Which opening to choose for white repertoire?

King's Gambit. Very rarely is it boring, and yes, top players have used it as well as we mortals.

@RudraveerM said in #1:
> I am deciding on which opening to choose for white. Queen's Gambit, Italian and Scotch all seem viable options. But after playing a few games with d4 my experience is that everyone plays something different to d4 so you have to learn a lot of openings for that. But which one should I use Italian or Scotch? I don't want to play Ruy Lopez as its usually boring and it has a lot of theory (Yes Italian has a lot of theory aswell but I already have learnt some of that)

Yeah everybody plays something different against d4 but it is a very situation with e4, from my experience at least more people answer e4 with other moves rather than e5. What I am saying is even if you learn the Italian or the Scotch you will still have to learn at least how to play against the Sicilian, the French, the Caro and also have something against the Pirc/Modern systems.

Honestly, E4 is probably the most sharp opening.But I like to mix up my repertoire and moves like C4 and NF3

@RudraveerM said in #10:
> I guess it works at the lower level but if they don't accept the gambit at a higher level, white has a worse position.
> I could use it until I reach high rating, but I want an opening that I can keep practicing like Sicilian or KID.

I think you should play the Scotch then because the respectable version of the Italian is the d3 variation which is similar to the Spanish which you find boring. If you play 1.e4 I have found the replies are usually are in this order

1.Sicilian
2.Scotch
3.French
4.Philidor
5.Scandinavian
6.Caro Kann
7.Petroff
8.Modern
9.Pirc
10.Owen
11.Alekhine

Locate as many chess insights as you can find. @RudraveerM
Then paste the ratingDiff opening Family details in a spread sheet.
lichess.org/insights/Toscani/ratingDiff/openingFamily
Sort them, and remove the lowest of the double entries.
Or highlight the highest of the rating gains and you will get a list.

This is what I got using the link ...
lichess.org/player
I then searched for the players that showed their chess insights.

Opening Family Rating gain (From chess insights found on leaderboards or online ... above 2200 )
East Indian Defense 1.39 (Clear advantage)
Semi-Slav Defense 1.25 (Clear advantage)
King's Indian Defense 1.07 (Clear advantage)
Caro-Kann Defense 1.02 (Clear advantage)
Pirc Defense 0.96 (Clear advantage)
Nimzo-Indian Defense 0.82 (Clear advantage)
Slav Defense 0.82 (Clear advantage)
Indian Defense 0.76 (Clear advantage)
Queen's Gambit Declined 0.75 (Clear advantage)
Van't Kruijs Opening 0.72 (Clear advantage)
Modern Defense 0.71 (Clear advantage) ̈

Scotch Game 0.64 (Small advantage)
Hungarian Opening 0.62 (Small advantage)
Saragossa Opening 0.6 (Small advantage)
Queen's Pawn Game 0.55 (Small advantage)
Zukertort Opening 0.51 (Small advantage)
English Opening 0.5 (Small advantage)
Scandinavian Defense 0.49 (Small advantage)
Lasker Simul Special 0.48 (Small advantage)
Ruy Lopez 0.39 (Small advantage)
Ware Opening 0.39 (Small advantage)
Benoni Defense 0.36 (Small advantage)
French Defense 0.33 (Small advantage)
Sicilian Defense 0.31 (Small advantage)
King's Pawn Game 0.25 (Small advantage)
Queen's Indian Defense 0.23 (Small advantage)

Russian Game 0.16 (Equality)
Torre Attack 0.03 (Equality)

I obviously want to learn the ones that have a clear advantage in rating gains.

The italian is absolutely fine. The opening is rich enough to teach you a lot about chess, and is still valid at superGM level nowadays, the opening is absolutely sound.

Don't worry about swapping openings at your level. If you enjoy the italian or the scotch, both are absolutely fine. If I had to give a recommendation between the two I'd say the italian just because the opening is richer in general so it would teach you more about chess in general, but both are totally okay. Stick to the one you prefer.

@Toscani said in #15:
> Opening Family Rating gain (From chess insights found on leaderboards or online ... above 2200 )
> East Indian Defense 1.39 (Clear advantage)
> Semi-Slav Defense 1.25 (Clear advantage)
> King's Indian Defense 1.07 (Clear advantage)
> Caro-Kann Defense 1.02 (Clear advantage)
> Pirc Defense 0.96 (Clear advantage)
> Nimzo-Indian Defense 0.82 (Clear advantage)
> Slav Defense 0.82 (Clear advantage)
> Indian Defense 0.76 (Clear advantage)
> Queen's Gambit Declined 0.75 (Clear advantage)
> Van't Kruijs Opening 0.72 (Clear advantage)
> Modern Defense 0.71 (Clear advantage) ̈

Except Van't Kruijs everything is a defense, it depends on black not white then

When I browsed the lichess database it seemed to me Scotch is an excellent choice given the winrate on the causal player's level and its simplicity.

Every top level player knows openings and all their subtlety. Further more, they study grandmasters games. So, they can go quite far in a game with moves learned by heart.

When they play, at a certain move, they say, I play this because X grandmaster played that in year Y and I decided to play it as well, kind of.

So when I see a comment from a top level player recommanding a beginner to play e4 and forget about studying openings, it's kinda weird. When should a player start studying an opening deeply and use it; after 10 years of fighting million of possibilities on its own, kind of?

Scotch is much sharper than many Italian variations, often times you need to know what you are doing or you’ll make a mistake. However it’s low on theory and gives good attacking chances. The Italian has many options, such as c3 d4, c3 d3 and Evans Gambit. The gambits are really sharp and there are some very rare gambits. c3 and d3 is basically a delayed attack, while c3 and d4 sometimes become very sharp.