Martha Beck, a life coach, said, “It takes about four days of virtuous living to create a little weight loss. That also happens to be the time required to get used to eating less. In other words, if you can get past day three of a fitness regimen, things improve.”

In a contract of four of a major, having only three tricks to lose is fine; if you are faced with four, you must work out how to shake that extra loser.

In today’s deal, South is in four hearts. He wins the first trick with his club ace and cashes the heart ace, being shocked to see West discard a diamond. How should declarer continue?

That South hand was a tad strong to open two notrump with its eight probable winners. So South opened two clubs and rebid two notrump.

With the bad trump break, South has five losers in his hand: one spade, one heart, two diamonds and one club. But that will not be a problem if he can take 10 tricks. How is that possible?

Declarer has four sidesuit winners, so he needs six trump tricks, three tops and three ruffs. He can get those if he is careful. At trick three, he should duck a spade, the key play.

Suppose the defenders shift to diamonds. South wins, plays a spade to dummy’s ace, ruffs a spade, cashes the club king, and ruffs his last club on the board. Then he leads another spade. What does East do?

If he discards, South gets his third low ruff. If East ruffs in, South discards one of his diamond losers, effectively making the defense take two of its winners in one trick.