Bird's Opening
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| Moves | 1.f4 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| ECO | A02–A03 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Named after | Henry Bird | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Parent | Flank opening | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Bird's Opening (or the Dutch Attack) is a chess opening characterised by the move:
Bird's is a standard flank opening. White's strategic ideas involve control of the e5-square, offering good attacking potential at the expense of slightly weakening the kingside. Black may challenge White's plan to control e5 immediately by playing From's Gambit (1...e5). However, the From's Gambit is notoriously double edged and should only be played after significant study.
The Encyclopaedia of Chess Openings assigns two codes for Bird's Opening: A02 (1.f4) and A03 (1.f4 d5).
The opening was mentioned by Luis Ramírez de Lucena in his book Repetición de Amores y Arte de Ajedrez con Cien Juegos de Partido, published circa 1497. In the mid-nineteenth century the opening was sometimes played by La Bourdonnais and Elijah Williams, among others. The British master Henry Edward Bird first played it in 1855 and continued to do so for the next 40 years. In 1885, the Hereford Times named it after him. In the first half of the 20th century Aron Nimzowitsch and Savielly Tartakower sometimes played 1.f4. In more recent decades, Grandmasters who have used the Bird's with any regularity include Bent Larsen, Andrew Soltis, Lars Karlsson,Mikhail Gurevich, and Henrik Danielsen.
Black's most common response is 1...d5, when the game can take on the character of a Dutch Defence (1.d4 f5) with colors reversed. 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. Timothy Taylor's book on Bird's Opening puts the main line Bird's Opening as follows: 1.f4 d5 2.Nf3 g6 3.e3 Bg7 4.Be2 Nf6 5.0-0 0-0 6.d3 c5.
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