Hardest (and easiest) opening to play?

Which opening do you think is hardest (and easiest) to play?

This is my opinion.

Hardest: Even though it's the most used opening in the world, the sicilian.

Easiest: I love to play the Queen's Gambit Declined.

The Sicilian Najdorf just has to be the toughest to play, both for White and Black.

As for the easiest... well, that's very debatable and largely based on one's personal taste, but in my opinion the easiest overall is the Hippo (g6, Bg7, b6, Bb7, d6, Nd7, e6, Ne7 regardless of what White plays), since Black is in autopilot without being in any immediate danger, while White can set up his pieces just about however he likes in response.

there are no easy or hard openings. some have more researched lines than others,so if you get into more complex openings like e.g. the ruy lopez or some lines of the sicilian you can easily get lost. my advice unless you are a top player,get the general idea of a couple of openings,then stick to general principles. the point is, if you meet a better player,he or she will beat you,and you will beat players who are not as good as you. there are no magic formula,experience is the best teacher.

           what mikemorgan has  commented  and i fully agree,  due to little of english  i cannot express more.

Yep i play the king gambit

In my (limited) experience, the gambit openings seem to be easiest to play. I don’t say they’re GOOD openings, but they are fun and do seem easy to play. Like King’s Gambit. Easy development for your pieces, natural easy-to-find moves, you’ve often got a lead in development. But it costs you a pawn, so maybe not for everyone.

Easiest: Wing pawns.

Hardest: Controlling and maintaining center pawns.

In my opinion, here are some example of hard openings and easy openings to play. Although this is completely subjective and difficulty is relative to your personal strength and weaknesses. Hard openings does not equal bad openings and easy openings does not equal to good openings. Its simply decided by its usual sharpness.

Hard openings: Sicilian, Kings pawn game, Alekhine, 2. Nf6-scandinavian, pirc/modern defence, Scotch game, Birds opening, Benoni defence, Chigorin defence, Kings indian attack and kings indian defence and all gambits (that I know of).

Easier openings: Caro-kann, French, London, English, Scandinavian(Qa5, Qd6 and Qd8), Queens gambit declined or accepted (for both colors), Nimzo indian(although theory heavy), Centre game, 

I'm about your rating in rapid and I really think Scotch is fairly esay to play, also the Chigorin Defense used to give me easy positions when I played it around 1400-1500.

However, I think the French is hard when you are facing strong opponents, the Caro-Kann a bit easier but still tricky. Also the English, Grüenfeld and Nimzo-Indian are very complicated to me !

I agree with you for the rest ! 

Nice to hear more opinions!

As I said, this list is purely decided by my own strengths and weaknesses. The French can be complicated, but in my experience OTB. People play the Fort Knox in order to trade pieces and play for a draw. There are some really exciting and complicated lines in the winawer and steinitz, but those are rarely played against me in OTB chess. 

I'm like 2018 rapid and I have been playing French defense against e4 and king's Indian against d4/c4/Nf3 since 2021 when I started studying chess. To be honest, French is easy unless you play the winawer variation. And king's Indian is really risky especially in the classical variation, if you don't manage to mate white, you will get crushed in the queenside.

For me, Sveshnikov because I don' t understand either side.

I think that the two most dramatic features that make an opening hard rather than Easy for the most players to play are:

1 How much known It Is - your skills of playing a specific opening depends on your experience and the time you have spent studing It, thus less used opening are harder ti play for the most 

2 The draw chance - there are some opening that leads quickly to a balanced and safe endgame (e.g. the Berlin) while others puts you in  a Sharp middlegame where the subtlest mistake can be deathly (e.g. the catalan)

Based on this premise and on the statistics in the opening database of chess.com I found out that the harder opening in chess Is the Barnes opening (1...f3).

It seems to give black a Better position at First, Indeed Is seldom played at GM level (only 36 games with this opening are registered in the database). Yet It can bring you very Crazy positions which looks very weird since It doesn't follow the classical opening principles and are very very thought ti play both for White and for black - In facts, It has only 8% of draws.

Carlsen and Bobby Fischer had a go this opening at the GM and I highly recommend you to get a look at them 'cause they are too crazy (in both they starts with 4 King moves in a row After 1...f3)

On the other side, I think that the easiest opening to play for almost everyone Is the Slav defense. Just because everybody nows It and it's very solid (92.378 games in the database with the 39% of win-rate), yet some of it's Lines are very Sharp.

a : Position without Queens but which is not an endgame, example 1) d4-d5 2) c4-dxc4 3) e4-e5 4) Nf3-exd4 5) Qxd4-Qxd4 6) Nxd4

We think [even wrongly] it's a draw and we stop fighting to win.

The mistake or very bad move has more serious consequences so it leads to be more focused, to pay more attention. 

Basically we have not studied endgames much and it can be a problem. 

b : Position called equal, symmetrical, example 1) d4-d5 2) c4-c6 3) cxd5-cxd5

We have difficulty coming up with ideas or winning plans and we can have draws "that make us want to stop playing chess".

c : Insane position, example 1) e4-e5 2) Nf3-Nc6 3) Bc4-Nf6 4) Ng5-Bc5 5) Nxf7-Bxf2+

In short, only tactics and calculations.

If we have time on the clock we will get tired and waste a lot of time calculating while our opponent will be more or less reciting with tactical solutions in mind learned by a super-calculator. [And if we don't have much time on the clock, well that's even worse]  

d : Position "in front of isolated pawn", example 1) d4-d5 2) c4-dxc4 3) Nf3-Nf6 4) e3-e6 5) Bxc4-c5 6) 0-0-cxd4 7) exd4

We tend to sell the skin of the bear before killing it because we naively believe that it is easy, just block the pawn, exchange pieces, endgame direction and it's gg but in practice White does not necessarily play "in doctor Jeckyll mode". 

And esiest, in fact these are openings where we have a ready-made strategic plan example strategy 0-0 vs 0-0-0.

Real easy openings don't really exist for me or we are talking about losing openings but there's not much point in talking about it.  

Hardest? Botvinnik in the Semi-Slav. Easiest? The London System

Not really. There are a lot of lines but the attacking ideas are fairly intuitive and natural for white. For black there is a common piece lay out to aim for which will give you a good game. Then you just play chess.

Taimanov and Kan are maybe a bit harder to play as the attacking ideas are a bit less intuitive and they are more positional.

I will say that the Sicilian and Grunfeld are really hard to play, since you have to be prepared for many lines and know all the ideas. While the easier opening to play can be for example the London, Stonewall or other "opening system", where you really just play the same thing against whatever your opponent plays.

The most complex to play probably is King's Indian, it requires a lot of dedication to play well, so much dedication that even Kasparov eventually dropped it as his main weapon vs 1.d4 even though he had played some spectacular and very complex games with it.