Elijah Williams

One of the leading players in England during the mid-1800s, the Staunton era, was Elijah Williams. Opening theory was not well developed and many players went their own way. Almost everyone played 1.e4 e5. Williams was known to play strategically sound openings that were what we might call offbeat.

Long before Aron Nimzowitsch would play 1.e4 Nc6, Williams tried it in the earliest record game of the Nimzowitsch Defence. His handling of it was amazingly modern. Masters will often play 2.Nf3 fully willing to allow Black to transpose into the Open Games with 2...e5.

The Williams idea is to play ...Bg4 combined with Nf6, e6 and Be7. Black's central pawns will likely advance to d5 and/or e5 depending on later developments. It's easy to set-up, but Black must push back as soon as he is ready to avoid just playing passively, and thus poorly. Many other players would add this variation to their repertoire. Some of the more notable were Rainer Knaak, Hugh Myers and Tony Miles.