[flametree]

Non-vul, in fourth seat against a weak no-trump opener, you hold 13 points and these majors :

♠ Q.J.7.3
♥ A.K.Q.10

You bid 2C for the majors, and partner replies 2D ("you choose").

Is it automatic to bid hearts here or is there some advantage to picking the weaker suit as trumps and having the strong suit for outside winners? I chose hearts, and when I had to ruff at trick three, it crossed my mind that I might prefer to ruff with a low spade rather than a high heart.

[P_Marlowe]

I would go with hearts.

If you end up in a 4-3 fit and have to ruff in your hand, having hearts as trumps
makes it less likely that you loose trump control.
You still have the option to draw 1, 2 or 3 rounds of trums, if spades are trumps,
you cant.

If you end up in a 4-4 fit, most likely spades would have been better.

With kind regards
Marlowe

[gordontd]

If you have hearts as trumps, they are more likely to get a spade ruff than they are to get a heart ruff with spades as trumps. This chimes with Marlowe's distinction as to whether you expect your trump fit to be 4-4 or 4-3.

[Free]

There are 2 ways of looking at it:
- bid your strongest suit to have trump control
- bid your weakest suit to avoid immediate ruffs
Both make sense in some way.

However, when you fear ruffs and bid ♠ in this case, you also run the risk of getting ♥ ruffs! Say you play 2♠ and your opps lead ♥. You take and play a ♠ which opps win (say the King), they play another round of ♥, you play another ♠ which loses to the opps (say the Ace), and they give a ♥ ruff. When you would've played 2♥, then they could start with ♠A, ♠K, ♠ ruff. So basically it doesn't matter that much.

Therefore I'd bid ♥.