In this deal from a London league match played at the famous TGR’s rubber bridge club, an English international misjudged the bidding. His partnership was not playing support doubles, so it was quite possible North-South had only eight spades between them. Since South’s diamond holding was also good for defense, he should have let three diamonds go rather than compete to three spades. Even so, he made up for it in the play.
West took his four minor-suit winners and then played a third club. West had passed three spades slowly, so he was likely to have his actual shape, but South could not ruff two clubs in dummy without setting up East’s spade jack.
Since he did not have the entries to set up and enjoy the hearts, South turned to a crossruff instead. If he could score all five of his trumps in hand in addition to two hearts and a couple of club ruffs, he would succeed.
Declarer could not achieve three ruffs in hand, so he had to lead the spade four from dummy at some stage. Therefore, at trick six, after ruffing the third round of clubs high, declarer realized the odds favored East holding the trump jack. A spade to the 10 was followed by the heart jack, covered and won by the ace, then a diamond ruff, the heart queen, and a heart ruff. Declarer was down to K-10 in spades plus a club. He ruffed his club high and then claimed the rest on a trump coup.
Note that three diamonds goes down on normal defense. All that hard work for one extra international match point!