From                  Board 2, 24th May, 2006

                                          Theme               Hold-Up Plays

                                          Difficulty           * * *

                                          Dlr East             None Vul             Hands Rotated

                                                                                                 for Convenience

After a Fourth Suit Forcing auction, you arrive in a contract of 3NT.  West’s opening lead is the T♦, which you cover with the King, won by East’s Ace.  East returns the 4♦, you discard a Heart, and West plays the Nine.

Plan the play.

SOLUTION

You can count 9 tricks here (given reasonable luck in Clubs) and a Heart finesse might provide a 10th.  But it's too risky to win the second Diamond, lose the Heart finesse, and then find that West started with T9x of Diamonds, resulting in down one.  It seems quite clear, from the earlier play, that the Diamonds are 4-4 or else that East is the one with 5 of them, because:

(a)    West led the Ten, so East has the Jack;

(b)    East returned a low Diamond at Trick Two, suggesting that his remaining holding is Jxx or Jxxx.

This tells us to duck the second round of Diamonds, the so-called Hold-Up Play, which will make the later Heart finesse a safe try for 10 tricks.

	♠ A32 ♥ 976 ♦ KQ85 ♣ K53
♠ 954 ♥ J53 ♦ T93 ♣ 9742	North    West          East            South	♠ QJ8 ♥ KT82 ♦ AJ742 ♣ J
	♠ KT76 ♥ AQ4 ♦ 6 ♣ AQT86

After ducking the second Diamond and winning the third, the Heart finesse is taken.  That works and the J♣ comes down on the first round of Clubs.  Very interesting!  If East started life with 4-4-4-1 distribution, he is about to be squeezed in Spades and Diamonds.  And if he started life as 3-4-5-1 he is also in jeopardy if he holds the QJ♠.  So, when the dust has cleared, it's 11 tricks.  West could have protected Partner by not playing that third round of Diamonds.  A Spade shift at this point would have broken up the squeeze.  Not an obvious play!

Keys to Success

   - Holding up in the Diamond suit

   - Realizing that West could not have 5 Diamonds, and that therefore the Heart finesse was safe

   - Executing the Spade-Diamond squeeze for the 11th trick

Postscript

What exactly is involved in "executing the Spade-Diamond squeeze".  Very little, all that is required is to cash the winners in the other suits and watch for Diamond discards.  If the opponents discard Jack then Dummy's Eight is good, if they don't then hopefully they were forced to unguard the Spades.

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