Definition of Non-Natural System

[gingolia]

I am trying to gauge which systemic questions go in this forum as opposed to other forums.

 

If choose one of the first four options, please suggest a value for N. (e.g. does the system have to be moscito? or do normal 2/1 but with multi-2d questions belong here as well?)

[helene_t]

Precision and Polish Club are frequently discussed at this forum although they are arguably both more natural than SA. I think "Non-natural" should just read "non-standard". For some reason, Acol tends not to be discussed here.

[AlexOgan]

Given that the other system forum available here is "SAYC and 2/1 Discussion", I would say that anything other than SAYC / 2/1 belongs here. Non-natural is a misleading title.

[Gerben42]

Agree, and no one dares to discuss the English 4-card major system since they are afraid to use their commentator licence... :(

[Free]

All of the above...

[NickRW]

Agree, and no one dares to discuss the English 4-card major system since they are afraid to use their commentator licence... :)

 

Well, this is a strange and old post for me to pick on as only my 2nd attempt at saying something interesting here...

 

I used to play standard Precision years ago at a local club. Quite soon even the little old ladies started to realise you can pre-empt the 1♣ opener on bus tickets and that all the other openings never have much muscle - which helped them with both play and bidding decisions. I reckon it was a servicable system at IMPs and we did OK with at MP coz the generally more accurate game and slam bidding gave enough edge to compensate for what we were losing elsewhere.

 

Acol, on the other hand - well - it is easy to learn and add in the multi or benji it becomes quite a servicable weapon at least for MP play. Don't get me wrong - I love bidding theory and spend far too long reading this forum - but I am yet to be lured back to the strong 1♣ system arena.

 

Just my plug for a tired old work horse system that is still going. At least it doesn't have idiosyncrasies like nebulous diamonds or unplayable 2C openers, nor indeed better 3 card minor as in SA - a supposedly "natural" system :P

 

Nick

[han]

You can post wherever you like but this forum is where the system geeks and other weirdos discuss gadgets that never come up but are theoretically superior. :)

[NickRW]

Don't get me wrong here - I am a system weirdo geek at heart too - I am just waiting to find a system that is really worth the effort.

 

I am however, beginning to despiar of being convinced that any 1♣ and/or 1♦

system is actually the answer to the percieved problems of the 2♣ based systems. Perhaps the FN/disciplined EHAA style is the way to go :)

 

Nick

[blackshoe]

"The way to go" is probably whichever way makes your partnership happy. :D

 

George Rosenkranz has suggested that "the wave of the future" may be "two card" systems. Something like 2/1 or other "natural" system when vulnerable, some "forcing club" system when non-vulnerable. In its latest incarnation, Romex takes this approach, playing at MPs "natural" Romex (essentially 2/1 GF with some extra forcing openings) when vulnerable and "Romex Forcing Club" (RFC) (with mini-NT) when not vulnerable. At IMPs the division is that RFC is played at favorable, "natural" Romex otherwise. Also the latest wrinkle (at both forms of scoring) is to make 1NT weak (12-14 HCP) in third seat when playing RFC. The theory is that this will at reduce, if not eliminate, opponents' tendency to preempt on "tram tickets" just because we opened 1♣. :)

 

Hamman-Soloway (iirc) used to play "Attack", a system based along these lines, albeit without Romex's "extra" forcing bids (and other things - a lot of effort was put into reducing the memory strain involved with a two card system as much as possible in the Romex variant). They later abandoned it, I don't know why (but I suspect memory strain might have had something to do with it).

[hrothgar]

Hamman-Soloway (iirc) used to play "Attack", a system based along these lines, albeit without Romex's "extra" forcing bids (and other things - a lot of effort was put into reducing the memory strain involved with a two card system as much as possible in the Romex variant). They later abandoned it, I don't know why (but I suspect memory strain might have had something to do with it).

Goldman and Soloway actually...

 

As far as I know, they continued to play Attack until the end of the partnership, however, they only dragged the system out in rare circumstance:

 

If G+S were significantly behind and felt that they needed to generate action they migrated to a high variance structure. Its interesting to note that they played strong club based on the opponents vulnerability.

 

hey beleived that it was most advantageous to play strong club when the opponents were red (and less able to jam the strong club opening)

[hotShot]

I think a workable definition is:

A system is non-natural if it's dominating/characteristic bid is non-natural.

 

In precision the 1♣ is not natural and it limits all other bids, that makes it the dominant bid of the system.

In SAYC there is no similar restrictive bid and (1-level) openings promise the named suit, so it's natural.

