Last night, I got to declare a fairly mundane 4 hearts contract.
At trick 4, knowing the hearts were 3-2, I took a misstep, and led the queen of clubs. LHO won and returned a spade, and right away I could see why I hadn't needed to worry - I could have taken the final trump straight away.
However, if dummy had stared with 3 or more spades, my play would have been correct.
The issue is whether opponents can run you out of trumps to promote a spade winner before the clubs are promoted. In this case, you draw the oustanding trump, lose one club, ruff a spade in hand, lose another club, ruff the next spade on the board, and even though you're now out of trump, you're good.
Note that there's no reason to ever take the diamond finesse.
This was a classic case of seeing something, but not thinking quite deeply enough.
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In rubber bridge it is probably right to draw third trump even if you have Axx in dummy. You guarantee 10 tricks.
Suppose the hands were:
Axx
AKxx
KJx
Qxx
x
QTxx
Axx
JT98x
Now imagine East has the following hand:
Jxx, xx, QT9, AKxxx
(Unlikely but possible!)
Now if you don't draw the third trump, when you play a club, East can duck and west ruffs, switching to a diamond!
Defense can now setup a diamond trick before you can set up clubs.
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