Hello everybody!

In a Competitive tournament. A player ask to judge.
player - I can remind triggered abilities to my friend?
judge - No, This is outside assistance.
player - that sanction is this?
Judge - Match loss.

The player drop from the event, and the player remembers his friend a triggered ability when he forgets.
What is your ruling?

The spectator who did this thing did not stand to gain advantage from it, and therefore cannot have been cheating. However…

He did know the rules about outside assistance and clearly broke them on purpose, and doing this has been extremely disruptive to the tournament. This spectator should be re-entered into the tournament, issued a match loss, and then dropped a second time. I would recommend to the TO that this spectator be ejected from the venue, and if the TO doesn't agree, at minimum the spectator should be given a direct instruction not to spectate this friend's match any more today. Further, this spectator's name and DCI number should be recorded and perhaps they should be allowed to make a statement, as I would report this sort of ‘cheating-by-proxy’ to the Investigations Committee for potential follow-up.

The player did something that was illegal in the game
The player gained an advantage (actually his friend did, but that is besides the point)
The player did this knowingly

=> I would rule Unsporting Conduct: Cheating

While the player/spectator wasn't likely to gain a direct advantage, he was still seeking advantage (for his friend). DQ, and ask him to wait for his friend outside the venue.

Keep in mind, they might have had a prize split arrangement, so he could have been seeking personal advantage - but regardless, his motivation was clear, and he believed there was something to be gained through his actions.

d:^D

The question here is whether the spectator gained an advantage, but I think this can be answered with yes. Maybe the two made a deal about sharing prizes, but I think even if the player only owes something to the spectator, this is advantage enough to justify cheating. You could also ask why the spectator helps the player if he wouldn't gain an advantage from it

A person can win an advantage without being personally affected for it. He wants his friend to win, by illegal ways. This is his advantage here. And of course, he knows it's illegal.

USC-Cheating, DQed, and a report clearly stating that he has been warned against it and does it anyway, among other things :)

There was a scenario that was in the hats.

A friend of the player (not known and also only a spectator) purposely helped the opponent (whom he also knows scarcely) of his triggers, which resulted in the match loss to the opponent (weird) . No one knew until a few years down the road until it was mentioned by his good friend.

Let's hope nothing like this happens though.

As an aditional aspect to point out, I would recommend (in the future) to be more clear with the explanaiton of OA. Saying “Match loss” can be missleading, and it would be a good instance of education saying that if the judge suspects the assitance was done knowingly and in order to gain an advantage to his friend, it is a DQ. If you don't have the time, you could say “from ML to DQ and investigation”; that would probably be enough to prevent this situations.

It remembers me a story about a guy at a draft who said “you can't DQ me for watching the cards selected by the other player, it's just the first time you see me doing it…”