A Classic Case

Q J
K 4 2
K J 7 6 5 4 3
7
8 6 K 10 9 7 5
A J 6 Q 9 8 5 3
10 8 2 A 9
10 9 8 5 2 J
A 4 3 2
10 7
Q
A K Q 6 4 3 Vul: No one

WestNorthEastSouth
1
Pass 1 2 3
pass pass 3 4
All pass

A classic case that surfaced on OKBridge, and I regret to say that I did not chase down the overall pattern so I could report on how many played it cagey and how many fought their partner to exhaustion and a poor score. I'll have to content myself with this one bidding scheme, but it has enough to offer room for discussion.
East might have considered a Michaels cue bid of 2 clubs. He might just get the nod at that level, though we can see from the bidding that South wouldn't have let that happen. Three clubs? Just barely tolerable. South can't know of the miserable split he's going to get in clubs, nor of the miserable fit with his partner. His hand is better, say for no trump, than point count alone would indicate. Aggressive, but tolerable.
Should North bid 3 diamonds? I would say so. Is this hindsight? With diamonds splitting benignly and clubs not so? I'll leave that to you. But North does hold 7 diamonds and needs so little for a viable trump suit while South is not holding a self-supporting suit. Six to the A K Q? C'mon. Seven to the A K Q, okay? That one more card would mean a lot. Anyway, with everything placed right, North would be in a fair position to make 5 diamonds, losing only a heart and a diamond. Opening lead the singleton club. Since he has another entry to dummy, declarer shouldn't try to cash the club honors just yet. Play the queen of diamonds, and declarer would seem to be in a fair position to draw trump, take the spade hook and discard some hearts on the clubs to hold his losers there to one.
Wait a minute, fella! East gets in with the ace of diamonds. Why can't he kill dummy with the play of the king of spades? Right on! It's a coup favored by professional columnists. Declarer will almost surely try one more round of clubs, thereby losing not so much the ruff, since he'll be sluffing a heart he'd have to lose anyway, but the ability to lead toward his king of hearts, and so eventually would have to lose 4 tricks. But don't hold your breath until you find a partner who'll plunk down the king of spades on that hand!
Plays like that are for bridge columnists and top level players. It's highly improbable that you'll see that play on OKbridge, not enough to warrant discussion. Nor for that matter, would 3 diamonds be such a bad score. In any event, I always have looked on 10 points as sufficient to take a second bid after a one-over-one where I've only promised 6 pts. To be sure, this would be the three level, not the two, but the 7-card length would warrant such a bid here. People have been known to pre-empt at the 3 level with no more than that. And this player is sitting opposite an opening bid.
And four clubs? Absolutely and unarguably indefensible. No, it isn't the hindsight of knowing of a bad split that prompts this position. Even a 4-2 club split, the most probable split, would put you on a path to a poor score (if doubled). To be sure, we've all made bids that would have put us on a path to a poor score if doubled, but this one is way out of line because the bidder has already bid his values and then some with a three club rebid -- as opposed, for instance, to bidding over a 3-level pre-empt with a good but not powerful hand. And South does have a partner. He's bid the suit, he's rebid it at the 3 level. That's enough, fella. How big do you think that suit is? You've just got to sign off somewhere.
And, oh, incidentally, 3 hearts doesn't figure to make. Because of the favorable position of the spade honors, declarer in 3 hearts should lose two spades and one in each of the other suits. Down one. 'Nuff said? There's no hint of a fit, no indication that you've got the tickets for the 3 level, much less the 4. The opponents may be underbid in three hearts, they may have found the best possible resting spot, or the contract may be beatable. You can't know at this point. But you should know that your 4 clubs is a no show. You've got some nice tickets there, some nice top tickets, and given no fit, would you like to chance them going for 10 tricks in clubs or just 5 in hearts?
This and the previous example are prime examples of simply bidding past the point of recognizing a misfit, past the point their hand warrants. You don't wanna bid the same values twice at any time, but it'll probably come back to haunt you mostly in a misfit.