Off the beaten path with the Bishop's Opening

Hey all,

As a 1. e4 player, I have to prepare myself for  1 ... e5 and the Ruy, Scotch, and Italian games all are backed with a monster amount of theory.  After watching some good games in the recent London Chess Classic with the Bishop's opening I thought I'd give it a whirl.

Does anyone have any experience with 1. e4 e5 2. Bc4!?

I love to play the Bishops Opening.

I mainly use it as a transpositional weapon, trying to transpose to the Italian Game while avoiding the Petroff Defence.

1.e4 e5 2.Bc4 Nc6 3.Nf3 and wham you are right in the Italian.  This usually messes people up as they are generally not prepared to face the Italian through the move order trick.  White should do very well.

1.e4 e5 2.Bc4 Nf6 3.d4 and you invite the Urusov Gambit or a transposition to the Modern Italian Game depending on how black plays. 

1.e4 e5 2.Bc4 d6 3.Nf3 is the Philidor which should not be a problem for white.

I prefer to play the Bishop's Opening primarily because I'm afraid of my on defence, The Petroff. As crazy as it sounds, but its true. The spanish game, italian game and the scotch require numerous time to study that's why I switched to Petroff.

I play the Bishop's Opening with a tendency to transpose my games into Vienna Game and by delaying the Knight move on f3 square, I'm transforming the game into King's Gambit Declined.

after the move 5. f4, I have a lot of options, I can either go for Na4 attack the black dark squared bishop, or f5, clamping the kingside, preparing to blast open my kingside.

Castling can either be kingside or queenside. I prefer kingside castling in this game because I don't want my king to be left out on the queenside while all my pieces  will be attacking black's kingside (that is if, black castles kingside).

I would like to hear from you if my strategy checks out ok for you. I've started adopting the Bishop's Opening (with Vienna opening and King's Gambit Declined options) just recently.

Thanks! Are there any other ideas behind the lines of Bishop's Opening? Perhaps I can say that "bishop's opening is a road less travelled". I have avoided the sharp defence that can brought about by the Ruy Lopez, enjoying a positional game with the Vienna options of Bishop's opening, and launching a very sharp attack with the King's Gambit options.

You will need to be ready to transpose into the Max Lange Attack if you like the line 1.e4 e5 2.Bc4 Nf6 3.d4

In fact, it is possible to avoid all independant lines of the Bishop's opening, so it really is a good transpositional weapon. But that tends to mean that you need to know more theory to use it well, because you've got to learn lines from the Vienna, Bishop's Gambit, Italian, King's Gambit Declined, Urusov Gambit, and maybe one or two more. There are also a few unique Bishop's lines, with the quick c6-d5 plan, but I don't know what it is called. It goes 1. e4 e5 2. Bc4 Nf6 3. d3 c6

The good news with the Bishop's is that there is quite a high chance of leading black into an opening he has maybe never even played before, because these transpositional openings play havoc with many repetoires. Considering how dangerous some of those openings are, it's even stronger than usual I'd say.

1.e4 e5 2.Bc4 c6!? is a variation that has caused me trouble in the past.

Rather than play something like the Max Lange, which is not entirely safe for White, the Lolli Attack is the way to go as seen in the diagram.  There are some other important deviations along the way that I showed in the moves list.

That's what white is hoping for if he tries this line, a transposition to the improved Fried Liver Attack. Black's sixth move should instead be Qe7+