[blml] agreements

[Eric Landau]

At 04:55 AM 10/12/06, Alain wrote:

>At 17:24 11/10/2006 +0100, Robin Barker wrote:
>
> >If West assumes that standard conventions are "on" and East
> >assumes everything is natural unless explicitly agreed, then
> >they have no agreement.  If they have had a discussion
> >"of course we play all the standard Belgian expert stuff"
> >then they have an agreement (one which East did not
> >understand or has forgotten).

I have a hard time believing this.  Is "the standard Belgian expert 
stuff" really consensually and uniformly defined to the point where it 
can be called an agreement by virtue of merely being named?

I can tell you this for sure:  There is not a single soul who could 
tell you what constitutes "the standard American expert stuff".  Any 
"agreement" to play *that* would be meaningless and would certainly not 
constitute what we mean by "a partnership agreement" in this context.

>This answer is very interesting. It raises some important points :
>
>1. "I don't understand that agreement" doesn't necessarily mean "we've no
>agreement". Something TDs and ACs keep forgetting.

Not "understanding" an agreement isn't black or white.  Agreements have 
tails: details, consequences to other agreements, presumed 
applicabilities, etc.  No two players will take exactly the same calls 
in every situation; there is a large grey area where the "tails" of 
one's agreements can't be differentiated from matters of "style and 
judgment", and nobody, not even Meckstroth and Rodwell with their 
hundreds of pages of explicit agreements, is on the same page every 
time.  There will always be a point at which "firm agreements" have "no 
agreement" tails.

If I sit down to play with Alain and we decide to use Stayman and 
Jacoby transfers over 1NT openings, I don't think either of us would 
say "I don't understand that agreement".  But that doesn't mean we know 
whether, say, we might use Stayman with both majors and a zero-count, 
or whether a new suit after a Jacoby transfer would be a one-round or 
game force.

>2. How does one ascertain the pair had an agreement of "standard on 
>unless
>agreed" ?

That's easy.  We ask them.

>3. If a pair says "for everything undiscussed, we follow the Kalamazoo 
>Club
>system", and the players have different ideas of said system, do they 
>have
>an agreement ?

That's for the TD or AC to decide -- as it always is when players 
believe they have an agreement but differ as to its substance.

But the converse always holds.  If they have the *same* "ideas of said 
system", then they have an agreement, even if that agreement is *not* 
the same one as is prescribed by the Kalamazoo Club system.

>In particular, may a book on that system be used by the
>TD/AC to determine the agreements ?

Sure, if that sheds any light on the state of the agreement -- evidence 
is evidence.  In a L75 case, where one partner follows the "Kalamazoo 
Club" book and the other deviates from it (in bid and explanation), 
their explicit "Kalamazoo Club" agreement should certainly be 
sufficient for us to use the book to determine whether to rule misbid 
or misexplanation.

>Similarly, if a pair agrees to use John Doe's system, may John's 
>testimony
>be used to determine the pair's assumed agreements ?

If we really needed John Doe's testimony to determine what constituted 
his system, I'd probably be inclined to find that they really had no 
agreement, since their "system" is not sufficiently well-defined to 
provide any substance to that agreement (not unlike "the standard 
American expert stuff").  OTOH, if John Doe had system notes, or even a 
pre-existing convention card that he was prepared to identify as "his 
system", I would be likely accept that as evidence in the same 
situations where I would accept a book on the Kalamazoo Club.


Eric Landau                     ehaa at starpower.net
1107 Dale Drive                 (301) 608-0347
Silver Spring MD 20910-1607