Im not much of tactical mastermind but i find that i play better when i have the black pieces. What openings should i use when playing as white? Im looking for something more defensive. Or should i scrap this idea and play an aggresive/gambit type opening?

I have tried the centre game, ruy lopez, bishops opening and english opening. But i havent gone too deep in analysis of any of them. Anyone have suggestions for me. Anything to help me improve my opening play as white would be nice.

There are tons of stodgy openings out there for White.  Some of them are fairly cookie-cutter with less theory to worry about.  Playing as Black, I've always found the Colle, the English and the Reti systems tough nuts to crack.

Worry far less about openings and work on tactics, board vision, and the positional elements, then all of a sudden you'll be enjoying good middlegames. And the opening is just about getting that, a good or playable middlegame.

The easy way is to play this setup no matter what black comes up with:

1.Nf3 2.g3 3.Bg2 4.0-0 (sometimes you could make the moves d3, knd2 and e4 before 0-0, but start with the most basic)

After castling you should take a look at the center, if you like to be black, this setup should suit you fine!

thx i will take all of ur comments into great consideration. :)

i've seen some defensive openings from white

you should take up the queen's gambit?

no stick with simple king and pawn openings for a while just play some like this.

When you start out, play a tactical opening.  Doing this will allow you to develop excellent tactics, which will allow you to succeed at the next level.

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The queen's gambit is a fairly safe opening for white that still gives him long term positional pressure. That position is just going to be boring. And again, I didn't really play tactical openings, developed my positional play mostly first (not because it's necessarily the best thing to do but it was my favorite thing to do in chess) and then try to eliminate blunders by just studying tactics out of books. In fact until I even knew about 1 d4 openings I always thought chess was boring because you would never know why a better player's attack would always succeed and I would never succeed in an attack. But in my experience you absolutely do not have to play a tactical opening to get better at tactics or chess in general if that's not your style. There are alternative ways. So yeah queen's gambit definitley, there is theory on it but for an opening like you usually aren't punished for making the wrong move. But make sure you know its plans. It's not really defensive, just positional, but as white there's no need to be defensive when you have the QG.

I don't think the QG is that easy for beginners especially with the number of looks Black can give. White has to know how to handle iso-queen pawns, minority attacks and other things that a beginner just wouldn't know. And it's not always safe when Black plays really aggressive with openings like the Benko gambit or Chigorin's defense.

In my experience as a weaker player when I was first playing the QG in tournament games as white I always knew what I was doing alot more than my opponent. My plan was just to play e4, so it was pretty simple actually. As black my opponents would just move around because they wouldn't really know what to do.

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There's more than one way to improve at chess, I've talked with IMs that have never played 1.e4. The main reason I suggested playing something along the lines of the Italian Game is it's easier to understand and generally leads to an open position, which involves more tactics. In games between players with ratings below 1200 tactics are going to be the deciding factor in the game, not positional play( not to say that positional play shouldn't be studied or is less important).

I think we can agree that the opening isn't all that important for a begineer. Playing the Italian game shortens the opening phase, and gets right to the middle game.

Ok, but I don't think it's a requirement is what I'm saying.

Im learning the kings indian i like it so far

You could always play 1.a3 - it'll be just like playing as black.

If defensive white openings is what you are looking for than i would recomend the English opening.As it ussually leads to closed games, i feel that the english is more conservative than the ussual e4 and d4 games.

I think I'd agree with friedfox99. The English tends to lead to compact positions for white that are safe but not passive. It's really an excellent opening for a player with a sit-back-and-wait style of play.

Here is an example game where white just slowly improves his position until black goes astray and then pounces.

 

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Check out chess.com's Game Explorer and see what you like!

If you want to play the English, make sure your endgame is good!

The Colle system is quite solid too.