Chess openings for a beginner

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As a chess beginner (ca. 1200 elo) I tend to play:

As white:

- Giucco piano

- Queen gambit (hopefully accepted)

- Evans gambit

As black:

- Caro-Kann

- Petroff defence

- French defence

- Slav defence

 

And now, if I may, I'd have three questions:

1. are these openings good for a beginner?

2. are there any traps I should be careful about?

3. what can I do if my 1. e4 is responded with 1... c5, which I hate?

SocialPanda

All of those lines are good...

But it´s too much to play 1.e4 and 1.d4 and to have 3 (!!) defenses against 1.e4.

Just play one of those (1.e4 or 1.d4) and have 1 defense against 1.e4 and another one against 1.d4. 

Your third question should be about 1. e4 c5, but first decide if you want to play 1.e4 or 1.d4, but most people will recommend you to play 1.e4 to practice your tactics.

A normal line in the sicilian (1.e4 c5) looks like this, but it could be very difficult that your oponnents will know or play the main lines (at least by now):



cornbeefhashvili

Giuoco Piano setup against 1.e5 and 1.c5 setups. Against defenses that don't challenge the center, try to have an e4d4 pawn phalanx and support it from behind with the rooks.

As black, two knights defense setup against 1.e4 or 1.c4.

Kings Indian Defense against anything else - especially against those annoying d4 players who think the stonewall attack is an automatic win.

Best opening advice I ever received - connect your rooks by move 10 before you even think about attacking.

As a beginner, keep things simple and emphasize on development.

vfdagafdgdfagfdagafdgdaf

Thank you very much for all your answers. I will try to follow your general advices and, hoping that cornbeefhasvili won't mind, I will give the "annoying" stonewall attack a try as well;-)

cazley

In the period of time when I didn't like playing against the Sicilian, I played the Alapin variation, or played the closed Sicilian, or transposed into the King's Indian Attack, or even played that line  where you trade your king bishop for black's queen knight, fianchetto your queen bishop, play d3 and f4 and expand on the kingside while keeping your pawns on white as much as possible.  Mostly I used the Alapin.

SocialPanda

Daimonion: 

I would try to summarize my previous post:

Less is More. Try to focus and don´t change openings/defenses for a while.

2200ismygoal

I would say that the French is not a beginner opening.  Its about piece placement, pawn breaks and things a beginner woud not understand yet.

cornbeefhashvili
Daimonion wrote:

Thank you very much for all your answers. I will try to follow your general advices and, hoping that cornbeefhasvili won't mind, I will give the "annoying" stonewall attack a try as well;-)

It works better when your opponent has played d5 and e6 locking in his bishop. But when black creates a kingside fianchetto, the "Stonewall bishop" on d3 bites on granite. Plus, the King's Indian setup is used to bust up the Stonewall.

Here is the basic pattern:



ForeverHoldYourPiece

Forget the stonewall, it's horrible and gives you a bad habbit of horrible openings. The french is really good, but it's a lot of theory and positional understanding. All the other ones you mention look very good.