Colle Opening

I am a low 1100 - 1150 rater and have just discovered the Colle opening.  I love it!  Any comments?

If it works for you, keep on playing it; but if it doesn't work for you try playing QG instead.

Colle Zukertort or Colle Koltanowski?

It's fine

Koltanowski.  It just seems to work so well and is easy to remember.

I like it too, though I usually play the zukertort. You'll find though that Black has a lot of ways to side step the Colle (either c-k or c-z), e.g. by playing early ...Bg4 or ...Bf5 before playing ...e6, or playing KID, QID etc - so there's still lots of other stuff you need to know.

Thanks for your comments guys.  I really appreciate it.  Now for that 1500+ rating.......

It's boring.

It's boring to me. And that's what counts.

Thanks again for your positive comments and excellent advice.  Viva chess!

I used to play the Colle quite a bit and have played some against it also. I stopped playing it when I started improving as it is very ineffective against the higher ranking  players that I started to run up against. However I do think I learned a lot about chess studying it because it was the first opening I made a serious study of. It's easy to learn but not so easy to actually beat an oppenent with, so you have know the ins and outs. I always found a good counter against the Colle as black was to be ready to advance my K-side pawns in the middle game. I think learning it was a good stepping stone to studying other openings as I went along.

I started to play the Colle as a beginner. It supposed to be a "good" opening for beginners. Now afterwards a regret a ever playing this opening because of:

1. If you against higher rated players (>1500) they will not let you play e3-e4, which is the main point in Colle. Instead many of these strong players play KID and you get a very cramped position. Because you position quite safe with the Colle, you probably survive many moves before you get defeated. My games against stronger players lasted often more then 40 moves, but you don't get any rating points for a stubborn defence.

2. Against stronger players your position often will be cramped, and the game will be non-tactical. Besides the last moves, when you will be mated.

As beginner I think it's very important to play openings which get tactical early. You should not try to avoid tactics, by playing "safe" opening systems, like Colle.

I have now switched to 1.e4 as white. I don't know all blacks opening alternatives, against this, but on my level, my opponent also don't know how to play the correct moves. The best player will win.

I suppose so, but weaker playes doesn't have good positional understanding.

And as I told in my previouse post, I have very bad experince with it against stronger players.