Colle

The Colle System is another one of the Queen’s Pawn openings which has a lot of fans especially among amateur players, because it is both simple to learn and simple to play. It has been named in honour of the Belgian master Edgar Colle (1897–1932), who won some beautiful attacking games with it in the 1920s. At first glance it does not look very likely that White could ever trouble Black after the modest move 3.e3, which unnecessarily shuts in his own queen’s bishop. But when the game is opened up after a series of preparatory moves (c3, Nbd2, 0-0 and possibly either Re1 or Qe2) by means of the thrust e3-e4, an unwary opponent can rapidly find himself crushed as White goes on to occupy the knight outpost on e5.