Bird's Opening is a
chess opening characterised by the move 1. It is named after the
19th century English master
Henry Bird. According to
ChessBase, in master level chess, out of the twenty possible opening moves, 1.f4 ranks sixth in popularity. It is much less popular than the mirror-image
English Opening (1.c4), mainly because 1.f4 weakens White's
king's position slightly.Black's most common response is 1...d5, when the game can take on the character of a reversed
Dutch Defence (1.d4 f5). White will then often either
fianchetto his king's bishop with Nf3, g3, Bg2, and 0-0 with a reversed Leningrad Dutch; adopt a
stonewall formation with pawns on d4, e3, and f4 and attempt a kingside attack; or fianchetto his queen's bishop to increase his hold on the e5 square. Another strategy, by analogy with the Ilyin-Zhenevsky variation of the Dutch Defence, involves White playing e3, Be2, 0-0, d3 and attempting to achieve the break e3-e4 by various means, e.g. Ne5, Bf3, Qe2 and finally e3-e4, or simply Nc3 followed by e4.
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