1.d4 d5 2.... Anything besides the queens gambit?

After d4 d5 is there anything white can play that works well besides the queens gambit? please help.

Try 2. Nf3 leading to the Colle, Catalan or others. If I play the Colle, I play 2. e3 to limit the time Black has to play the annoying Bf5. However, do not give up on c4. It is tried and tested, and if something was demonstrably better, it would have been found by now.

play 2 e4 dxe4 3.f3 exf3 ...(The Blackmar Diemer Gambit). You get plenty of compensation in exchange for the pawn.

Try the Torre Attack. It's fun. The stonewall also is interesting. The get boring after a while though

You can try the Catalan (1.d4 d5 2.c4 e6 3.Nf3 Nf6 4.g3) which starts out as a QG

Ive said it before but ill say it again and there will be people who disagree but in general:

After 1.d4, 2.c4 (or 2.Nf3 Nf6 3.c4) is the best move and without it, d4 just isn't that great and it might even be white who has to equalize.

So many people complain that d4 is boring and they are right if it applies to the minor d4 lines like the London, Torre...But as for 1.d4 2.c4, they couldn't be more wrong.

And @Henri: If one really wants to gambit, why play the BDG when you can just play 1.e4 and have better gambis to pick such as the KG, Danish, or SMG (Against the Sicilian) Yea, black can get equality or more in the Danish or SMG if he knows the line but hey, a gambiteer knows this and he will try setting as many challenges as possible. The KG however is a different story and although I never face it as I play 1...c5, I respect it.

who ate my beef?

I play nothing but 1.d4 and after 1...d5 can choose between 2.c4 or Bf4 or Nf3 or even g3.  Any of these can lead to an interesting game. It depends on your preference and perhaps what you know about your opponent.

Well the  BDG is considered today as very solid (Grandmasters have beaten other grandmasters with it), and although I play the Goring too, it is not as solid as the BDG. IMO its advantage is that there is not as much documentation on it as other gambits, and its surprise value is very good. Don't tell anyone, but ICC has a 3-part video on that gambit. Of course the White player should have a fair tacticl ability, because there is no use getting a 3-move mating attack if you can't see 2 moves ahead.

And BTW I could be wrong, but I seem to remember that the Danish Gambit is unsound...

And oh yes, another good one against Indian defenses is the Tromposwsky attack: 1.d4 Nf6 2. Bg5 followed by BxN. Of course it helps if one knows a bit about the openings before playing them.

If you are bored with dull openings that your opponents know 20 moves deep, try those openings.

But if a Queen pawn repertoire is what you are looking for as White, then maybe you should get the book "A killer chess opening repertoire", by Aaron Summerscale (Everyman chess). It is a full Queen pawn repertoire for a White  club player that includes the Barry attack, the 150 attack, the Colle-Zukertort system, the anti-Dutch 2. Bg5. and a few others. The philosophy of the book is to give the White player a complete  White repertoire that requires the MINIMUM amount of opening study. You cn probably find reviews of the book on the web.

Although I have the book I have not used it (yet).

Thanks for the update. One opening that I would have liked to see in the book is the Trompowsky attack, which may be used against many Black replies by transposition.1.d4 Nf6 2. Bg5 followed by Bxf6. It has the advantage that there is not much literature on it and it has a great surprise value. It is now considered sound and grandmasters including Kasparov have used it.

Well, it's really not considered to give white a serious try for an advantage, and yes, Kasparov has used it, in a simul against an amateur.

No, everything after 1. d4 d5 is crap except the queens gambit. True story. Yes there are playable lines but none of them "work well", which is what you asked.

Catalan seems to be quite respectable, but I think you mean everything without c4 after 1.d4 d5 is crap.

Systems without c4 do tend to allow Black to equalize quite comfortably.

I'm only a class C player and I have played games where I have never lost my opening advantage in the game and won it. I don't think what you are saying is true. Ofcourse, I am speaking of chess with long time controls, not blitz. In blitz you can play 1. a4 and it doesn't make much difference.

GM Andrew martin disagrees in his video. And actually Kasparov has used it in simuls a number of times against strong players (not only amateurs) and won. Grandmasters who have used it against other grandmasters include Hodgson and Stefanova. Sure the Trompowsky does not guarantee White a serious advantage against best play, but no opening does.

"It is better to make a weak attacking move than a weak defensive move!" (me)

I like Andrew Martin and his videos but honestly he can be a bit too optimistic sometimes or atleast give more credit to a line then it objectively deserves.

i guess we can start with the basic question, why do you want to avoid 1.d4 d5 2.c4 which is white best move and an exiting one?

Exactly. That is a great way of learning. If you know 2.c4 is the best move after 1.d4 d5 then play it. If you don't know move 3, that's fine. You try to wing it from there. Atelast you'll have a good starting point and next time you will know move 3 and more. It doesn't take THAT long to learn d4c4 theory and play it well at club level and it will never ever be an obstacle for improvment because you haven't based your opening and experience on faulty or dubious opening moves.

The stronger player will usually win, but only after his/her opponent(s) blunder or after the stronger player creates advantages and uses those advantages more effectively than they're opponents' advantages
Why start from and equal position and make advantage when you can start from a slightly better position and aim to increase that advantage?

I wouldn't consider the colle, london, etc difficult to equalize against at all as long as black is looking at the plan of an eventual ...c5. If he doesn't know anything about the opening you may be able to get maybe a slight edge, but nothing too big because the openings don't put a lot of pressure on black. The point is it's much less challenging than the queen's gambit.

One "system" that I do think has bite however is the torre attack with the bishop coming to g5. After this pin is played white uses a semi slav setup. The pin helps to keep black from getting as much activity (because often black would like to break it with ...Be7, but comparing this to a regular queen's gambit, black's bishop is much more passive than a white bishop would be on d3) so I do think this is a good option, and I myself have been burned by it once when I didn't know how to play it and I got a passive (but at least not terrible) position. I have not however ever been threatened by the colle or london systems.

Unlike Atahan I'm not going as far to say that any d4 opening without c4 is just crap, but few of them are at all challenging and I would be happy with equality.

In quiet positions if you know the plans, in fact the advantage doesn't always get "thrown away" or an equal game getting screwed up. What you say could apply more so to a sharp sicilian defense or something of that nature. There have been many times, when I knew what I was doing, where I got an edge in the queen's gambit and held onto it constantly pressuring my opponent and have scored nice wins in this way.

Although games may not be decided by the opening, it's certainly nice to start out with a decent position nonetheless and sometimes in grandmaster chess if a guy like karpov secures an edge against a lesser gm that gm will be suffering for a long, long time, often losing.