Opening repertoires as White

Opening Repetoires as White

I wanted to share this, because I think it will help a lot of beginners. Thank you

So I consider 4 usual repetoires: King's Pawn, Queen's Pawn, Unique, and the Mixed. Let's have a look at all of them.

King's Pawn

So the King's Pawn Opening (e4) has been played the most times by grand masters. It's rich in positional and also tactical play.

The classical respond to e4 is e5. It's also sometimes called the open game, althought that's not always true.

For example this is a well analysed position from the Open Ruy López, you can see that it's open, but also much riskier than a closed game.

And here is also a Ruy López in a Chigorin formation, but this time a game that has started with e4 is closed.

Who should take an e4 repetoire?
Someone who is always playing for a win, usually a more tactical player, and wants to attack and win the game, althought e4 can provide positional, and defensive chess, it all depends on black what does he respond to e4.

Queen's Pawn

The Queen's Pawn (d4) is more often a slower paced and more positional than e4. It also has a variety of Hypermodern ideas, which can be really interesting. It decides to give up the center and later target it more often than e4 does, it has some really beautifull and modern play, in my personal opinion d4 is inspirational.

For example here is a Grünfeld Defense where black just gave up the center and it seems like black has nothing.

And here is a continuation of the Grünfeld where black is getting a lot of counterplay.

Here in the Stonewall Dutch black closed down the game, progress is slow but usually steady and well preapared

Here's a postion where black played the Blumenfeld gambit, sacrificed one pawn, opened up the B file, but has a solid center what he can build for. What does white have? 1 pawn advantage, open position, and wild bishops. The game is more positionally rich, but you can also play it a tactical way with Bg5.

The Nimzo-Indian and a lot of other Indian defenses together with the Grünfeld, usually control the center in a unique, hypermodern way, and the position is dynamic, and both tactically rich. I think these are the most inspirational openings in chess.

Unique

If a player has a Unique repetoire that can mean a lot of different things. The most common is the Réti & English duo playstyle

As you can see, this position is a bit open, a bit closed, positional, and also tactical. These labels are pretty often in the Réti and in the English.

The Nimzo-Larsen, a whole new dimension of playstyle, applying long-term pressure with the bishop, partly giving up the center, and strongly relying on already preapared pawn pushes later.

The King's Indian Attack copyies the KID sometimes, but it often kinda creates a different playstyle, protecting the king, and then striking in the center like the KID does, but in a different way, and as white.

We have another King's Indian Attack, not the KID way, but a just solid enough, dynamic structure.

This is a Bird-Larsen, it takes a little from everything, the dutch, the larsen, the KID, everything! It later preapares to strike with d4, but it's still very unique and creative, although it is considered risky.

Of course, there are 100 more sidepawn and other openings that are offbeat, but I wouldn't consider those Unique openings, and will probably transform into and other opening but with reversed colors for example, just don't play them, unless you have a competative theory of a whole new thing, that even the engine doesn't hate that much (the engine usually hates every offbeat opening)

Mixed

Mixed repetoires are usually to confuse opponents, or the player just cannot choose what to play. I for example have a mixed repetoire. I'm better at e4, but I love to play the queen's pawn, and esspecially the hypermodern opening. I respect the Réti and the English, but I don't play them, I'm not an offbeat player. If you are an offbeat player, have at least three solid and not faar into the position openings, that you are really good at. For example in my case, for white: I said I'm better at the King's Pawn so: Italian Game, Ruy López, a3 Sicilian (I use that as an anti sicilian because I'm sick of it)
and for black: The Petrov, The Dutch, Queen's Gambit Declined

So this was all of my opinion about Opening repetoires, mainly focusing on white, of course I could talk about much more, but I didn't wanna make this post too long, and I think I mainly covered the important things in my opinion. But this is only my opinion, feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments, I'm really interested about what do you think about this.
And also: If this post gets enough support, I will probably make another one for black.

Thank you!!!