Saturday February 8, 2014, Sweden
A few days ago I was playing a match on BBO with my brother (Ola Rimstdet) against two grandmasters: Benito Garozzo and Jimmy Cayne. This is one of the hands of the match that I want to share with you: Board 24, Dealer West None Vul, Teams A 8 2
 K 7 3 2
 Q J 7 4
 10 9 |
||
| K
A Q 9 8
A 9 6 2
K Q 5 3 |
Q J 10 9 7 5
10
10 8
8 6 4 2 |
|
| 6 4 3
J 6 5 4
K 5 3
A J 7 |
| West | North | East | South |
| O. Rimstedt | Garozzo | M. Rimstedt | Cayne |
| 1
|
Pass | 2
|
Pass |
| 4 |
End |
5
Sitting in East I received the 5 lead and before touching the first card I stopped a few seconds to analyze the hand. I had a diamond loser, and a spade loser so could not afford to lose two tricks in clubs.
I knew Jimmy never takes any risk so I was quite sure that he didn’t lead from the King. Therefore I won the A and played the K. When I won the trick I was pretty sure the spade was 3-3, because they wouldn’t dock the spade with Ax.
Since I already put Garozzo with K, I continued to play Q which Garozzo covered and I ruffed. Now dummy’s 9 8 had become important. I played the Q, pitching a diamond from dummy, and Garozzo won with the A, returning the 4.
When Jimmy played the K I learned that: Garozzo had at least 4 diamonds. As I wanted to use my hearts on the table for something good, I played the 8, when Garozzo played low, I pitched a diamond loser and Cayne won the trick with his J returning the J.
I played dummy’s K, winning the trick. I reentered my hand ruffing a diamond and played the J confirming trumps were 3/3. Now I perfectly knew that South distribution was: 3-4-3-3, because:
* He led the 5 and in the second heart round he played the 4. They play 3/5, and H/L=even
* The spades were 3-3
* After winning the heart trick with the J, Jimmy also knew my distribution based on Garozzos cards signals. Therefore he couldn’t have 4 clubs because he would have tried to give Garozzo a club ruff.
Therefore Jimmy had 3 clubs and so 3 diamonds. So I played a club, Cayne won with his A…but the rest of the tricks were mine: 9, Q and a trump.
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