I played through a few Bird's Opening games today in the bookstore, and I was intrigued to say the least. Timothy Taylor (IM who wrote the book on the Bird that I read today) had some interesting points about the Bird, such as white's valuable e5 square, how it's like a reversed dutch with an extra tempo, how From's Gambit isn't as good as people think it is, etc. I'm considering ordering it off of Amazon.com....can get it for x-mas .
What are your experiences playing the Bird (on either side of the board)?Do you have any of your Bird encounters that you'd be willing to share here/send me the PGN of?
Regardless what you think of the Bird, it's definitely a fun opening to learn about and I'm looking forward to using it in match play. I'll definitely post the games when I do play the Bird OTB.
Well I've played once as black against Bird's and I lost. And I've tried it a couple times as white and won both. But my opponents weren't that great, so...
Unluckily I don't have a PGN of any of the games.
I became a nationally rated chess expert by playing 1.f4 as a main move. Now as an expert player whose goal is to become an FM some day, I'm about to relegate it to an alternative opening, in favour of 1.e4 and 1.d4, although I'll never stop playing it. It will always be an opening in my arsenel, to be played at the right time, against the right opponents.
As TT suggests in his book, there is indeed nothing "wrong" with 1.f4 And if Black wants to play 1.e5 then White has excellent prospects for the full point. Problems start to occur when you get to my level and above. Against strong opponents, there are limited prospects to maintian the initiative, especially against the Modern Defense (1.g6) and other Kingside fianchetto defenses. Against such defenses it's best for White to try transpose into a space-grabbing opening such as a mainline pirc or KID where White can maintain some initiative.
GM Henrik Danielsen was an avid practioner of 1.f4 as his primary opening for some time, but even he switched to 1.d4 in the last few years.
Fromm's (1... e5) is over rated imho. Any Bird's player is likely to know the Fromm's to an extreme depthm and it maintains excellent options for White (what chessbully said :))
And regardless Fromm's is a gambit. I'm looking for a strong positional answer to 1. f4. Any ideas?
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