Looking for response to 1. d4

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Avatar of MitchCanadian

Hello, 
I'm a chess player who regularly plays blitz chess. I have a decent rating of 1300 in blitz and a 1550 rating in daily chess , but I'm still looking for a good responce to 1.d4. 

For White, I always I start with The Reti Opening, or 1. Nh4. It's a great opening and I love it because of the many common openings it can transpose to: Sicilian, King's Indian Attack, Indian, English, etc.

For Black as a responce to 1. e4 I play the Caro-Kann. The reason I play this is because this opening can be very defensive, but usually does not transpose into many different openings. The thing I hate the most is when openings transpose into lots and lots of different openings I dont know of. Yes, I realize I play the Reti, which basically can transpose into anything, but all the openings it can change to are all common and all that I know of.

The problem is when I play the Indian Game as Black as a responce to 1. d4, I feel completely out of place. It transposes into completely weird openings. Worse of all, a lot of these openings aren't too defensive, which is what I really hate. (I'm not a gambit player).

Because of this, I'm looking for a defensive, yet common opening to play as a responce to 1.d4. If you guys help me that would be great!

Avatar of wasderd

play the nimzo-indian, claimed by many to be the strongest response against d4!

Avatar of wasderd

play the nimzo-indian, claimed by many to be the strongest response against d4!

Avatar of spawkle529

you can play d5 but that goes into a lot of different variations but i play it. your opponent typically plays c4 or Nf3

Avatar of Henson_Chess

Dutch defense, Leningrad Variation

Avatar of GalaxKing

There's no easy road to defense against d4. If you want to avoid the Kings Indian, the Gruenfeld, and Queens Gambit accepted, there's two main solid choices. 1). The Nimzo Indian/Queens Indian complex. (If white plays 3.Nc3, you play the Nimzo (Bb5), and if white plays Nf3, you play the Queens Indian. 2). The Queens Gambit Declined complex, which is as tough as learning both the Nimzo and Queens Indian combined, lol. For myself, I decided on the Queens Gambit Declined complex, because I thought it was more classical. I still suck at it, but occasionally I don't lose, lol. Hope this helps explain a couple things.