Welcome all English opening players!  Let's discuss this wonderful and complex opening with open minds and hopefully we can all learn to play it better from the White side!!

Thanks for setting this up.  I've only been playing the English for about a year, but I pretty much only play 1.c4 and 1.d4 as white.  I like that the games tend to be a little more positional and that I can use an opening system instead of memorizing a lot of theory, which I'm not so good at.  What about everyone else?  Why play 1.c4?