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uday, on Jul 31 2006, 05:40 AM, said:
Someone opened 2C (precision) and simultaneously alerted and explained it as
"11-15 pts 6cs or 5cs and 4cd major"
"11-15 pts 6cs or 5cs and 4cd major"
Uday, a skilled and experienced programmer like yourself should have no trouble parsing this as a computer would. For myself, I need to consult the Perl cheatsheet I have on the wall, which has 'and' way down in the second-last position of precedence...but ahead of 'or', which is tied for dead last (with 'xor', whatever that may be).* This means that the Perl compiler at least would put the first brackets around (5Cs and 4cd major), and the sentence would match the intended meaning.
I don't think I would adjust. Whatever the guidelines of international offline tournaments, online is a special animal. We have UI-less ways of asking opponents to clarify their meaning. In offline bridge, the confused opponent would have to verbally ask one of the opponents to clarify, with the possibility of creating UI for his partner. Online, we simply send a private message and against actively ethical players the mystery is cleared up fairly quickly.
So my take on this one is that I would ask the defender/plaintiff why he did not simply ask privately for a clarification--a question to which there probably isn't a good answer. The 2♣ opener would be advised to be more clear in future, but I wouldn't change the score.
Here's a thought: if your agreement is that a 2♣ opener promises a 4cd major only if the clubs are five long, why is it so important to divulge this immediately? Why not wait and explain this later, when the rebid confirms only five? One might get the impression that a rebid of clubs denies a four-card major, which is not true, is it?
* Perl gurus will note that most Perl-ers will never use 'and' or 'or,' instead using '&&' or '||' respectively, since these forms have much higher precedence. But even then, '&&' outranks '||'...