How to respond to the English C4?

I sometimes play C5 in friendly games in response to c4 what is the commonly accepted reaponse to the English?

cool, thanks

Wikipedia has nice articles about such subjects for many openings.

Google "wiki English opening"> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_Opening

As the English has lots of variation you can read lots of them there.
Compared to other openings its a large article.

cool might check it out ... but wikipedia can sometimes be full of rubbish as anyone can contribute on it .... but i guess for chess openings it don't matter as it's only opinion or theory as to the best response

e5 and a reversed sicilian setup is good, b5 is intresting too :)

yes sounds interesting ... i have not played many people though that play C4 (the english) most play e4 or d4

I have even managed to get a reversed Smith Morra gambit against 1.c4, that was great fun! (if you don't know the SM: 1.e4 ..c5 2.d4 ..cxd 3.c3 and if black accepts: ..dxc 4.Knxc3)

even more interesting sounds like you have played against the English a lot or at least have experience of playing against it

I have meet it sometimes, here is a game I actually should have lost, but it's a 1.c4 ..e5 game :)

White wasn't to happy after this game, if it's luck in chess, I had it in this game:)

A reversed Closed Sicilian plays well against the English.

we all get our share of luck

The reversed sicilian is the 2. line against the English, Knf3 is most comon, c5 often gets to balanced for annyone to win.

http://www.chessgames.com/perl/explorer?node=2&move=1.5&moves=c4&nodes=2

you definitely know a lot about this so i wont ever be playing the english against you not that i know how to play it!

option 1 resign, option 2 offer a draw, option 3 try to push your centre pawns as black possibly creating the spearhead c5, d4, e5 works well against many giving a space advantage and allows black to build positional pressure, some smarter white players will throw in an early b4 and your centre may crumble like sand so you should be aware and try to prevent this with careful play.

>:)

cool :-)