Queenside Fianchetto

     I like the Queenside Fianchetto but I rarely see it played.  It really seems to work well against players in the 1200 to 1500 level.  It is amazing how many players forget about that bishop until it comes up the long diagonal and takes out the rook.  When I use it against higher level opponents, it tends not to work so well. I also like how it keeps my paws more tightly grouped so they can support each other.

     I like to start out with a Queenside Fianchetto, then develop the Knights, then E3 to open up for the Queen and the white squared bishop.

     Anyone else like to use a Fianchetto?  Any other suggestions after the Fianchetto is played?

I like the fianchetto on Kingside that develops from the Kings Indian Attack/Defense.  I rarely use the attack, but I love the Indian defense when my opponent opens queenside.   Sometimes my knight ends up in a nasty pin to my bishop.  If I watch for it I can usually avoid that pin and get my knight activated with out having to rely on my king to protect the kingside bishop.

I like to play the king's indian, which uses Fianchetto on the king side.. it tends to work pretty good for me.

This is typically how i see it played... There are a lot more variations to it, but this is the most common

1.b3 is called the Larsen Opening named after Danish GM Bent Larsen who used to play it a lot. It went through a brief period of popularity in the early 70’s but then fell out of favor.

Generally Black will meet it with 1...e5 trying to limit the scope of the B. Typical play might be 2.Bb2 Nc6 3.e3 d5 4.Bb5 Bd6 5.f4

Another popular way to meet it is: 1...d5. In that case the usual move is 2.Nf3 which often transposes into a Reversed Nimzo-Indian

Black can also play 1...Nf6, 1...c5, 1...f5, 1...e6, 1...c6, 1...b6, or even 1...b5.

It allows Black a lot of options so to play it correctly you should be pretty familiar with a lot of different formations.

which queenside fianchetto? 1.b3? 1e4 b6,  2.d4 b6 3c4 b6?  queen's indian?

I would guess 95% of the time I have finachettoed a Bishop by the 4th or 5th move as either Black or White (but King side). Love the Bishop on the long diagonal. I have even fianchettoed both Bishops in a few games!

No way mate! that's radical!

like this.  

This is definitely an overly-simplistic way to look at it. You are describing potentially several different white or black openings and seemingly not taking into account what the opponent plays. For example, if  you are an English Defense player you are watching the opponent's move order carefully and in some instances are better off pivoting into the French instead.

Similarly, I enjoy the Catalan a lot which starts from Queen's Gambit, but depending on my opponent's moves I might stay in more traditional Queen's Gambit variations instead of going into the kingside fianchetto.

I also like playing King's Indian Defense from both the white and black perspective but find a lot of people who use it don't know the real long term plans of the opening. They just expect to win material on the long diagonal at some point. The real main plan for KID, though, is to break on f4 and push the kingside pawns at the opponent's king and go straight for the checkmate. Then the g7 bishop eventually drops back to f8 to defend white's queenside push and eventual c5 break.

So to answer the question, "do I like to fianchetto" I can only say "that depends....."