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Assume you've reached three notrump on the bidding shown and West leads a spade to East's jack, which you win with the king. You can now count eight sure tricks, and your only chance for a ninth lies in the club suit.
Without any opposing bidding, the percentage play in clubs would be to cash the A-K, playing for the queen to fall in accordance with the adage "eight ever, nine never." But considering West's preemptive three-spade opening, which almost surely is based on a seven-card suit, the odds no longer favor cashing the A-K of clubs, since West is now much more likely to have started with a singleton or void in clubs. Because of this, you might decide to lead a club to dummy's king at trick two, planning to finesse against East for the queen.
Unfortunately, this seemingly rational approach would fail in the actual case, and you would go down one after East showed out on the second club. You could then claim bad luck, but a more accurate assessment would be bad play.
Before committing yourself as to how to tackle the club suit, you should first gather all the information you can about West's holdings in hearts and diamonds. You can do this by cashing the A-K-Q of diamonds and A-K of hearts. One possibility is that West will follow to all five leads, revealing that he has at most one club.
But in the actual deal, West turns up with just two diamonds and one heart, leaving him with three clubs. It is then a simple matter to cash the club ace and take the marked finesse against West's queen to finish with 11 tricks.
Tomorrow: Life on the edge.