Counting Distributions by Mikael Rimstedt

Saturday February 8, 2014, Sweden

Counting Distributions by Mikael Rimstedt

CsbNews Note:  Mikael is a member of the Swedish U21 team that last year won the European Open Category and his team is one of the favorites to win the World Cup this year in Istanbul (Turkey).

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

Contract: 4 

Lead: 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 King 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.

The hand: