Yet another opening

Is this a book opening?  There is a major flaw as well.

It's not a book opening after the first move as far as I am aware. 

Your first move (f4) is Birds Opening or the Dutch Attack.  Black's response (d5) is the most common. I haven't played with this opening as it leaves the king side a bit weak but I think that White normally fianchettos his bishop with the moves Ng3, g3 and Bg2 followed by castling (doing this when he can).  You could try looking this up on this site and others if you are interested.  Wikipedia have a good range of articles on openings.  The remainder of your moves are really rather adventurous.  I wouldn't play e3 because it really opens up your king and helps to block in the black squared bishop.  I'd certainly commend you for your spirit of adventure here but if I were you I would explore the main line first

At the point of 1.f4 d5 2.e3 it is a pretty standard Bird's Opening. But BL is not meeting it well. His ...Nc6 does not "fit" the scenario well, imo. More typical would be a black formation such as d5/Nf6/Bf5/e6/c6/Nbd7 or if instead of c6 he plays c5, THEN the Nc6 placement should be okay.

Other ways for BL to meet this opening are to play as a King's Indian Defense formation against it. Such as Nf6/d6/g6/Bg7/O-O/e5 .

Or frequently played is the From's Gambit, which is analogious to the Staunton Gambit that is played vs a Dutch wehn the colors are reversed. A typical From's may go like this 1.f5 e5!? 2.fxe5 Nc6 3.Nf3 and then the two main continuations are 3...d6 or 3...g5 . From's is difficult to meet if you do not know it, otherwise if you do know it, both sides should get quite a playable game. Another way to meet From's is for WT to simply answer 1.f4 e5 with 2.f4, transposing to a King's Gambit Opening, if you like that kind of tactical game. This is actually the approach recommended by ICCF Corr. Chess International Master Keith Hayward, who has been a major proponent of the Bird's Opening.

If you do wish to play the Bird's, it would be very well for you to Google or see some online d-bases of Chess for Hayward's games. He used it successfully for years to help gain his CIM title. He does call it a second rate opening system ...but like any other, having the superior knowlege of it will make it work for WT. Then it is quite playable.

Also it can be extremely effective against Class level opponents because of a most unusual characteristic it often has, which is that WT is often able to initiate a Kingside attack with his pawns, without having to first lock-up the center because the usual remedy of meeting such an attack, which is to counter-strike with the center pawns to open it up there ... often is not effective against the Bird's. BL may find that even after such a center strike he is still facing a mating attack which has not lost its sting despite his having opening a center line such as the d-file.

Your c4 can be very weakening, especially played so early. If set up for it, it might be playable later, but generally is not a part of WT's plan in this opening. The more usual plans are to either play b3 & Bb2, then play for control of e5 & attack as in the Dutch. Or the Hayward plan of not playing the b3 fianchetto, but rather to play d3 (like the ...d6 move of the "Modern Dutch" defense) in order to play to obtain an e4 pawn push against the BL center.

Good luck to you if you take it up. I've played it against Experts in online corr Chess and it has done fine. There is seldom difficulty for WT as long as BL is kept from playing ...e5 effectively. Attempts by BL to ignore the center and counter-attack only on the Q-side tend to be pretty anemic in practice.

  }8-)

Keith Hayward's site is http://www.geocities.com/drawyah/ (good call, Craig). Nice guy, I corresponded with him a little bit a couple of years back. Seems he's playing more conservative stuff now that he's older and he's happy to share the fruits of his knowledge.

His general concept in playing the Bird's is that it's the mirror image of the Dutch Defense (1...f5), and consequently you are playing in the same pawn structures most of the time if you adopt this set for your repertoire.  But the Bird's is not for the timid!

I've started playing with this and it has been quite different than my usual game and is very fun to see what people play against it. My scenario actually has not been played so I don't fork with the pawn(I don't think that's right but oh well).

I'm thinking you should trade off dark squared bishops.

thought taken