The Hold-up: The Good and the Bad


Illustrations of Good Hold-ups
Illustrations of the Ill-Advised

The "hold-up" refers to declining for strategic reasons to take a trick you could easily take, primarily to exhaust one opponent of any more cards in that suit and cut off communication between the two defensive hands. It can be employed by both the defense and declarer, though you'll almost always find declarer pinpointed in discussions of the hold-up for the obvious reason that he can see his 26 cards. While the defense, particularly early in the hand, is more or less in the dark about both the top cards and the distribution of unbid suits and might get antsy about ducking and perhaps losing that trick. It can be employed in both trump contracts and no trump contracts, but you'll doubtless find it referred to more often in no trump contracts because if you hold up a bit in trump contracts, there's always a chance that your ace will be wiped out by a ruff. Still, it is done, as declarer reads the cards to a T. In this layout, for example:

10 6
K J 9 4 2 Q 8 7
A 5 3

If declarer takes the first or second round of the suit, the defenders will still have communication and should you lose the lead to East, he will be able to hit his partner for a run of the suit. If declarer holds up two rounds, then East won't be able to hit his partner, provided declarer has control of the other suits. The hold-up doesn't guarantee anything, of course. Declarer may not be able to garner his needed tricks without losing a trick to the ace in another suit, and if West has it, there's nothing you can do about it. But you try. You hold up on the possibility that West won't have the ace.
Now, you can't hold up on every hand, of course. Further even when you can do it, that doesn't necessarily mean you should. You may have good reason not to. One common reason I have observed more than once is holding ace-empty in two suits, say each 6 or 7 cards long. And you hafta knock out an ace. Now, I would advise going up quickly and hoping the defenders are holding a balanced suit. The reason for this is that if you hold up here, even just once and the defenders shift to the other suit, now where are you? If you hold up here you might find yourself whiplashed by a return to the first suit, and pretty soon you can't make your contract regardless of where the ace lies.
There is also a chance, incidentally, on any suit of blockage. It's not something you can work out by reasoning, but a bit of luck that can happen. A defender with K Q tight in his partner's suit, where you hold A low-low, would be delighted to unblock the suit and then shift to another if he holds the lead after two tricks.
I might just mention in passing that there is another reason for holding up, and that is to rectify the count for a squeeze. If you have ten top tricks and aren't afraid of either defender, you still might do well to duck two rounds, if you can, and squeeze for an 11th.
Here's a mini-quiz: You have just one stopper in a very short suit and are pretty sure you know which is the dangerous hand here. What do you do under these circumstances:

1. You need take a finesse into each hand. Into which hand first?
2. You need to knock out an ace and finesse into the dangerous hand. Which comes first?
3. You need to knock out an ace and finesse into the non-dangerous hand. Which comes first?
4. You are must knock out two aces. The opponents did not bid. Which comes first?

The answers are: (1) Finesse into the dangerous hand first. You can handle one more attack on that suit, and hope the other hand will be exhausted of that suit if the second finesse loses.
(2) Finesse into the dangerous hand. If that hand knocks out your last stopper, you at least have the hope that the ace lies with the other hand.
(3) Knock out the ace first. You hope that the finesse into the non-dangerous hand works or that that hand is out of your short suit.
(4) That's a trick question. If the two aces are in the same hand, it doesn't matter which you hit first. Only if they're split does it matter, and there's no way of knowing which one has which ace. But if you guess wrong, your partner might be pleased to tell you how you could have known to do otherwise.