Forcing.♣

Exploring the game of bridge one hand at a time.


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What do you open?

You hold:

      KQ532
      85
      7
      AKJ83

What do you open?

Apparently this hand appears in the Seattle Times today. The author of that article suggests opening 1♣ and rebidding ♠ twice. This post is a counterpoint opinion.

There was a time when the mainstream recommendation …

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Happy 2021, goodbye and good riddance to 2020

  •   Fri 01 January 2021
  •   Misc

Happy New Year! This year in particular might be even happier than most, since we can officially close the books on 2020.

I had been planning to post more often, but when Covid hit and I was isolating at home my priorities shifted. For quite a while I wasn't playing …

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Pop Up Squeeze

Try this hand yourself! Thanks to BBO for providing these tools to help explore hands.

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Advanced Squeezes from the club, Part 2

My follow up to part 1 took longer than I anticipated, but I'm glad it did. I'm going to write about a different hand, one which came up yesterday.

In geometry, there is a family of shapes known as a flexagon, a shape which can turn itself "inside out", so …

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Advanced Squeezes from the club, Part 1

2 hands came up earlier this week at my local club game that are good examples of possible squeezes. The first of these features a rare and complex squeeze, the so called non-simultaneous double squeeze.

NS

North East South West
P P 1♠ P
2♣* P 2♢* P …

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Back from my absense

  •   Thu 23 January 2020
  •   Misc

After about 2 months of silence, I'm back writing again.

The gap was unintended, I was sick for most of December, which led to being behind on many projects in January. I plan on resuming posting on a more regular basis.

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Theory Thursday - Relays Part 1

  •   Thu 28 November 2019
  •   Theory

One of my goals for this site is to have some weekly series of articles on various topics. I have dubbed the first of these categories "Theory Thursday", where I will discuss some bidding theory.

I'm going to kick off the series by talking about relays.

Most bidding is a …

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Fall NABC - San Francisco

  •   Wed 27 November 2019
  •   NABC

Tomorrow kicks off the Fall NABC in San Francisco. While many Americans will be carving their turkeys and watching football, bridge players world wide will be making the journey to SFO.

This NABC is particularly exciting for me, as a new premier event is kicking off: the Soloway Teams. The …

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Custom Convention Card for Club Systems

  •   Wed 27 November 2019
  •   Tools

I have created a version of the ACBL convention card which is more friendly to various club systems, both Strong/Forcing clubs and also other systems where 1♣ and 1♢ are distinct. This card is free to use.

Download here

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Welcome

  •   Sun 24 November 2019
  •   Misc

Welcome to my website. The content is sparse at the moment, but I will be adding more content in the following weeks.

In the meantime, please enjoy what I do have.

♠ ♡ ♢ ♣

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About
Welcome to Tom Carmichael's bridge website.
 
Tom is an ACBL Grand Life Master, Bridge Teacher and Professional Player.
 
His hobbies outside of bridge include tabletop games and computers.