It's very unconventional to start a "How-to-Play Chess" resource such as this blog with a discussion of the English opening. But I think it is the most instructive way to begin.
The English opening is not some superpower that makes all good chess opponents suddenly forget how to play. At its core, the English is a way to play more reactively as white. In this sense, it is quite similar to the first move of the Reti Opening (Nf3).
1. e4 c5
Housekeeping
A few notes about chess openings before we dive in...
First: the most popular opening moves with white at all levels of chess play are e4 and d4, known as the king's pawn and queen's pawn openings, respectively.
Second: these two openings have highly developed theory. This means that the pre-calculated lists and variations of best possible moves and counter moves for each of these openings are very, very long.
And third: when playing e4 or d4, the best way to improve your performance is simply memorize theory. You don't have to know why a move it correct to play it and win.
That last point might be a bit depressing to those of you who have just started to get into chess and have a more romantic idea of what it is like to play. But I wouldn't crush your dreams and leave it at that. This desire to play chess with less pre-planned moves and more creativity and realtime calculation is exactly why I think the English opening is the best place to start.
Introduction to the English Opening (c4)
While there are some lines in the English opening that are fundamentally solid regardless of how your opponent plays, what you should take away in your study of playing the English is this: you need to pay attention to how your opponent is playing, and take advantage of the weaknesses in their structure.
If you don't counterattack as white while playing the English, you will be punished for your slow play. Your opponent with develop a plan of attack and sound structure for how to defend themselves while enacting that plan. If that happens, your less aggressive opening will put you behind.
Let's dive a little deeper into that point. Why do you lose advantage in the English if you just sit and develop your board while ignoring your opponent?
Because you've staked out a position on a flank. Your pawn does attack the center, but only in one place. For black to attack your c4 pawn is bad play -- they are risking material (pawns, pieces, etc.) to remove you from a flank and put their structure there instead. That will necessarily leave the center more open, and if you move in, your position will be better.
In other words, you are attacking from a position that the opponent doesn't really have much to gain by taking over. It's more effective for black to stake out their own position and try to defend it, rather than go out of their way to push you off of an already off-center outpost.
That is why the English and Reti opening moves exemplify "hypermodern" chess philosophy. What is that? It's the concept that controlling the center of the board is important, but by doing so from a distance, you can be more flexible in how you play. You make meaningful moves, but you don't overcommit and open yourself up to as many traps.
Controlling the center directly would be what moves like e4 and d4 do. These moves often attack more than one central square at a time. But, they also place the pawn in the most dangerous and highly fought-over area on the board. High risk, high reward.
Many of the best lines in the English opening for white involve black moving their pieces (i.e. knights and bishops) too far into the center or forward. If white lets that happen without reacting, then black simply gets a free space advantage. But if white counterattacks effectively, black's pieces become liabilities, and they lose tempo (i.e. waste moves) moving their pieces out of danger.
Again, just because this opening is reactive does not mean it is passive. That is a huge risk when playing the English -- if you can't see the line you need to play to pressure black, you are not going to sit comfortably at parity like you might be able to with an e4 or d4 line. You will naturally lose advantage by giving your opponent the center for nothing.
What the English Does, and Does Not Do
Let's list some of the things that c4 accomplishes simply by being played:
- It mostly eliminates 90-95% of possible chess opening theory that might have been used by either player. Though you can always find the game wandering back into a position that has well developed theory, that is mostly up to white. Something like a Queen's Gambit may result from an early English opening, and this kind of transitionary play is quite common. It can actually help you "hide" your plan from the opponent to hopefully get them off balance.
- It can force black out of certain openings and move orders that white may not like. This is mainly do to the delayed e4 or d4 choice. Most openings for black are strong or weak based on if the opponent played e4 or d4. By waiting to see what black does, you can play the more advantageous one (or the one more comfortable for you).
