So I've got an OTB tournament coming up soon, and I'd rather not play against 1. c4 with zero theory knowledge anymore.
Anyone got any openings they like? I like several solid and sharp openings, so I'm not really looking for anything in particular, just whatever I find interesting i guess.
Some openings I frequently play as black: KID, Grunfeld, Sicilian Scheveningen. Transposing to one of those would be nice.
Thanks for the help!
Just play Nf6 and it will transpose to a KID
c4 players will rarely transpose into the KID proper. you can definitely play the KID setup (it's totally viable) but don't expect it to be the same thing
One of the reasons I play c4 is to avoid the grunfeld and steer towards maroczy-bind type positions. You definitely wouldn't be bad off going with a symmetrical defense and I've seen good games where black gains a lot of activity by playing f5 and e5. (forgetting the name for the f5 push) I'll link a game or two if I can find them. I remember Andrew Soltis explaining the KID f5 as a plan against white in the english.
As a general rule somebody around your rating who plays the English is going to probably be playing it either in attempt to make the position as dry as possible or because they themselves are afraid of theory.
Consequently I think the best answer is to respond with 1. .. e5. It doesn't really matter if you don't know any theory beyond that - just play good moves. Unless white responds very aggressively black will get a very comfortable game with routine moves in any of a countless number of viable setups. And even if your opponent does respond sharply, which again is very unlikely from a lower rated player who plays the English, the sharp responses aren't like Najdorf sharp where you can easily lose if you don't know some very counter intuitive theory - it's all relatively intuitive and traversable over the board and just leads to very interesting positions where the better player will win.