How to meet the English?

Personally I like 1. c4 e5 best, this will usually be a nice open game with tactical shots, like in an Open Sicilian with white. I even tried a "reverse Smith-Morra Gambit" with some success (... d5 cxd5 c6 dxc6 Nxc6), that's something no 1. c4 player is prepared for :)

Yer wot, me old china?  I notice your surname is that of a very painful medical condition, but not sure about the reference to mine?  If you mean Here_Is_Plenty, it is a convenient anagram of my real name - If you mean the real name Stephen Riley I was not born with that name but yes it would be English or Irish if it was my original name. (I was born Stephen Forrest, not sure how Scottish that is either but my mother remarried and I am glad of that as it made crap anagrams.)

Yours confused, Zaphod Beeblebrox VII.

Always grateful to be patronised by an Englishman. :)  You know how us poor Scots struggle, with our woeful 18th century notions.  I will of course wriggle out of it with some words from the famous Welsh writer Shakespeare:

"A rose by any other name would still smell as sweet."

Absolutely! "Oh what a rose garden it is"

If i had my own way.. I would lower the border to just above Birmingham and put a steel fence up..circumnavigate Liverpool with it and leave a small corridor through Manchester to Wales so that i could steal sheep and sell them to the scots.

Excellent plan.  We can only pay you in haggis and whiskey though. 

You Europeans have such odd rivalries. It is no wonder America finishes everything you start.

Wait, we didn't start Vietnam or Korea...oh that's right the Americans didn't finish those.  As for odd rivalries, maybe compare the endless antipathy between Japan and China.  I have a friend who used to go out with a chinese girl (brought up in Scotland, totally Glasgow accent) - she was playing playstation with her young nephew and instructed him to "Kill the Jap".  Tolerance the world over is easier with those who are not your immediate neighbours.  Having said that, this sheep sale proposition may mend fences between the English and ourselves.  We can only hope.

Thats alright..  I like haggis! but only after i've drank whiskey.

Best not do this here the billy goats gruff will accuse us of sitting under there bridge.....

France started Vietnam (but I believe we all equally dislike the French, so common ground).

Oh would have thought the welsh love of sheep would make the UK a more peaceful place...seems they are good for something.

The Americans have finished many things..havent they RJ..

I'm getting out of here! its getting way to deep.

Saying France started Vietnam seems a bit wrong.  It's not their fault that the country revolted and then split into two states.  The government was supposed to hold general elections and become one, but due to someone in the south over throwing their Emperor, the country never held those elections, so the north started attacking the south.  Vietnam started it.  What I want to know is why is it that the North is always the communist part?

One could argue that France should have sat up a good government and gave Vietnam their independance.  It's probably a better argument that the south started it by not holding those elections.  

What I find interesting is the idea that Britain and France started World War II because of their absurd punishment of Germany with the Treaty of Versailles.

http://www.chess.com/opening/eco/A13_English_Opening_Agincourt_Defense_Kings_Knight

haahahahhahaha, funny guy eh?

to the OP, the stonewall formation is perfectly useable against pretty much ANYTHING except 1.e4 and 1.g4, and is also playable as white as the stonewall attack, and is even easy to learn and master, but is it ever boring and confining if you're an "all of your pieces out in the open center" kind of tactical player! stonewall tactics happen in slow motion. LOL all those pawns... soooooo many pawns always in the way.

i'm sure you could also use the more aggressive and hypermodern leningrad dutch formation too. i don't like playing fianchettos myself.

if you want one aggressive system for everything, there's always the king's indian formation.

i just started playing the smith morra gambit against the sicilian and was wondering about playing the formation in reverse against the englist as i love smith morra and took to it right away with minimal study.

it's not covered in the 1...e5 gambit guide to the english though. it does mention reversed sicilians and dragons, but you'd think it'd mention reversed gambits too. no reversed wing gambit either. there's the 2...Bb4 system if you want something unorthodox. it's covered in the book, playable, and sidesteps a lot of transpositions. it looked like the most interesting line to try to me, but vector gambit looks way more interesting and has the "lite theory" advantage.

i could always try the smith morra formation against engines and see if they're playable and just learn the opening on the fly like i'm doing with the morra. otherwise, i'll try the vector gambit as an alternate open center gambit. if nothing else, it has one of the coolest gambit names.

Be sure to bring a 6-pack of Samuel Smith's and a big chunk of Yorkshire pudding along with you (they love that stuff).

I'm an English player myself and all i play with the white pieces is 1.c4 . If you are playing the botvinnik system you must be very cautious not to let white have control over d5. And this is quite problematic if you dont know what you are doing. Also you cant escape from having a positional calm game and this is what your opponent wants. That why i suggest some kind of an Old Indian defense setup. This involves a fianchetto on the dark squared bishop and going for activity on the kingside. Very important is if your opponent plays e3 or not. If he plays e3 at some point its going to be to prevent you from playing f4 but this will allow you to make his B at g2 useless. Its a very complex topic and i think that you will need more practise to figure out what works for you the best. If you have any specific questions feel free to ask.

Find it a little hard to believe that somebody with a 2117 USCF rating would have to ask this question...but hey, maybe he's gained about 600 or 700 points in the last 8 months.

I find the best to be the early f5-systems in the Reversed Sicilian.

More specifically, 1.c4 d6 (or 1...e5 and 2...d6 if you prefer not to face 1.c4 d6 2.d4) 2.Nc3 (or 2.g3, same response) e5 3.g3 f5.  Same if 3.Nf3, f5.  If White ever plays d4 AFTER you have played f5, then you respond with e4.  The knight is a little oddly placed on g5.  Don't immediately kick it with h6.  There's a time and place for that, like if you are also ready for g5 to prevent Nf4.

Otherwise, these lines with 1...d6, 2...e5, and 3...f5 often lead to a tempo-up version of the Classical Dutch, as you play e7-e5 instead of e7-e6 and later on e6-e5.