I just came back from a two week vacation and I am a little disappointed about what happened in the meantime. Before everyone gets into details, we should agree on our target. IMHO BBO Moscito should be (relatively) easy to learn and memorize provide a solid base for further steps into the realm of Moscito-like systems be legal in most NCBOs at club level I hope all agree on the first point and probably there will be a lot of support for the second one. The third one may be debatale since we are creating a system for an online community, but in my experience it helps a lot being able to practise such a system at the club and/or regional tournaments. Of course, even if we agree on the basic requirements, we'll have to discuss their consequences. Here are mine: As a consequence of the first point I would try to use the same relay scheme over 1C - positive and after relays to as many opening bids as possible. In my experience it helps a lot if at least 90% of the time relay-responses even remain the same bids and not only steps. Therefore, I would neither use 1C - 1D positive nor a 1S opening on all hands with 4+ spades. To me, a further consequence of simplicity would be that CABs and denial cues suffice. There are certainly hands more suited for other methods, but CABs do their job well enough on most hands. Consequences of the second requirement would be that we should use a standard relay-scheme, i.e. symmetric with hi shortness first, since that seems to be the most widely used variation nowadays. Opening structure may be an issue here too, but since there is no Standard-Moscito anyway (Marston seems to change the system every 2-4 years), I would accept any structure that the reflects the original "majors first" approach. As I said before, the third requirement my be debatable, but it is the one that led to German Moscito and the "funny" 1N and 2C openers. I am not going to defend them in any way, but I want to explain how they came into being: In Germany 1N must be balanced unless it is 17+ (for the ROMEXicans) and majors must show at least 3 cards precluding transfer openings. Given these restrictions, I still think the German Moscito resolution is best. The 1N with spades is a little more difficult to defend and offers an additional safety net when responder is weak. We, too, were a little suspicious concerning the 2C opener but it proved to be a big success. First, it is relatively difficult to defend (a little like Ekren) and second, it is "majors first" at it's best: with a fit responder can wreak havoc on the opponents contructive bidding, without a fit there are two suits to run to and a simple method to show a third, clubs. ;-) All this does not mean, that we should stick to this structure. It was the best solution under the resctrictions by our NCBO and proved to be very playable. But if there is either no general agreement on my third requirement for BBO Moscito or the system restrictions of most other NCBOs are less strict than the ones in Germany, there is no good reason to choose it as a standard. Rene
