[Echognome]

Scoring: IMP

---

West opens 1♠! North overcalls 2♣ and not surprisingly East passes. Both North's and East actions are a clue that indeed, West did not psyche. Another clue is your 7510 shape. You have extreme distribution and there's no reason why spades might not be extremely distributed as well. However, all that being said, when the hand was played one South decided to bid 4♠ and went down badly when all the trumps were behind him.

Most souths will simple bid 2♥ and North will then show his "useful" spade shortage. Most souths will then settle for 4♥ as you can hardly expect North to be able to ruff all your spade losers. As the cards lie, 6♥ can be made (you can try yourself on the play part), but I think it's due to a lucky lie of the cards.

[Cascade]

(1♠) 2♣ (Pass) 2♥
(Pass) 3♠ (Pass) 4♥
All Pass

I fell off my chair when Pam showed spade shortage.

Even with the complementary shortages it was easy to imagine not being able to ruff six spades in the dummy.

[han]

Our auction was

(1S)-2C-2H
2S-pass

Looking back at it now, I can't believe that I passed 2S!

[awm]

I held the north cards again, and Elianna and I reached 6♥. I think this was mostly my fault (I evaluated my hand very aggressively once I heard about her five-card heart suit). Of course, if a few of her small spades are minor suit cards (say 5-5-2-1 shape), this would be an excellent slam.