Board 10 saw Rukson and Poohdid bid to a good small slam in Diamonds starting with 6 artificial bids. East, Bryan, led a spade and declarer made the obvious 13 tricks.
Two other pairs bid the slam on this board. They were Max Chu & Dave Ko (Hong Kong), and Ramadhan & Khelvin Syauqi Endyananta (Indonesia).
Board 15 Dealer South N-S VUL
A K 5 4
A 4 3
A K 10 8 3
8
Q J 9 3
Q 10 8 5
2
K 7 6 2
8 7 6
7 2
Q 9 7 6 5
A 9 3
10 2
K J 9 6
J 4
Q J 10 5 4
West
North
East
South
Pass
Pass
11
Pass
2
Pass
2
Pass
2
Pass
2NT
Pass
3NT
Pass
Pass
Pass
After a strong 1C opening from North, South showed his rounded suit lengths before North chose to play in a NoTrump game. Shek chose to lead the only unbid suit, a S6, which is covered by the ST from dummy. Mak contributed the SJ, and when that was ducked by declarer, continued with the SQ, which declarer took with the SK. Declarer first tried his luck on the H finesse, which failed.
After getting in with the HQ, Mak correctly continued with the S3, avoiding the clash with his partner’s S8. Now, declarer made his last struggle by cashing his top H, and seeing the suit not breaking, tried the D finesse, which also failed. From here, Shek and Mak are left with not much difficulty to collect all their remaining winners, bringing the contract 3 down.
Out of the 11 pairs who defended in 3NT, only 4 pairs succeeded. Alif Zidan and Dery Syams Ahnaf from Indonesia defeated the contract by 1 trick, while Sean Seet and James Tan from Singapore, Bryan Yip and Leo To from Hong Kong both defeated the contract by 2 tricks.
A
—
A K 10 9 4 3 2
A Q J 9 3
