Meta-agreements

[gnasher]

What, if anything, does the term "meta-agreement" mean to you, and how does it differ from an "agreement"?

[Jlall]

Agreement is specific to an auction, meta agreement is just a general agreement that covers auctions that are not specifically agreed on imo. Meta agreements are needed because it is not practical to have an agreement for every single auction.

 

One common meta agreement is "If it's unclear whether a bid is forcing or not, it is." This at least allows you to make a forcing bid even if you haven't discussed it as being forcing.

 

Another one that Fred seems to like is "If it is unclear whether a bid is natural or not, it is natural." This allows you to have some idea whether or not a bid is a cue or natural in an auction that your partnership has not discussed.

[karlson]

Seems like it should mean an agreement about other agreements. That seems to cover the way I generally use it, which is just an agreement that covers a wide variety of auctions. Examples I would use are "when we ask for shortness, we use LMH responses", "first new suit bid in slam try auctions is semi-natural, not control showing", or "if it's retarded, we don't play it".

[Apollo81]

"if it's retarded, we don't play it".

Can we repost this to the non-natural systems forum?

[TimG]

Barring specific agreement to the contrary, all low level doubles are takeout until our side has found a fit.

 

debrose recently suggested this one:

 

In comp, 5N is always pick-a-slam and a Q-bid of their suit which forces us to slam is always a grand slam try.

 

I think of meta-agreements as general agreements that cover more than one or two specific auctions and which apply in the absence of a specific agreement.

 

Meta-agreements are rules that you can fall back on in otherwise undiscussed auctions.

[Mbodell]

Agreement is specific to an auction, meta agreement is just a general agreement that covers auctions that are not specifically agreed on imo. Meta agreements are needed because it is not practical to have an agreement for every single auction.

I think that is an excellent definition. I also think folks should be encouraged, in general, to have more meta-agreements because one of the arguments against allowing many different conventional calls is it is too tough on the opponents for them having agreements over these bids. But it isn't that tough, often, if you have good meta-agreements.

 

Meta-agreements like "if the opponents make a transfer bid then X of the transfer is abc and bidding the transferred suit is def" then cover you if it is a transfer preempt, a transfer over a nt opening, a transfer positive response to a strong club, or a transfer response to a 1♣ natural opening, or transfer opening bids, etc.

 

The other thing, however, that can happen to meta-agreements, that can't happen to actual agreements is that they may conflict. You may have meta-agreement 1 that says some bid should have some meaning but meta-agreement 2 that says actually it should have some other meaning. I have a partner who was, seriously, trying to sort out our "meta-meta-agreements" earlier this month to help us figure this out (the more "specific" meta-agreement applies complete with a definition of specificity of meta-agreements).

[peachy]

It is not possible to have an agreement for every single auction that could crop up. I have some meta-agreements with my favorite partners such as

 

"If we are in undiscussed territory, strange bids are natural and forcing 1 round"

"If I don't know what a bid means, do not Pass"

"If I don't know or we haven't agreed if it is forcing or not, it is forcing"

"If it could be splinter, it is"

 

I want to add what debrose recently said: "5NT in comp is pick a slam and cuebid that forces us to slam is a grand slam try"

[gnasher]

Seems like it should mean an agreement about other agreements.

Yes, that's what I think.

 

That seems to cover the way I generally use it, which is just an agreement that covers a wide variety of auctions.

But that's not an agreement about agreements. It's an agreement whose scope is general rather than specific.

 

None of the examples given so far in this thread are agreements about agreements. These are examples of what I would consider a meta-agreement:

- "If it's not written down, we don't play it."

- "Agreements are freely transferrable from one auction to another related one."

- "If two agreements conflict, the more natural applies."

- "If it's not clear what an opponent's bid means, for the purpose of determining what our methods are, we assume that they play the same as we do."

 

I suspect that I'm not going to get very far with this argument. There just aren't enough pedants around.

[jdonn]

None of the examples given so far in this thread are agreements about agreements.

I don't think that's true. Peachy's first and third examples would seem to suffice. Well maybe, I think I see what you mean. Anyway I don't really agree with your definition, I think meta-agreement is a subset of "agreement" which just defines a broad agreement covering undiscussed specific auctions.

[karlson]

There just aren't enough pedants around.

 

I'll bite.

 

I'll admit that your examples are all better examples. I think that one of the questions is how general an agreement can be. If one can claim that "we play 1M-2N as jacoby" is two agreements, covering 1h-2n as well as 1s-2n (or maybe 4 since it applies to different seats, or 16 if we go by vulnerabilities) then one can call jacoby a meta-agreement since it generates other agreements.

