West   North   East   South
                                 2♣
pass     2♦¹      pass   2♥
pass     4♥      all pass

1 - Waiting.

West leads the ♠K against your 4♥ contract, East playing an encouraging ♠8. West continues with the ♠10 to East's ace. East persists with a third spade to your jack and West's king. Plan the play (The scoring is IMPs, where the objective is to make your contract and overtricks are insignificant).

Solution:
You have ten tricks (five hearts, four clubs and one diamond) but the club suit is blocked, and the defensive force in spades threatens to remove the dummy entry prematurely.

If trumps split 2-2, you have no problems; you can ruff the spade at trick three, draw trumps in two rounds, unblock the ace and king of clubs, enter dummy with the last trump and cash the queen and jack of clubs.

If trumps divide 3-1, ruffing the third spade in dummy will jeopardize the contract. You have to play three rounds of trumps to exhaust the outstanding trumps, which means you will not have a trump entry to dummy. You will be forced to hope for the ♦K to be onside, which is not the case on this layout.

The solution is to refuse to ruff at trick three, and discard a diamond instead. You can now win any return, draw trumps, unblock the ace and king of clubs, enter dummy with the fourth trump and cash your remaining club winners.

Analysis:
Bridge Baron's double dummy solver confirms that refusing to ruff the spade at trick three is required to make the contract.

Bridge Baron's Line of Play
Bridge Baron saw the point of this deal pretty quickly, and found the key play of discarding a diamond at trick three and made the contract.

Par Contract Analysis:
Since East-West are not vulnerable, a sacrifice of 4♠X by East-West is the par contract on this deal.

Bridge Baron deal No : N0315-04584-08924-22179-01432-20614