This is aHand:

Sometimes your opponents get off to a great start by finding the best opening lead.

Annoying as that can be, you have to focus on how you can combat it.

Bidding.

Over partner's 1NT opening bid we can easily work out that our side belongs in a game contract. We have 10 points and partner has 15 to 17, so the minimum number of points our side has is 25. But which game should we be in? 

We could bid 3♠ to show that we have enough for game but there is no point. That would offer partner a choice between 4♠ and 3NT. Do we really want to play this hand in 3NT?

Partner's 1NT opening promised a balanced hand and must, therefore, have at least two Spades; so, knowing that our side will have (at least) an eight-card Spade fit, we proceed directly to 4♠.

Play.

West leads the ♥K and we first assess our options. This awkward lead automatically sets up two Heart tricks for the defense and, with a top Club to lose, we have three quick losers to start off with.

There might be other potential losers too, for instance, Spades could split in an unfriendly manner of 4-1 (as we can see with hindsight). So what's the best way to limit those (potential) losers down to three or fewer?

No doubt our secret weapon (our source of tricks) is dummy's Diamond suit.

What we should do is to win the opening Heart lead and draw three rounds of trumps. If trumps break 3-2 then we would have six Spades, one Heart, three Diamonds, and one Club for a total of eleven tricks.

When trumps don't break (as on this deal) then, after drawing the third round of trumps, we should not play another round of trumps – otherwise East would win, cash two Hearts and the ♣A and our contract would be down before we knew it.

After drawing the third round of trumps we immediately turn our attention to Diamonds by cashing the top three honors discarding the two Heart losers from the closed hand.

East is forced to follow suit to all three rounds of Diamonds so, eventually, the only losers that we have are a Spade and two Clubs.

Put another way, we make five Spades, one Heart, three Diamonds and a Club.