Karpov/kasparov 1984/85 openings

I have been studying all of the Karpov and Kasparov matches and noticed how one-sided their first match in 84/85 was when concerning openings. Practically all of the match was QGD, queens indian.....and then Sicilian and petroff defenses. Just curious if anyone can shed some light on why they chose to duke it out over those openings when clearly their matches after the first championship featured so many more in addition...Lopez, nimzo, grunfeld,scotch, KID, English.....

Probably they were just topical theory at the time.

Sicilian was Kasparovs choice against 1.e4 while 1..e5 and petroff/ruy were Karpovs choice, so its sensible to think these were the mainstays at the match.

I don't find QID strange, first likely one side was very successful in their last match with the nimzo you mentioned, therefor the opponent stuck to 3.Nf3 instead. Also it was another of Karpovs favourites.
As for the QGD idrk, ive never done any serious study of it, but I wasn't under the impression that it was a larger favourite of Kasparovs, I always thought he was more along the lines of Grunfeld and KID.

Definitely kasparov used the grunfeld and KID a lot in the 1990 match. Great games.

Although there seems to be a lacking of any caro kann action with karpov when he played kasparov....perhaps knowing that kasparov was such an attacker why use it in passivity?

My guess would be that Karpov probably wanted to avoid some of the sharper lines Kasparov would play (not too familiar with caro, but Panov?)

Also likely at the time the Petroff was a very good way or neutralising e4 (still is), since then many new attacking ideas have been found which would not have been widely analysed at the time of the match.

Cool:). I guess my curiosity was stemming frm the amazing track record karpov has with the caro kann....

Kasparov was a very heavy Queen's Gambit player as White.

Many mistake him as being an e4 player exclusively like Fischer, which is completely inaccurate.  He played 1.e4, 1.d4, 1.c4, and 1.Nf3 throughout his career.

There is a great video o n youtube kasparov teaches the queens gambit

At that time they had very similar Soviet GM rep, with especially Tartakower Queens Gambit played by all the top Soviets. After Kasparov's bad start he chouldn't afford to play his more ambitious choices.

And nowadays? Taimanov Sicilian all the time (I think it was Taimanov in '12). :)

@jimmerstoopy: Kasparov was dug in to a trench trying to draw games for much of that first match.

@MSC157: Taimanov in '12?

I meant that Gelfand played Taimanov all the time in 2012. Or was it Rossolimo?

In the World Championship, Gelfand was playing Sveshnikov until Anand short-circuited it with the Rossolimo.

Oh, Sveshnikov, thanks.