, and 10.97 VPs — all close matches, with no dominant win in sight. We kept hoping for a decisive victory, but it never came, which was a bit frustrating.
Still, the most critical match was clearly the one against China. We struck hard with 14.64 VPs, putting an end to their outrageous streak of scoring over 16 VPs in every match of the second round robin. That win felt good — but even so, the final point gap between us was still 17 VPs. A bittersweet result. 🙃
China’s unbeaten streak in the 2nd RR came to an abrupt end.
💫 Featured Deal
The outcome of this match hinged on a slam — called by one side, missed by the other.
A matter of bidding or not, of opening lead or not — a tiny margin made all the difference.
The 22-IMP swing from that one board sealed the result.
With the China Open Team
🚩 Day 7：Three Wins in a Row — All Fired Up
Grand slams and bloodbaths — the final stage had it all, and it didn’t disappoint.
Our opponents for the day were India (ranked 4th), Australia (1st), and Japan (7th). We sat in 3rd, looking up at the top two teams with a 17–20 VP gap, while maintaining a 20–40 VP cushion over 4th and 5th.
Not quite hopeless, but it definitely felt like we were stuck in no man’s land.
💫 Featured Deal
In the first match against India, our weak no trump came through once again.
We were lucky not to get penalized, and ended up penalizing instead!
3Nx-2, earning us 11 IMPs and 17.04 VPs
The perfect opening shot to launch our counterattack.
So Ho-Yee of Chinese Taipei
1 of only 5 women in the entire Open category
💫 Featured Deal
It wasn’t exactly a textbook-perfect auction, but it was a fearless one — and it bore fruit.
Australia’s aggressive bidding style pushed hard, offering nothing but an eight-card spade fit and zero known points. All I could do was estimate whether, under typical distributions, the slam had enough expected value to be worth the risk.
Normally, I would’ve played it safe. But today, I came in with fire — determined to turn things around. And with a bit of help from the bridge gods, we hit the slam and took 14.42 VPs off a top seed. From behind, we surged ahead!!
💫 Featured Deal
This penalty-pass decision was clearly the toughest of the three.
♦AT986 is far less convincing than the previously mentioned ♠KQJ83, and there was even a comfortable 2♠ alternative available.
But Kuo Li-Hsiang showed excellent judgment and chose to Pass! — going for the penalty.
2♦x-3 for +500 and a 12-IMP gain, leading us to a decisive 15.46 VPs victory over Japan.
With all of Japan's national teams
🎖️ Final Results
Second Round-Robin Results
2nd RR: 9 wins, 3 losses
Total: 171.15 VPs
Average: 13.26 VPs
Mission One: Complete!
The miracle didn’t happen — we couldn’t overtake China.
But with three consecutive victories over India, Australia, and Japan, we surged past Australia in the final sprint and claimed the silver medal at this year’s APBF! 💪🥈
Although we still finished 15 VPs behind the champion China team, we beat them in both head-to-head matches — never backing down, and never giving them an easy ride. With that, this silver medal feels like no regrets at all. 😂
Pair Datum：
Huang-Chen: 4th +0.843
Kuo-So: 7th +0.746
Open Team Results：
🥇 Champion – China
🥈 Silver Medalist – Chinese Taipei
🥉 Bronze Medalist – Australia
🧮 Team Results Overview
🧮 Pair Butler Summary - Kuo-So Pair
HP：https://www.ccba.org.cn/Tour/TourIndex.aspx?tourid=32327
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