1.e4 is drawish?

Heard this comment more than once during the 2016 canditates tournament. It surprised me, thinking of the Sicilian defense and others. I'm guessing the remark is in response to the Petroff, maybe the Ruy Lopez/Berlin defense. Now 1.d4 is the move to play for a win? I look forward to your comments. Thanks!

I play e4. I win all the time.

If you want to prevent a draw play 1. f3.

I've heard that (at the top level) if white wants a draw, 1.e4 offers many lines that suck all the play out of the position early. I'm not sure it's in reference to black choices like the Petroff and Berlin.

For example some Giuoco Piano lines for sure.

1.e4 is not drawish.  

To be perfectly clear, I'm hearing it from players at the top level. I would imagine nothing is drawish at the club level, certainly not my level, where I could easily lose to any first move from White, i.e, 1.a3.

Perhaps over the centuries 1.e4 has been explored more? Still more lines to discover with 1.d4?

richie_and_oprah wrote:

Better chances for White to create and maintain tension in the game by playing 1. d4.

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When I hear the word tension, I think of authors talking about pawn tension in the center. Maybe there are more 1.d4 lines that do that.

I disagree that 1.e4 is drawish at the top level as well.  There are really only two openings that you could make that argument with...the Petrov and Berlin.  Play the Nimzowitsch against the Petrov and with the Berlin you can play 4.d3 and play the different queenside castling lines and the game can become sharp quickly (you can even play into the Berlin endgame in an ambitious manner, although you need to be a wizard like MVL to get something out of it at the highest level, but for us mortals the endgame can offer chances due to the pawn structure and how strategically deep it is, regardless if queens are off the board).  

Let's just be realistic, Fischer was about as opposite as you can be from the typical high level drawish player (the Lekos and Tomashevsky's of the world), and I don't need to bring up how devoted to 1.e4 he was.  Add in very ambitious and prepared current super-GMs like MVL and Caruana who play 1.e4 all the time, and its easy to see that 1.e4 is not drawish by nature.  

Play 1.e4 if you want to play aggressively with white.  It can be done with 1.d4, of course, but the variations you can choose with 1.e4 are much more juicy.  The Open Sicilian alone makes it worth it.  

You misunderstand the question @fixing_the_hole. 1.e4 IS drawish when white wants to play for a draw. The Petroff and Berlin are openings when black wants a draw so are unrelated.

At least, this is the commentary I've heard: that black can be frustrated when white goes 1.e4 and tries to suck all the play out.

No, I think it has to do with the asymmetry of the board (kingside vs queenside).

In 1.e4 e5 setups black's big equalizer (if they can get it ideally) is ...d5 (actually true for sicilian too).
In 1.d4 d5 setups it's ...e5
So (according to my guess logic here heh) it's actually easier to play d5 because the queen supports it. So when white allows the break (at the cost of trading a lot of pieces) black is both ready to play it, and really has nothing better to do than to play it (lets say white builds a fast big center)... and so they reach a really dull position quickly.

Maybe for sicilians a 2...c3 setup for a toothless IQP. Or maybe 3.Bb5 (I know there are some very early dead positions there but I don't know how much black can choose to try something better).

Some lines that come to mind.... I don't know if they're great examples. Just things I've run across in looking at building my own repertoire (I avoid this stuff as either color course haha).

Any real lines?

lol

Nope. e4 isn't drawish - in fact I have lost most games playing e4. Case rested.

Great posts, thanks! Thinking of the Petrov and Berlin, I've heard that the King's Gambit fell out of popularity at the top level because Black no longer has trouble equalizing.

Don't worry about what is drawish for 2700s. 1.e4 is fine for everyone else, and also for the 2800s.

I played both sides of the King's Gambit in a game 10 tournament on Saturday, winning both with White and with Black. With Black I sacrificed two pawns for the initiative, then won material when my opponent (a former student now getting training from a FM) missed a zwischenzug. My former student and I followed Schulten -- Morphy 1857 through move seven, a game we had studied together two years ago.

Looking at Game Explorer, there are 838,434 master games starting with 1.e4 and 658,484 games with 1.d4. I know of "best by test" from Bobby Fischer. I'm sure he didn't open with 1.e4 to draw. That just sounds ridiculous. However, does anyone know what first move has been played most by super GM's recently? My first memory of the dominance of 1.d4 was during the 2012 world championship match between Anand and Gelfand, where 1.d4 was played in 11 of the 16 games.

According to ChessBase's 2016 Powerbook, 1.c4 is best by test. 

Thats correct that there are lots of potential forced draws that white can play into after 1.e4, but white can ALWAYS play that way regardless of what first move he chooses.  If white wants to play like a coward, many times there is little that black can do besides trying to bait white into a mistake.  And I think you might be the one misunderstanding the OP's question...as he is trying to figure out whether its better to play 1.d4 if you're going for a win.  But in reality, if you're ambitious and not afraid to play sharp chess for the win as white, you play 1.e4.