Irregular openings are chess openings with an unusual or rare first moves from White. Such openings include:
- 1.a3 (Anderssen's Opening)
- 1.a4 (Ware Opening)
- 1.b4 (Sokolsky Opening, also known as Polish or Orangutan Opening)
- 1.c3 (Saragossa Opening)
- 1.d3 (Mieses Opening)
- 1.e3 (Van 't Kruijs Opening)
- 1.f3 (Barnes Opening, also known as Gedult's Opening)
- 1.g4 (Grob's Attack)
- 1.h3 (Clemenz Opening, or Basman's Attack)
- 1.h4 (Desprez Opening, or Kadas Opening)
- 1.Na3 (Durkin Opening, also known as Durkin's Attack or the Sodium Attack)
- 1.Nc3 (Dunst Opening)
- 1.Nh3 (Amar Opening, also known as Paris Opening)
The above openings are all categorized under the ECO code A00. Openings that are not "irregular" comprise:
- 1.e4 (King's Pawn Game)
- 1.d4 (Queen's Pawn Game)
- 1.c4 (English Opening)
- 1.Nf3 (Réti Opening or Zukertort Opening)
- 1.f4 (Bird's Opening)
- 1.g3 (Benko's Opening) and
- 1.b3 (Larsen's Opening).
If White plays a regular opening and Black responds in an unconventional way, the opening is not categorized A00. For instance, 1.e4 a6 is classified as B00 (King's Pawn Opening).
Famous quotes containing the words irregular, chess and/or opening:
“My father and I were always on the most distant terms when I was a boy—a sort of armed neutrality, so to speak. At irregular intervals this neutrality was broken, and suffering ensued; but I will be candid enough to say that the breaking and the suffering were always divided up with strict impartiality between us—which is to say, my father did the breaking, and I did the suffering.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)
“Work, as we usually think of it, is energy expended for a further end in view; play is energy expended for its own sake, as with children’s play, or as manifestation of the end or goal of work, as in “playing” chess or the piano. Play in this sense, then, is the fulfillment of work, the exhibition of what the work has been done for.”
—Northrop Frye (1912–1991)
“With two sons born eighteen months apart, I operated mainly on automatic pilot through the ceaseless activity of their early childhood. I remember opening the refrigerator late one night and finding a roll of aluminum foil next to a pair of small red tennies. Certain that I was responsible for the refrigerated shoes, I quickly closed the door and ran upstairs to make sure I had put the babies in their cribs instead of the linen closet.”
—Mary Kay Blakely (20th century)