Another suit combination

[Fluffy]

I was reviewing the hands I played today and found something I completelly missed at the table:

 

[hv=pc=n&s=sqj62hjt63d6cak42&w=sk74h852daq82ct87&n=sa93haq974dt4cq63&e=st85hkdkj9753cj95&d=w&v=e&b=16&a=p1hp1sp2sp4sppp]399|300[/hv]

 

Playing in the somewhat inferior contract of 4♠ I got the ♣7 lead which I won in hand, the I played ♠J which held, and was surprised when I played next spade and LHO played ♠K while RHO played ♠8. This was just another of my late stories of guessing who made the bizarre move, but that's another story.

 

I found nothing better than drawing another round of trumps finding the friendly split, and then I run ♥J losing to ♥K and scoring 450 as everyone else in 4♥.

 

I cursed for my bad luck of clubs splitting badly but after reviewing I started to think: Shouldn't west cover ♥J with practically every heart holding except ♥Kxxx?. Obviously this assumes West has more skill than she actually had, but against a decent player, shouldn't I had played for stiff ♥K rather?

 

Curiously, playing for the drop would had been a no brainer if they didn't give me the free spade trick as I would be behind the field.

[gszes]

I see nothing in the bidding to indicate the heart J cannot be a singleton. Lho has no logical reason to cover. In your spade contract and knowing you have at most 1 trump left covering

(with say K84) might allow declarer to bring the heart suit home by smothering your 8 with the 9 on the 3rd round of hearts and declarer having even 2 hearts makes any Kxx holding dead anyway so covering is pretty much never right.