The English Opening.

[MJMcCready]

Sincere apologies for my sheer laziness but one 18-month project and three others running concurrently really take it out of me, as well as having to pack personal libraries and put them on planes every month. As we know some openings are named after nations; we have our own The English Opening of course but I just don't have the resources with me and neither the time nor inclination to go swathing through primary or secondary source material to discover/encover how the term was coined and why. Even establishing how the term found its way into literature is too much of an ask right now.

Could someone offer their opinion? Please don't say wikipedia says this or just google it. I come to this site to avoid all that silly nonsense, please just offer your opinion and support it with claims or discuss -none of this 'just google it nonsense'. Ideally I am curious to know what is it about it that makes it English. The simple answer is probably in XXXX year some played like this in XXXXXXX coffee house but probably there is a fair bit more to it than that.

Sorry, got to crack on... .

[IM Jack Rudd]

The 1843 match between Staunton and Saint-Amant has six games where Staunton opened 1.c4. That might be the origin.

[MJMcCready]

Aha, must be 30 years since I looked at a single Staunton game.

[MJMcCready]

Chess set wise he is the top man but western chess pre-Capablanca, lost interest in it a long time ago... .

[Michael Farthing]

The 1843 match between Staunton and Saint-Amant has six games where Staunton opened 1.c4. That might be the origin.

This is the view of Modern Chess Openings 10th edition (1965):

..derives its name from its association with Howard Staunton who played it against St Amant in their match (1843) and again in the England v France team match (1843) as well as the historic 1851 London tournament.

Staunton himself, in his Handbook (1847) gives it no name but refers to it as "Irregular", though wryly notes that the sequence P to Q B's 4th P to K's 4th is regarded by "some writers" as favouring black, whereas "in the Sicilian Game, when the position is reversed, and you have Black's position, and in addition the advantage of the move, you can barely make an even game".

[MJMcCready]

Hmmm, thank you, so its from Staunton then. Okay, well the naming of openings was more regional then than it is now I guess, not that I would know which the last opening to have been named regionally was. An off the top of the head guess would be the Scandinavian but who am I to comment without resources.

[John McKenna]

The "Scandinavian" (Skandinavistk parti) has been in use since at least 1921 in the region itself.

The Leningrad (Dutch) is a later example of geographical naming probably originating in the 1930s or 1940s.

[John Clarke]

There was for a time the Birmingham Defence (dating from 1980) but that didn't stick. It's now usually called the St George Defence.

[MJMcCready]

Given the choice, I'd call that 'The Miles Defence'

[Matt Mackenzie]

That is a logical name for it, so I wonder why it never took off.

[Kevin Thurlow]

"Given the choice, I'd call that 'The Miles Defence'"

Basman played it before that - a quick look at Chessbase reveals about 200 examples, even players such as Kamsky, Artemiev, Dubov and Fedoseev have tried it. Nomenclature of chess openings is a bit odd at times, The "Basman Sicilian" (1.e4 c5, 2.Nf3 e6, 3.d4 cxd4, 4.Nxd4 Bc5) was played by Paulsen against Morphy over 100 years earlier, and not without success. Mike of course played it a lot more, and published theory of it, as he did with the St George. Tony M only played the thing once, but to stunning effect of course!

[Matt Mackenzie]

Tony M only played the thing once, but to stunning effect of course!

Heh, I did not know this!

Though since there are openings named after people who *never* played them, maybe that shouldn't disqualify him?

[Kevin Thurlow]

"Though since there are openings named after people who *never* played them, maybe that shouldn't disqualify him?"

Fair point!

[MJMcCready]

Some openings are named after animals, they should be disqualified also. I've never seen animals play chess before.

[MJMcCready]

It takes the thread off topic but where did that idea come from?