c4 opening

any 1 expalain the idea behind c4 opening. its pros and cons .. does it leads to closed or open game .... does it lead to tactical or positional games ... some books on c4 opening and some main variations

It's versatile, and can lead to either open or closed games, though white doesn't always get to decide this...so it's an opening where YOU need to be versaitle.

It can be its own opening system (as with Kosten's excellent "Dynamic English"), or can be used as a transpositional weapon.

A lot of GM's use it that second way to get into good 1.d4 positions, while avoiding some of black's more annoying defenses.  It's pretty effective for avoiding the Grunfeld, for example (which usually gets forced into KID lines).  And the Slav (which usually becomes a Caro-Kann).

The flip side to that is that it opens up a whole branch of theory you can't avoid when black plays 1...e5.

Karpov does a really good book on the english opening so worth reading. Very true that it can transpose and you need to be able to play close postions and open ones.

@ MrBlunderful

thank you very much.

@punictrader

can u name that book ?

I play this opening everytime and i am still learning new things about it

@ nothing12345 the book is called "How to play the English opening" by Anatoly Karpov. It features 30 games at the top level. Each game has about 20 branch games included in the analyst of the game.