[NickRW]

I think a workable definition is:

A system is non-natural if it's dominating/characteristic bid is non-natural.

 

In precision the 1♣ is not natural and it limits all other bids, that makes it the dominant bid of the system.

In SAYC there is no similar restrictive bid and (1-level) openings promise the named suit, so it's natural.

That's the generally perceived wisdom - except that it isn't really true. SAYC has natural 1H/1S openings - but 1C/1D don't actually promise a suit of 4 or more cards. Basic Precision, for example, from its equivalent set of bids, i.e. 1D/1H/1S/2C has 3 of the 4 showing a genuine suit - and, in some peoples' variants, even 1D is genuine as well. On that basis Precision is a more natural system. And, comparing SAYC's 2C to Precision's 1C - well they are both as unnatural as the other - it is just that Precision's version is vastly more frequent.

 

I beat no drum particularly either for Precision or naturalness - but - lets be kind here - what is regarded as a "natural" system is regarded that way for 'historical' reasons.

 

Nick

[blackshoe]

One could argue that if the basis of "natural" vs. "non-natural" is the nature of the opening bids, the only truly natural system (well, only may be an overbid - the only one of which I'm aware, anyway) is EHAA. B)

 

I suspect the right name for this forum is "other system discussion"

[Free]

I think a workable definition is:

A system is non-natural if it's dominating/characteristic bid is non-natural.

All you now need to do is to define what the dominating/characteristic bid is exactly, and when it's considered non-natural... Is opening a 3 card minor in 10% of the cases considered natural? Is opening canapé considered natural?

 

But still it's not a good definition imo: if all your opening bids are 'natural', but you play a relay structure after every opening, you won't be able to convince anyone that you're playing a natural system. So your definition is not complete. B)

[awm]

A reasonable definition for a natural system might be both:

 

(1) An extremely high percentage (say 90%) of the times you open the bidding, your opening bid shows length in the suit named (or shows a balanced hand in the case of notrump openings).

 

(2) An extremely high percentage of the non-jump suit responses to natural opening bids show length in the suit named.

 

Strong club systems fail on the first criterion because the artificial 1♣ opening bid is actually quite common (probably around 15% of openings bids). This percentage is even higher for "prepared club" methods like WJ. The 1♦ bid in some strong club methods also qualifies as not showing length in the suit named.

 

On the other hand, systems like SAYC and 2/1 (and obviously EHAA) are okay on the first criterion because a strong 2♣ is quite unusual. Adding openings like namyats or gambling 3NT or mexican 2♦ probably won't raise this percentage enough to disqualify the system. Even multi probably doesn't raise the percentage of artificial openings above 10% of opening bids, although if you add enough artificial calls you will eventually get there.

 

Very few systems that qualify on (1) fail on (2), but a very relay-intensive method might qualify, as might a method that is very heavy on transfer responses (probably just transfer responses to 1♣ is not enough to become non-natural).

 

But really this forum is just for any methods which are not on popular "2/1 GF" convention cards.

[hotShot]

That's the generally perceived wisdom - except that it isn't really true. SAYC has natural 1H/1S openings - but 1C/1D don't actually promise a suit of 4 or more cards.

Around here a minor suit call is considered natural if showing 3+ cards.

[Free]

That's the generally perceived wisdom - except that it isn't really true.  SAYC has natural 1H/1S openings - but 1C/1D don't actually promise a suit of 4 or more cards.

Around here a minor suit call is considered natural if showing 3+ cards.

The idea that one suit requires at least 4 cards and another suit requires only 3 cards to be natural is ridiculous. Natural is natural, whether it's ♣, ♦, ♥ or ♠.

 

This is just a definition made up by the ACBL to make regulations easier (because almost all their members play 5 card Majors and 3 card minors). They solved it practically, but it has nothing to do with the concept 'natural' however.

 

Another typical example is Stayman: everyone plays it, so it's considered normal. But normal is not the same as natural. B)

[helene_t]

So Wei Precision has a quite frequent artificial opening (1♣) and a less frequent artificial opening (2♦), while SAYC has two very frequent semi-natural openings (1♣ and 1♦) and one artificial opening (2♣). Unless we agree on the "artificiality score" for the SAYC minor suit openings we cannot compute the average artificiality of SAYC and therefore can't compare it to Precision.

 

Defining "artificiality" for a single call is hard enough. Defining it for an entire system is almost pointless. Most would probably agree that Acol is more natural than Dejeuner, but beyond that people tend to mean "different from what I have learned" when they say "non-natural".

