Openings with the least amount of theory

for posterity! (me)

There are some good openings with very few books or articles written about them.

Against the Queen's Gambit, the Accepted is fully playable, but rarely written about from Black's perspective.

The problem with 1.e4 lines is that White dictates the opening in the 1.e4 e5 lines, and there are plenty of books on the other lines. From the White perspective, the Scotch has relatively little written about it, and the modern Italian lines don't have any books that I know of covering it.

I haven't seen a book on the Petroff/Russian Defense in quite a while.

Thanks, I haven't seen those. I'll take a look.

It looks like Lakdawala has written one too, in 2015. So the Petroff's covered. 

I'm always looking for relatively simpler/solid/theory light, that's why I play the London. But the weakness of b2 and the counter hit ...e5 are annoying. I've qualified for the second round in a 3 days per move tournament, when it begins I'm going to give the c3 Colle and Torre repertoire a shot based on an old small book by Soltis I have (the book includes the Stonewall for variety). 

As for black, to me it seems the Tarrasch Defense against the QG and some form of the Scandinavian are about as practical as one can get on the club level. The Tarrasch Defense setup can be used against white's queenside openings, or black can head for a London reversed if he wants to (but against 1 d4 2 c4 it is called the Baltic, the Baltic is difficult for black but perhaps playable).  

Edit: I might use 1 b3 instead of the Colle/Torre. Somehow the Torre has never really grabbed my interest enough. 

The book How To Play Against 1 e4 is also a possibility for someone seeking theory light. The entire book is 238 pages but half of the book is optional. You just have to learn but a little over 100 pages if you want to keep it as light as possible.

The book covers the Fort Knox, Advance, Exchange, and King's indian Attack (some players actually only use the KIng's Indian Attack against the French). That makes up about half the book. The other half is on the McCutcheon, Steinitz, and Tarrasch as an option if someone decides to play more than just the Fort Knox.

The Fort Knox is solid but can be hard to win with, so it makes sense to provide an addition for those who want to have something else in their arsenal to go along with the Fort Knox. But you don't have to take on learning the McCutcheon, Steinitz, and Tarrasch, as the author points out, you can just stick to the Fort Knox and leave the other half of the book alone. Maybe even use the chess time saved to work on mastering the endgame. 

I think that's McDonald's book, isn't it? Just because an opening book is slender doesn't mean the openings it recommends are light on theory. I've seen entire books devoted to the White side of the French recommending how to play the Steinitz. 

That doesn't mean the book is useless. It's a good way to reach a playable position. Generally speaking, if an opening move is good, it already has a name and has been analysed. This is true in the French, just as it is in most openings. Neil McDonald has presented a good, sound opening repertoire with just enough theory to keep an average player from getting into too much trouble against other class players.

But consider the audience. If you're a competitive player who's looking to break 2000 or above, use such books with extreme caution. McDonald also has a nasty habit of recommending computer lines that are extremely difficult for humans to play well. A few years ago, I looked at some of the lines he recommended and realised the positions he reached would require tremendous skill to survive even if the engines considered them close to equal.

Yeah, in his book he has a section in the Fort Knox chapter called White Plays the Terrifying 6 Neg5. He shows that against 6...Nd7 white can make things messy with 7 Nxf7. Fort Knox players who are seeking solid light theory play are not going to tend to like for things to become messy. He gives the antidote as being 6...Bd6. However, Stockfish 8 is telling me white can still sack on f7. Stockfish gives 6...Be7 as its third choice but black is ok, and it does actually prevent white from daring to sack on f7. So I wrote in the book the line 6...Be7 7 Bd3 Nd7 etc, because it keeps things within a pattern I prefer if I'm going to play the Fort Knox. To be fair the book was written in 2008 when engines, although strong, were not capable of seeing what all Stockfish 8 realises. Maybe that made a difference. 

How to Play against 1 e4 by Neil McDonald (2008)

https://web.archive.org/web/20140626174056/http://www.chesscafe.com/text/hansen120.pdf

The Sniper is 1...g6 2...Bg7 3...c5. 

In my experience, if you play the French you will almost always encounter the Advance or Exchange variations at club level. So that cuts down on the theory a lot. I once beat a clubmate who always played the French by playing 3.Nc3 against him. Afterwards he complained that he didn't know the theory because no one had ever played it against him before.

I understand your desire to avoid a lot of theory. I took stock of my game a few years ago and searched for an opening system that would just allow me to play chess on an even playing field with my opponent. Then out of the blue, the universe seemed to answer my question. I stumble upon an obscure Canadian grandmaster from the sixties to eighties. His name was Duncan Suttles. He played the Modern Defense almost exclusively both as black and white and seemed to make it work. he was a very a positional but very creative player. He almost always started his game with (g6...B-g7...d6), and that is it...a universal system you can play against anything except the Nimzo-Larsen (b3...B-b2). To play this system and survive you need to over-protect e5 to keep white out of your face early on. I've been playing this Modern Defense exclusively as black and white and am doing quite well with it (when I don't blunder that this). Give it a try to see if its for you but be fore warned it takes some getting use to. I like to think of it as 'judo chess'...using your opponent's aggression against himself. Hope this wasn't too long for you....Cheers...