English Opening

The English opening is an opening in chess. It was named after the English champion Howard Staunton, who often practiced in the 19th century and great services acquired to their theoretical understanding. English is an immensely flexible opening, where you can often go into many other opening systems; so much is possible from the Queen's Gambit on the Indian defense to Sicilian. No other system offers such opening a world of possibilities.

The English opening is among the Closed games and is classified in the ECO codes A10 to A39 under the keys.

Each of its main variants begins with the following features: 1 c2 - c4 ( transpositions are frequent; eg 1 ... 2 Nf3 c4)

The main variants of the English Opening include:

• English symmetry variant 1 ... c7 - c5
• After the first neutral development course ... Ng8 - f6 is the Mikenas system or Mikenas attack called 2 Nb1 - c3 e7 - e6 3 e2 -e4 independent significance. In the case of 3 ... d5 4 e5 d4 5 exf6 dxc3 6 bxc3 Qxf6 7 d4 is white on the space advantage of its robust peasant center. In the case of 3 ... c5 4 e5 White can Ng8 by 5 d4 cxd4 6 Qxd4 Nc6 7 De4 defend his outpost e5 Nf3 Nc6 or 5 with 6 d4 cxd4 7 Nxd4 Sxe5 8 Sdb5 figure pressure exercise.

The opening starting with 1 c4 is also called occasionally Bremer opening or Carls - opening, after Bremen chess champion Carl Carls ( 1880-1958 ). As White Carls always opened with 1 c4. For this one tells the following anecdote: When Carls at a chess tournament once again had white, glued friends before the game secretly the pawn on c2 fixed. Carl sat down to the board, summed up in the c-pawn and tried to pull with force.

• Chess opening