 

Here in England, many players (even some quite knowledgeable ones) seem to think that "natural" implies a weak notrump. I have met Americans who think the opposite. And one Dutch player I met thought that for jump overcalls, "natural" means "intermediate".

 

Ultimately, one could let Jack play 10,000 hands with all kinds of combinations of bidding systems opposing each other, and then for each bidding system compute the ratio a/b between

a) the number of calls in the final strain made by the declaring party

b) the total number of calls made by the declaring party

 

Then publish the a/b ratios as objective measures of naturalness. But even if we could all agree that that would be the right way of resolving the issue, I am not sure what purpose it would serve.

[Finch]

You can post wherever you like but this forum is where the system geeks and other weirdos discuss gadgets that never come up but are theoretically superior. :)

That's the right description. Perhaps we should change the forum name.

[Apollo81]

George Rosenkranz has suggested that "the wave of the future" may be "two card" systems. Something like 2/1 or other "natural" system when vulnerable, some "forcing club" system when non-vulnerable.

You sure he didnt suggest two system based on opponents vulnerability? This makes more sense if you play strong club when opponents are vul.

[awm]

The idea that 1♣ showing 3+ is natural doesn't seem to be just ACBL's doing -- as I understand it the WBF also treats the bid this way, at least to the degree that you can play any defense you want over an artificial 1♣ showing 2+, whereas many unusual defenses to 1♣ 3+ are brown sticker.

[NickRW]

That's the generally perceived wisdom - except that it isn't really true.  SAYC has natural 1H/1S openings - but 1C/1D don't actually promise a suit of 4 or more cards.

Around here a minor suit call is considered natural if showing 3+ cards.

Around here (EBU land), the authorities apparently go even further than ACBL in allowing "phoney" club bids. This is the definition of what is allowed at level 2 (only just up from "simple systems"):

 

"A 1♣ opening may be played to have any meaning, forcing or not, as long as this does not include unbalanced hands with 5+ Diamonds or 5+ Hearts or 5+ Spades (unless there is a Club suit of equal length or longer)."

 

In other words people graduating from beginners classes can play and be expected to play against people who play 5 card majors and 5 card diamonds as well and who open 4=4=4=1 shape 1♣.

 

One diamond, strangely enough, has an even looser definition:

 

"A 1♦ opening may be played to have any meaning, forcing or not, as long as this does not include unbalanced hands with 5+ Hearts or 5+ Spades (unless there is a minor suit of equal length or longer)."

 

In other words 1♦ doesn't need to guarantee any diamonds whatsoever - it could be 4=4=0=5 shape, for example.

 

I am not necessarily saying this should not be allowed (well, actually I think it is crazy) - but anyone saying this is natural is resorting to the historically allowed perspective as opposed to being truly honest in my opinion.

 

<grump mode on> - and people pay the EBU their membership fees to write this jibberish <grump mode off>

 

Nick

[helene_t]

Lol Nick, what you write is that EBU allows short minor suit openings, not that they consider them natural. Tons of articial methods are allowed (Stayman, for example). OTOH the perfectly natural Lorenzo 2-openings are not allowed in EBU-land.

[NickRW]

Lol Nick, what you write is that EBU allows short minor suit openings, not that they consider them natural. Tons of articial methods are allowed (Stayman, for example). OTOH the perfectly natural Lorenzo 2-openings are not allowed in EBU-land.

Yeah, but if I remember correctly, they used to go under the labels "natural". "prepared" etc under several different definitions in the older Orange book - the newer one simply amalgamated these into one cleverly worded definition and dropped the word natural. Well, gee, they don't pretend they are natural anymore. They do pretend that these things are OK to play against graduates of beginners courses because they are licensed for use at level 2.

 

Compare this to how AUC is treated. Entirely natural 1D/1H/1S/2C and the 1C opening is, what, well - it could be clubs fully natural (allowed at level 2), prepared clubs with 2+ and 15-17 (also allowed at level 2) or strong (also allowed at level 2 provided that "strong" conforms to their "extended rule of 25"). Yet because these types are mixed in one bid (arguably more of an impediment to the opening side than the defenders) this is only allowed at level 4. Where is the logic in that?

 

And, to take this thread totally off topic, the EBU now wants to impose a "pay to play" tax on all affiliated clubs - thus I will be obliged to fund and be a member of this silly organisation as well when I actively do not want to endorse this insanity.

 

Nick

[1eyedjack]

The cut-off is entirely arbitrary and wherever you choose to define it