English defense

I think many of you know the english opening.....

.......but do you know the english

I'm not quite sure why it's called the English Defense as it doesn't contain c5. My late instructor used to always play a symmetrical defense against my English and it took a long time to learn how to beat it. It looks more to me like you're playing a Reti or Larsen's Opening in reverse. 

I definitely don't like that knight's journey variation as the knight wastes too many moves getting into position only to be exchanged for the bishop while white continues to develop other pieces. White is ready to castle and the undeveloped bishop has an open diagonal. White also has complete control over the center. It looks like white is going to have a space advantage going forward while black's position will be cramped.

    Try looking at books on the Queen's Indian Defense.  That seems to be the pawn structure that Black is trying to achieve.  But some of Black's moves are not theory and would definitely be punished by White. 

The English defence is an awesome opening. I use it alot and do well with it. 

GM Tony Miles is really the master of this opening. If you look at his games using the English defence (not Evans defence!) you will be very impressed and this is the way to learn how to play this defence properly. He is very very creative!

Here is something of interest for people found of transpositions in the opening. From my experience as Black, i like to play the English defence and i also like to play the Hippo. The best way to enter the English defence is 1.c4 b6 because against 1.d4 b6 white can play 2.e4 and refrain from c4 which is Evans defence. BUT! this is a good thing for transpositions! 

Andrew Martin has a book on the Hippo and in every game in the book White does not play c4 in the opening. This is probably the downfall of the book because if you try to play the Hippo against systems where White has played c4 you wont know what to do. So, generally the Hippo should be okay against systems with Nc3 and the pawn on c2. 

Think about it. The drawback of an early ...b6 is that White can delay c4 and play Nc3, but if he does this Black can instead play the Hippo in a favourable situation .ie c4 has not been played! I am pretty sure you can create a full opening repitoire for Black using only these two openings if you like that style of play. Of course you will have to have a little think about which move orders to use but its not that difficult since the Hippo is very flexible in its move order and quite similiar to the English defence (in terms of pawn structure, obviously the Hippo is not as active as the English defence.)

Mainline_Novelty wrote:

I think many of you know the english opening.....

.......but do you know the english

defense

 

It’s called the English opening, but it very closely resembles most Indian defenses such as the nimzo indian and queens indian. It is a more modern, counter-attacking defenses, where pawns aren’t pushed to the center early, but threats are made by minor pieces and the middle is controlled from afar. I am not extremely well versed in the theory, but it isn’t very easy to punish so long as black plays moves in order. It is not exactly as “system-like” as the sturdy King’s Indian Defense, which is less theoretical and more hyper modern.