[blml] natural bids and conventional bids

[Eric Landau]

At 12:32 AM 1/5/07, richard.hills wrote:

>Ed Reppert:
>
> >"Natural and Conventional are mutually exclusive." So said a poster
> >on bridge base online.
> >
> >It seems to me we resolved this in the recent thread "conventional"
> >- and did so in such a way as to make the quoted assertion false.
> >But I can't now find it. *Did* we resolve it in that way?
> >
> >I think:
> >
> >Some bids are natural.
> >Some bids are conventional.
> >Some bids are artificial.
> >Some conventional bids are also natural.
> >All artificial bids are conventional.
> >
> >One could argue that all bids are conventional (that is, they are a
> >matter of agreement between partners) but I don't think the laws
> >mean to go there.

As I suggested in a previous post, this is all about semantics.  The 
laws require only a binary distinction, between "conventional" and "not 
conventional" calls.  We can call them "artificial" and "natural" calls 
if we like, but what we call them doesn't matter; the handful of laws 
that depend on the distinction all rely on the definition of 
"convention" (the adequacy or clarity of that definition is a whole 
separate topic), which any call either conforms to or doesn't.

>Richard Hills:
>
>Under the ABF Alert Regulation, all calls are either "conventional"
>or alternatively "natural".  A "natural" call is defined as "not
>conventional".  A "conventional" call is defined as per Chapter One
>of The Fabulous Law Book.

And as far as the Law is concerned, that is all that is necessary.


Eric Landau                     ehaa at starpower.net
1107 Dale Drive                 (301) 608-0347
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