One of the earliest opening plays of b4 was by
Bernhard Fleissig playing against
Carl Schlechter in 1893, although Fleissig was handily defeated in just 18 moves.
Nikolai Bugaev defeated former world champion
Wilhelm Steinitz with it in a
simul exhibition game, and later published an analysis of the opening in 1903 in a Russian magazine article.
Savielly Tartakower defeated
Richard Réti using b4 in a match in 1919 when both were top-level players, and Reti himself defeated
Abraham Speijer in
Scheveningen 1923 using the opening. The name "The Orangutan" originates from that game: the players visited the
Bronx Zoo the previous day, where Tartakower consulted an
orangutan named Susan. She somehow indicated, Tartakower insisted, that he should open with b4. Also, Tartakower was impressed with the climbing skills of the orangutan, and thought that the "climb" of the b-pawn was similar. In that particular game, Tartakower came out of the opening with a decent position, but the game was ultimately drawn. The opening received sporadic play in the decades that followed. Tartakower had more success in 1926 when he used it against
Edgard Colle for a victory. One of the most notable proponents was the
Soviet player
Alexei Pavlovich Sokolsky (1908–1969), who often used it in high-level play. Sokolsky wrote a monograph on the opening in 1963,
Debyut 1 b2–b4, which would lead to the opening being called the "Sokolsky Opening". Sokolsky's work defended the viability of the opening even at the highest levels of professional play. The final term, and the one used in contemporary books and chess websites such as
Chess.com and
Lichess, is the Polish Opening. This is by analogy to the
Polish Defense (1.d4 b5), where Black's Queen's Knight pawn is advanced two spaces. ==Notable later usage==