1. f4 c5?

I've seen the Bird's opening a couple of times lately, and i've been responding with a Sicillian setup. This doesn't seem to be in the database... but it seems like a sound idea.

Any thoughts from my betters?

transposes into reversed dutch or grandprix sicilian most of the time I guess

A good book on the Bird (Timothy Taylor) covers this, and he concludes that no independent lines in the Bird give White a good hope for advantage.  He recommends that Bird players transpose to the Grand Prix.  Thus it's a good idea if you play the Sicilian.

I doubt this deserves a ?. I have seen the reversed structure(1.c4 f5) employed in many games and it's not like W was struggling (for example i remember a recent Carlsen-nakamura 1-0). On the chess 365 database there are 1000+ games with 1.f4 c5 and B is doing really well.

Its the 4th most common move in my database just a tad bit behing 1...e5 (from's gambit) but it looks like it mostly tranposes to main lines of 1...d5. And don't forget to play g6/bg7 against the Bird's for defensive purposes.

And if you play 1.f4 c5, you gotta be ready for Grand Prix Attack too...

And I guess that it may 'prevent' white from a Stonewall Attack setup if you don't play d5 since then you can bomb the wall with something like d6+e5. Similar to Stonewall Dutch vs. English opening.

I play the Bird quite a bit and a friend of mine likes to play c5 against it. He does well enough and I would say that Black has decent chances if playing smartly. The Bird is fairly flexible, but so is 1... c5, so be prepared like the above posters have mentioned. 1. f4 c5 is definitely not a ?

Well its definately better than something like the Symmetrical Bird

Or shall I say Symmetrical Dutch :P

Gotta hate it when you play 1...f5 to 1.d4 and your opponent goes for a Double Stonewall >.<.

It works pretty well, but you must consider that white can transpose with e4.

1. ... c5 is the 4th most popular response to the Bird's opening. It looks like a good response to the frequently misguided 1. f4 move. Mainline is 1. f4 c5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. e3 g6 4. Bb5 Bg7 5. O-O Nf6 from 365chess.com with a small advantage to black (-0.14 according to Houdini with the move Nc3 to follow).

Yes 1...c5 is perfectly good, avoids weakening e5 like the more common d5. Was played in the Larsen v Fischer Candidates match, Larsen transposing into a strange closed sicilian with Be2.