Alerting

How to alert

You always alert your own bids. When you alert, you immediately explain what the bid means according to your partnership agreements. Always give explanations via a private message to your opponents; if you type the explanation in your bidding box, this happens automatically. Your partner cannot see your alert or explanation, so no unauthorized information is transmitted.

Asking for explanations

As an opponent, you may always ask for additional information about the opponents’ partnership agreements. Do this privately so that no unauthorized information is conveyed. You may not ask the partner of the alerter what an alerted bid means, because this could reveal a misunderstanding. That is not the intention of the alerting rules.

Example: If your left-hand opponent opens 1NT, your partner doubles for penalties, and your right-hand opponent bids 2♥ (explained as a transfer to ♠), you may not ask left-hand opponent what 2♥ means.

What counts as an agreement?

Alerting and explaining is intended to give the opponents full information about your partnership agreements (full disclosure). These can also be implicit agreements: agreements never explicitly discussed, but which occur frequently enough that both partners rely on them.

Example: If a player occasionally opens a preempt in third seat with a 6-card suit, while the official agreement requires a 7-card suit, then this is an implicit agreement. The opponents are entitled to this information.

You must always alert and explain your agreements. However, if you intentionally deviate from your system, you do not alert this, because your partner also does not know you are deviating.

Example: You open 1NT with a singleton and your partner is just as surprised as the opponents. There is no reason to alert.

Example: If your convention card shows that you play Multi 2♦, and with ♠K875432 ♥98 ♦QJ ♣Q6 you still choose to open 2♦, then you explain the bid according to the agreement (Multi 2♦), not according to your actual hand.

What should be alerted?

You must alert any bids that opponents might reasonably give a different meaning without a warning. Natural bids do not need to be alerted unless they have an unusual or partnership-specific meaning. In that case, alerting is required.

In face-to-face bridge, some bids are exempt from alerting. These exemptions do not apply on StepBridge, because your partner cannot see your alerts or explanations. No unauthorized information can be conveyed.

For natural bids that are played differently by different partnerships, we recommend alerting and briefly explaining them anyway. This makes the game smoother and more pleasant.

Example: A natural 2♥ overcall (weak, 6-card ♥) does not need to be alerted. But because some partnerships play this as strong, it is helpful to give a short explanation such as “wk”.

Failure to alert

If a player fails to alert a conventional or unusual agreement, this is considered a failure to alert. This is an infraction of the rules, but there is no penalty for the failure itself. Only if the opponents suffer damage as a direct result of the failure can the score be adjusted to compensate.

If there is no demonstrable damage, no adjustment is made. The player may be reminded to alert correctly in the future. Note: damage is not the same as getting a bad score; there must be a clear causal link between the failure and the result.

There is a grey area where technically an alert is required, but the agreement is so well known that an alert adds little (for example, 2♣ as Stayman). If such an alert is forgotten, this does not mean you may assume the bid is natural. The alerting rules require an active attitude from all players. If it seems an opponent has forgotten to alert and the meaning is relevant for your decision, calmly ask what the bid means. If it is not relevant, simply ignore it.