[toimkr]

What is preferred method for one who has forgotten to self alert a bid. When is the correction made? If defender clicks a bid asking for explanation, is the response visible to all? Upon completion of bidding, how does defender ask if there has been any failure to alert?

[mycroft]

Depends on the game.

In a tournament with a TD, I would talk to them if I could. or at least warn them before...

At a table, I'd do what I do FTF, when I have provided misinformation - correct it when I remembered. Yes, that can cause problems - that's why the heads up to the TD if there is one.

In answer to your specific questions:

• self alerts, including self-provided explanations and explanations from opponents' queries, are displayed to yourself and your opponents. Partner does not see them. At the end of the hand the last state of Alerts and explanations are in the history that is visible to all.
• Defenders can ask the meaning of any call, including non-Alerted ones. I would warn you that doing so (or at least the fact of bidder explaining implying the query) passes information to partner, and information from that is unauthorized (*).
• Yes, there can be an issue where someone doesn't know their call is Alertable, so they didn't. "Did we miss an Alert?" doesn't help there either...
• Frequently the opponents can work out that the auction has gone off the rails because the explained bids from one partner don't match with the responses of the other partner. That's good, in fact - that level of "is partner on the same page" comfort from the Alerts from the other side of the table is one of the big reasons self-alerting is better (with its own problems, of course).

(*)if you look up my history, you will find that I have a bit of a bee in my bonnet about this one. How many times a completely Alerted strong club auction got to 3NT, and then before the opening lead, I'm asked about one call (say 3♦). After explaining (say, "third round control in spades"), opening leader finds a diamond lead. Third hand has AQJxx. 3NT fails, making on any other lead. I wonder how OL found the dead doubleton lead instead of their suit? Brilliance, obviously. I am not ascribing malice to any of those people - they really were confused, and they really wanted to know the answer. I'm just saying that they - and everyone - need to be careful about times and times to ask.

[pescetom]

mycroft, on 2020-April-24, 12:22, said:

At a table, I'd do what I do FTF, when I have provided misinformation - correct it when I remembered. Yes, that can cause problems - that's why the heads up to the TD if there is one.

I would suggest that you correct the misinformation immediately but via private chat to opponents.
As an online TD, I wouldn't be particularly thrilled if you were in time to do this but called me instead, although it is certainly one of your rights.
Opponents will call anyway if they see (or imagine) some problem.

mycroft, on 2020-April-24, 12:22, said:

(*)if you look up my history, you will find that I have a bit of a bee in my bonnet about this one. How many times a completely Alerted strong club auction got to 3NT, and then before the opening lead, I'm asked about one call (say 3♦). After explaining (say, "third round control in spades"), opening leader finds a diamond lead. Third hand has AQJxx. 3NT fails, making on any other lead. I wonder how OL found the dead doubleton lead instead of their suit? Brilliance, obviously. I am not ascribing malice to any of those people - they really were confused, and they really wanted to know the answer. I'm just saying that they - and everyone - need to be careful about times and times to ask.

This seems to me yet another area where online can handle things differently compared to F2F. There is no obvious need for a defender to know that 3♦ has been queried by his partner - if he has doubts about the same call he can always query it and just receive the same answer "third round control in spades". Now if he finds the killer lead it was just brilliance.

[Vampyr]

pescetom, on 2020-April-24, 12:54, said:

This seems to me yet another area where online can handle things differently compared to F2F. There is no obvious need for a defender to know that a certain call has been queried by his partner - if he has doubts about the same call he can always query it and just receive the same answer without knowing how it was originated.

This depends on whether both defenders receive an explanation about a queried call.

[pescetom]

Vampyr, on 2020-April-24, 13:00, said:

This depends on whether both defenders receive an explanation about a queried call.

Exactly. It is not inherent in the system and arguably not desirable that it happens automatically.