Looking at just the north and south hands, it's hard to say
whether you'd rather be in 4 hearts or 4 spades. I tend to prefer 4- 4 fits
rather than 5-3, if they can be found without distorting the auction. In this
case it's very close. After N raises 1 spade to 2, South can make a game try by
bidding 3 hearts. North would bid 4 hearts, accepting the game try and
suggesting the possibility of switching the choice of trumps from spades to
hearts. South could be happy with that.
Now for the play in 4 spades. The heart lead puts a
lot of pressure on declarer. At other tables the lead could have been in clubs
or diamonds. A Club lead makes it a little easier than a Heart and a diamond
lead makes it very easy. I can understand worrying about a singleton Heart and
starting trumps immediately. If West wins the Spade Q and shoots back a Spade,
you can no longer ruff the 2 diamonds you need to trump in dummy. You can no
longer make the contract after a very normal and reasonable start. To
make 4 spades on this hand if the opponents do everything right, you need to
win the opening lead in hand and lead a club to establish entries back and
forth. Of course, if it turns out West can ruff Hearts, you go down quickly. On
this hand it doesn't matter. What does matter is that neither the D King nor
the C Ace are on side, so taking 2 diamond ruffs in dummy is the lucky winning
line, since both majors split 3-2 and East holds the doubleton high honor. I'm
betting most declarers who made 4S didn't play it perfectly, but probably got
help from the defenders. Ironically, in an all- expert field, more than
half the declarers would go down at 4 Spades and some unlucky souls could
go down 2 if they try the Diamond finesse, which is a reasonable play, but
not successful on the actual deal.
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