When "Under 14" Juniors Play an English Opening...

English Opening is not an easy opening. If you do not agree with me then just have a look how many books or DVD's dedicated to this opening have been published over last decade. For all I just will name the trilogy written by Mihail Marin recently  published  by Quality Chess or DVD prepared by Nigel Davies and published by Chess Base. 

The pawn structure is not well defined and can change very quickly and you can commonly expect slow manoeuvring and positional battle then transition into rather complex endings.  But I have noticed that this opening (or even Réti set-up) with King-side fianchetto is quite popular among the juniors and I can hardly tell you why. So what is so attractive for young generation on this way of development? Is it the fact that they can play first several moves like an autopilot? Or are they attracted to study games of Ulf Andersson or Tigran Petrosian more then games of Kasparov, Fischer, or Shirov? Or do they believe they do not need to study a lot of theory?

Well back to the reality of recent tournament practise. In the round 8 of Premier section, London Gatwick Tournament two juniors "under 14" were paired and lets have a look at their game.