St. George was a roman soldier and christian martyr who supposedly slayed a dragon in the 3rd century, and so it is surprising to find his moniker attached to a chess opening that isn’t part of the Yugoslav attack. Rather, the St. George is an “uncommon” opening for black involving the the moves a6, e6, and b5, with the idea of an early queenside fianchetto. Michael Basman has played this for years, and has written a small monograph on it as well. One nice thing about this uncommon opening is that it can be a universal defense for black, like 1…b6, since it is playable against any of white’s first moves.

Famously, Tony Miles beat Karpov with the move 1…a6 in 1980. Naturally, his motivations were to avoid opening theory and try to simply play chess. Incredibly, this worked.