- It lets you attack with your knights more than e4 or d4. This is because in those openings, knights are one of the best ways to defend your central pawns. But with c4, which requires less defending because losing it is less impactful to your position, the knights can instead attack with the pawn (often targeting the space d5).
- It keeps your pawn structure tight around the king. All three pawns adjacent to the king remain back, and therefore early king attacks are more difficult for black.
- It usually (see below) results in a reverse Sicilian (i.e. c4 e5). This position, when the colors are flipped, is a common and powerful black opening called the Sicilian defense. The Sicilian can lead to the the Najdorf variation, which is a very solid opening for black. Why is this a good thing? Because you sorta get to practice your white and black game at the same time! There are key differences of course, but the kinds of positions that result share a lot in common. So even when you are playing black, the English opening practice you have is applicable.
Okay, that's all well and good, but what downsides am I signing up for by playing the English?
- The game will be slower. In terms of time, tactics, trades, etc. If you take a long time to think of moves, the English is not going to speed you up. If you want an exciting game with lots of trades and early captures so that the board opens up and there isn't so much calculating going on...the English is not the opening for you.
- Because it is slower, weaker players are not as disadvantaged against it, because it will be harder to push an advantage against fundamentally sound play. This is the other side of the "early counterattacks are necessary" problem. If black plays very passively (which is not advisable), it can be hard for you (especially as a new player) to know how to switch into attack mode from an English start.
- It weakens black's d5 square, so you are most likely to see e5 played against you. If you like playing against black when they play e5, you're golden. But if you don't, then the English is a bad choice.
- It impairs the development of your light square bishop on f1. That darn c4 is just right in the way of that guy! So this bishop is mostly relegated to moving further to the right in order to get access to that long a8 - h1 diagonal. If the opponent knows this, they can pressure you in a way that takes advantage of your weaker light square bishop before it reroutes.
- Related to the last one, the English generally plays out with either the knights or the bishops developing to attack the center. Not a weakness in itself, but it adds a little bit of predictability or even monotony to the opening. There are only so many squares that the minor pieces can go to when your plan is to stake out c4 and then keep the center open until the best pawn moves are opened up. You'll end up moving the knights to the second rank rather than the third a lot, and fianchetto structures are all over the place when playing the English. Again, not inherently a draw back, but you need to consider that greater central pawn flexibility leads to less minor piece flexibility in the initial moves of them game.
The Symmetrical English
*Bum bum buuuuuuuuum*
Okay, jokes aside, this is a unique and scary problem for English players. Strange as it may sound, if black simply copies all of your moves, they will be fundamentally sound well into the 7th, 8th, and even later moves of the game.
This is kind of a taste of your own medicine here -- black is saying, "Oh, you want to react to my play? Why don't I just do what you do, so now you have to make all the proactive decisions again?"
You aren't just doomed to a draw when black decides on symmetrical play, of course. The key moment in these games is when white can find an initial attack that doesn't cleanly trade symmetrically. In other words, because white has the tempo (gets to make each move before black makes the same move, in this case), white can force the game into an imbalanced state by capturing or attacking in a way that the simple symmetrical response is not sufficient to fight. This may involve moving the queen out aggressively, because she can so often attack two or more pieces at once. If one of those is the black king, then symmetry becomes broken, guaranteed.
Example Openings in the English (plus the Najdorf)
Below are the move orders or lines of the English opening that you should briefly study to better understand why they work, and what aspects of the English they take advantage of (and what black is trying to avoid or attack). At the end is the Najdorf Sicilian defense as an example of similar structure and sequence in a black defense rather than white.
Full Symmetry Line, Closed System
- c4 e5
- Nc3 Nc6
- g3 g6
- Bg2 Bg7
- d3 d6
Neo-Catalan Declined Line in the Agincourt Defense
- c4 e6
- Nf3 d5
- g3 Nf6
- Bg2 Be7
- 0-0
Najdorf Variation (Sicilian Defense, Open Sicilian)
2. Nf3 d6
3. d4 cxd4
4. Nxd4 Nf6
5. Nc3 a6
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