The Napoleon Opening is an irregular
chess opening starting with the moves:
:1.
e4 e5
:2.
Qf3
As with the similar
Danvers Opening (2.Qh5), White hopes for the
Scholar's mate
In chess, the scholar's mate is the checkmate achieved by the following moves, or similar:
:1. e4 e5
:2. Qh5 Nc6
:3. Bc4 Nf6??
:4. Qxf7
The same mating pattern may be reached by various move orders. For example, White might play 2.Bc4 ...
(2...Nc6 3.Bc4 Bc5 4.Qxf7), but Black can easily avoid the attack.
History
The Napoleon Opening is named after the French general and emperor
Napoleon Bonaparte
Napoleon Bonaparte ; it, Napoleone Bonaparte, ; co, Napulione Buonaparte. (born Napoleone Buonaparte; 15 August 1769 – 5 May 1821), later known by his regnal name Napoleon I, was a French military commander and political leader wh ...
, who had a deep love of chess but was said to be a mediocre player. The name came into use after mid-nineteenth century publications reported that he played this opening in an 1809 game that he lost to
The Turk, a fake chess
automaton
An automaton (; plural: automata or automatons) is a relatively self-operating machine, or control mechanism designed to automatically follow a sequence of operations, or respond to predetermined instructions.Automaton – Definition and More ...
operated at the time by
Johann Allgaier.
[Murray, H.J.R. ''A Short History of Chess'' (London: Oxford University Press), 1963 posthumously, p. 79.]
Assessment
The Napoleon is a weak opening because it the white
queen
Queen or QUEEN may refer to:
Monarchy
* Queen regnant, a female monarch of a Kingdom
** List of queens regnant
* Queen consort, the wife of a reigning king
* Queen dowager, the widow of a king
* Queen mother, a queen dowager who is the mother ...
prematurely and subjects it to attack, and deprives the white of its best development square.
See also
*
List of chess openings
This is a list of chess openings, organized by the ''Encyclopaedia of Chess Openings'' () code. In 1966, Chess Informant categorized the chess openings into five broad areas ("A" through "E"), with each of those broken down into one hundred subcat ...
*
List of chess openings named after people
''The Oxford Companion to Chess'' lists 1,327 named openings and variants. Chess players' names are the most common sources of opening names. The name given to an opening is not always that of the first player to adopt it; often an opening is nam ...
References
{{reflist
External links
Napoleon vs. The Turk, Schönbrunn Palace, 1809
Chess openings
Napoleon