The Danger Hand & Holding Up
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This tutorial will deal with two important and related aspects of declarer play. The basic concepts are outlined below.
The Danger Hand. What is it? The danger hand is a term used to describe a potentially dangerous situation that often occurs when you are the declarer. Look at the diagram below.
If your left had opponent (LHO) gets the lead and they lead a club you will loose the next three tricks. However if your RHO gets the lead and they choose to leads clubs, you will be very happy. They have two options:
- They lead the ace, and promote your king to a winner
- They lead a lesser card and your K wines the trick
In Bridge Jargon Your LHO is the Danger Hand
This situation is quite common, so you need to know how to handle it. Basically you try to play the hand so that you keep the danger hand off lead. How?. Well there are a number of common manoeuvres. For instance you shun a finesse into the danger hand, preferring to lose to the safe hand.
The Hold Up. This is a related manoeuvre to convert a danger hand into a safe hand. Often the decision occurs on the first trick. Typically you are in a no trump contract and your LHO opponent leads a suit where you have Axx in your hand xx in dummy. If your LHO has a 4 card suit so does your RHO, and they can only take 3 tricks. But if your LHO has a 5 card suit you stand to lose 4 tricks quickly. However if that's the case your RHO has only 3 cards in the suit.
The standard play is to let the opponents win the first two tricks and take your ace on the third round. This is the Hold Up. Then if the cards are split 53 your RHO has none left. If they subsequently get the lead they have been neutralised; they do not have a card left to lead back to their partner. And if they do have a card left they are limited to three tricks.
