is the catalan sharp or quiet and positional? is it good for learning chess?

Wooow nice this post was posted in 2010, and now he is 2300 he probably doesn;t need any answer anymore, let it die

It's neither sharp nor quiet. It's strategically complex and requires a lot from the player (if they play it for a win).

I see that this topic was made 10 years ago, but the fact remains that categorizing openings like this (sharp or quiet) is something weak players do... so by all means play something more sensible like a normal QGD. It took genius like Kramnik to revive the Catalan. If you want to play it just because you saw some GM do it your criteria for maximizing your performance is flawed... but who are we kidding? You've neve considered developing such a criteria. You were just trying to be trendy.

2300 rapid.

So what? maybe 700 blitz?

Maybe worse than that?

Who knows.

Rapid ratings are silly.

• Parties
  21,687
• Problèmes
  0

Parties = games

Problemes = puzzles

Par jour = daily

and the rest is obvious

I would trust rapid or blitz rating here over FIDE otb any day - for the simple reason that people don't always have the time or opportunities to play otb, plus the OTB ratings change so slowly. If they are playing 20+ otb games a year and are not drastically improving, sure I will trust otb more.  

Rapid is inflated but not something outrageous like you're suggesting. Blitz on this site used to actually be under what a lot of people's FIDE was, but they've changed things and now it's inflated like the others, especially recently blitz ratings seems a lot easier to get - and obviously lichess is a joke. However I would still find it hard to argue that anyone rated over 2300 here in live is not a high quality player that could probably get 1900-2000+ otb if they wanted.