Winning with the Bishop's Opening

The Bishop’s Opening is the Gumby of King pawn openings. Bend it this way, you have the Vienna Opening. Bend it that way, you have the Giuoco Piano. Give it a twist, you have the Petroff. Give it another twist and you have the Two Knights Defense. Squash it flat and you get a Philidor’s Defense. Unroll it and you have a Four Knights Game. Pull it to its limits and you can wind up with a closed Ruy Lopez. Snap it, and you get a King’s Gambit. The opening’s flexibility once moved Tim Harding, (whose out-of-print pioneering study thirty years ago is still worth searching for) to title one of his 1998 “Kibitzer” columns “What Exactly Is the Bishop’s Opening?” Luckily, we now have Gary Lane to explain.