[jw_nl]

Recently the Tournament Rules of a TD showed the following:

"Asking for non-alerted bids: allowed but do it by private chat (use -> or <- or <-> buttons on the toolbar).
Clicking on non-alerted bid will be considered as unauthorized information and penalized with Ave- "

TD and I discussed this point. I always assumed that nobody can see why a bid shows an alert (eventually + explanation). It's an alert by the bidder WITHOUT OR AFTER a request of one or both opps. In both cases UI will be out of the question. My colleague has a different view as you can see above.

We decided to check this point here.
Please your opinion.

[helene_t]

I think this TD is a little paranoid.

If you click a non-alerted bid, partner can see that it becomes alerted and maybe deduce that you asked for clarrification. But maybe the opponent just decided to alert the bid afterwards on his own. And even if partner knows that you asked a question, so what? Most of the times it carries no UI. Even if it does, partner may not be in a position to use the UI, or he may be ethical enough not to do so.

If you send a private message, the opponent can see who asked the question. I think that's worse, in particular given the high frequency of non-alerted artificial bids.

[uday]

More than a little paranoid. Pairs that want to cheat wont bother with weird low-bandwidth codes like "ask for the meaning of the 2nd bid if you have a singleton"

They'll just use IM