 

If, on the other hand, you think that's a ridiculous point of view (and I suppose I agree) then we're all using meta-agreement incorrectly, but we're going to keep using it because it's such a nice word.

[hotShot]

Meta-agreements are agreements that are "universal" and not liked to a specific bidding sequence.

 

"Jumps are weak/strong"

"Jumps to game are 'to play' "

"Repeating your own suit, limits your hand"

[blackshoe]

LOL. One player who, who's not nearly as good as he thinks he is, is fond of proclaiming, loudly and often, "all jumps are weak". Once, playing with me, he jumped two levels. Okay, sez I, all jumps are weak. I passed. "Not that one!" he cried. :(

[hanp]

We will only adopt agreements that we expect to win IMPs over the next year.

 

If we forget a single agreement three times, we drop it.

 

If we have complete understanding about an undiscussed auction, we don't change anything.

 

If two agreements seem about equally good and one is more natural, we choose the natural agreement.

 

If a pendant asks about meta-agreements, we'll make up a few on the fly.

[pooltuna]

"if it's retarded, we don't play it".

Can we repost this to the non-natural systems forum?

why? It is not system specific and IMO general bridge discussion is the right forum

[peachy]

What, if anything, does the term "meta-agreement" mean to you, and how does it differ from an "agreement"?

Maybe the term to use is meta-rule? "Meta" just means it is everywhere or covers everything so metarule (or -agreement) covers a hole in your system, ie. when there is no specific agreement, a higher ranked general rule covers the case.

[helene_t]

I suspect most people mean "an agreement with a very general scope" rather than agreements about agreements.

[gwnn]

meta agreements are tiebreakers (sorry just watching tennis)

[blackshoe]

If we forget a single agreement three times, we drop it.

If I had had that meta agreement with a friend with whom I played for a while several years ago (she quit playing duplicate because there were too many jerks in the game) we would have dropped Stayman after our second session.

[Sadie3]

I suspect that was a good decision, blackshoe. ROFL

[aguahombre]

For those of us who never were introduced to "meta", we just call them "fallback" agreements ---something we fall back on when the specific situation has not been discussed. We never meta situation we couldn't screw up.

[Free]

My best example to illustrate the difference is transfer preempts.

 

A set of meta-agreements is for example:

- Dbl shows the suit bid

- bidding their suit is takeout

- other bids like a normal preempt

- passing first followed by Dbl is penalty

 

Now you come across some pair playing 2♣ as either weak with ♦ or strong. You just use the same set of agreements as usual. You can fill in the calls (here 2♦ is takeout - while after a 3♥ transfer preempt 3♠ would be takeout) using your meta agreements.

 

A specific agreement for example would be if opps open 2NT as a transfer preempt ♣. Now Dbl can't be "the suit bid", because NT is not a suit. In this case you'll give it a specific meaning.

[gwnn]

If we forget a single agreement three times, we drop it.

so does our Ghestem fiasco count as 1 or 2 times?

[gnasher]

If we forget a single agreement three times, we drop it.

so does our Ghestem fiasco count as 1 or 2 times?

I suggest you round it up to 3.

[RichMor]

Seems like it should mean an agreement about other agreements.

Yes, that's what I think.

 

That seems to cover the way I generally use it, which is just an agreement that covers a wide variety of auctions.

But that's not an agreement about agreements. It's an agreement whose scope is general rather than specific.

 

None of the examples given so far in this thread are agreements about agreements. These are examples of what I would consider a meta-agreement:

- "If it's not written down, we don't play it."

- "Agreements are freely transferrable from one auction to another related one."

- "If two agreements conflict, the more natural applies."

- "If it's not clear what an opponent's bid means, for the purpose of determining what our methods are, we assume that they play the same as we do."

 

I suspect that I'm not going to get very far with this argument. There just aren't enough pedants around.

Andy,

 

I think your definition of 'meta-agreements' and the examples make sense. Maybe we want 2 terms; meta agreements and default agreements.

 

Default agreements are things like:

'An undiscussed bid is assumed to be natural',

'In a constructive auction, it is forcing',

'In a competetive auction, it is non forcing'

(These are paraphrases of Jeff Rubens comments in the Bridge World.)

 

Meta agreements follow your examples. Here are some additional possibles:

'Conventions and treatments remain in force regardless of vulnerability or table position',

'Conventions and treatments generally remain in force after pass'

 

RichM

[helene_t]

"Meta agreements" should be agreements about the agreement-making process:

 

"We revise our agreements primarily during the summer break"