[blml] A lawbook wish: Clarify "convention"

[Jerry Fusselman]

On 9/27/07, Eric Landau <ehaa at starpower.net> wrote:
>
> TFLB does not define "natural";

Right; though TFLB uses "natural" once, undefined, in a footnote.

> neither, AFAIK, has any other
> authority of record.  The ACBL does use "natural" as a synonym for
> "not conventional" and so do virtually all of its members.
> I would imagine many non-ACBLers do the same.

Eric, where does the ACBL do this?
>
> The historical distinction between "not conventional" and "natural"
> goes back to an old proposal by Edgar Kaplan,  who suggested that the
> law recognize three types of calls: "conventions", "natural calls",
> which suggested play but contained no additional information by
> agreement, and "treatments", which included calls which gave specific
> information about strength or were forcing.  This never became law
> however; its only residue in TFLB is the second sentence of the
> definition of "convention", which tells us that (most of) what Kaplan
> called "treatments" are not conventions.
>
> As far as the Law is concerned, only the difference between
> "conventional" and "not conventional" matters; if "natural" were
> indeed to be defined as some third thing it would make no difference
> to TFLB, and should make no difference to us.  IMO BLML would be well-
> served to accept the ACBL's usage.
>

Yes, as far as TFLB is concerned, natural can be left undefined.  But
as far as the law that we play under in the ACBL is concerned, the
meaning of natural is important:  My conventional defense is allowed
(under GCC) against conventional calls, and we all three suspect that
any non-natural bid is conventional.  If so, then my conventional
defense is allowed against non-natural bids.  But if a director rules
that a bid I thought was non-natural is actually natural and also not
conventional, that makes my defense illegal.  You see that the
definition of natural really matters to me when I play under ACBL law.

As for BLML usage, the ACBL's definition of natural is not perfect.
For example, assuming no competition, 1S - 1N (forcing) - 2C - 2N - 3H
could well show 5314 shape.  But in the ACBL's definition, 3H was not
natural, because here it only shows three cards.  (Recall that natural
major-suit bids in the ACBL must show four in the suit.  Natural
minors show three---which is more in step with TFLB's definition of
convention with its phrase "three cards or more.")

Also, the ACBL's definition is not complete, because it only defines
natural bids.

I suspect that the ACBL usage may be that a bid can be natural and
conventional at the same time, such as or 2H showing both majors, or
4S in 1S - 2N (forcing raise) - 4S (weak, no singleton) .  My *guess*
is that the point of the ACBL's definition is to give an easy way to
classify many bids as conventional (assuming that "non-natural" is
sufficient but not necessary for "conventional") and also to ban
partnership agreements that allow 1-level three-card major responses
that are not game forcing.

Jerry Fusselman