London System vs. Queen's Gambit for improvement?

Hi. I'm playing the London System right now as White and I'm thinking of switching to 1 d4 and 2 c4. My rating is around 1850 USCF and it has stagnated for about 3 years now in the 1800-1900 area. I know playing 1 d4 and 2 c4 takes a lot of time to learn, and so I just wanted your opinion on whether switching from the London System to 1 d4 2 c4 is a good idea for an 1800 who wants to improve his chess. I kind of feel like the London System is too drawish and non-aggressive (although my ex-coach who was an FM told me that was my style - I don't know if that was a compliment or an insult :)).

Thank you!

Play the Queen's Gambit or switch to an English.

Go for the upgrade to d4+c4. I'm sure the London System defenders will be all over this, but it really is a one-trick pony.   

If you are already 1800-1900 and want to get better, time to learn some more ambitious openings.

I made a similar switch from the Colle-Zukertort to the Queen's Gambit.  I used Kasparov's QGD DVD and the Chess.com videos here by (now GM) Sam Shankland to make the move.  I'm about to start looking into the Catalan, no idea how that will go.

Is this even a serious question? Queen's gambit obviously. Any mainline opening will do much more for you than the London system.

While I agree with the general sentiments above, I'd say leave the opening and work on other parts of your game for now.

The deficiencies of the London system vis a vis the QG are a good reason why one gets stuck at 2200.  They are NOT the reason one gets stuck at 1800.

You are saying that you actually remember last week's threads ?

Another nod to that. The opening isn't what's stalling you. The London allows Black equality, but so what ... you win by playing better chess in the middle-game, and if anything that will have bigger long-term payoffs than betting everything on a single choice of opening and hoping you repeatedly meet opponents who don't know the lines.

It is true that for club players games are won in the middle and endgame, not the opening. Saying that, as chess players we should always seek to play the best move at every stage of the game. With the London system you are playing a sub-optimal set-up for the first 8 or 10 moves, giving black easy equality, and then expecting to win based on your middle game and/or endgame skills alone. Although you should probably focus on these areas the most at 1800 strength, winning a middle game is a lot easier if you can get something out of the opening, especially with white. White has a slight edge in most openings by birth right, why not make use of it? Why start playing the best moves only in the middle game when you can start playing the best moves right away (2.c4)? The evidence that the London is worse than 2.c4 is indisputable.

Also, as Fezzik pointed out, you will learn a lot more with mainline systems because they lead to many more types of positions. Diversity is key for growth in chess.

I agree -- I just don't want players persuaded that a change of opening will yank them out of the doldrums. I made advances after I began appreciating the unique qualities of one opening over another (eg. Scotch Game versus Scotch Gambit versus Goring Gambit), but I had a lot to learn (mostly about positional play) before I could.

In Theory, 1.d4 - 2.c4 will yield a higher winning percentage, but in many cases Black still can equalize, it is no guarantee of advantage.  In Practice, one could spend a lifetime and still not learn the myriad of defenses, variations and sub-variations of 1.d4 - 2.c4.  The London does not necessarily rule out c4, per Lakdawala's book, such as Spassky's treatment of King's Indian Defense and in some cases the Gruenfeld.  The London avoids very dangerous defenses such as the Nimzo-Indian, Benko, and Benoni, tricky systems such as Blumenfeld, Albin, Budapest, and a few others like the Bogo-Indian. 

Your ex-coach was correct --- play an opening suitable to your style.  If you like wild tactics, and want to be like Tal, then don't play the London. But if you seek quieter positional play, the London is worth considering. 

I think the switch is a good idea, though you may experience some difficulties in the first months because a new world will open to you

So I realize this thread is ancient, but I have a similar predicament. I just started going into chess theory in depth about a week ago.

I started out with the London just a week ago now. I found a bunch of tutorials on the London and so far I'm having good success with it, but I notice every time I analyze my game after a match. I've learned some cute little pocket tricks I suppose, but a higher level player doesn't necessarily fall for the bait and many of these little pocket tricks just result in negative tempo from a theoretical perspective. Also if your opponent does play technically good chess then you end up trading very few pieces and end with a very stagnant board.

Then I started playing queens gambit and from what I can see the tricks you have don't really leave you with downside, just very good board states where pieces steadily get exchanged and the board opens up and where mostly you can keep your tempo advantage and take advantage of the open board. But I think even when I play the queens gambit, I see some structures are similar, I think mainly because you have D4, E3 pawns so it shares some of the same strength and weakness.

I guess this transitional strategy is allowing me to focus line by line on Queens Gambit positions. Now should my next step be to learn to go from the England into Queens Gambit instead? Or should I just stick to The London/Queens Gambit and look for good theoretical places to dirty the mud or whatever? It seems like no matter what I do I'm pushing higher ranks each day.

One thing I'd like to note is that so far some people choose to avoid the London defensively altogether by playing the Englund Gambit, and if I can see that all from like one week of playing the opening, then I can see that even then the London player experts would need to know how to play these Englund Gambit lines expertly as well.

"Now should my next step be to learn to go from the England into Queens Gambit instead?"

The England or Englund? If you mean Englund, I thought you were talking about white. Can you explain this a bit, @glensucksballs?

The Englund gambit is D4, E5, I think it is a little trick to beat newer players and not much else. It's very much a different thing to the English opening which is C4, whereas I suppose the London and the English probably derive from an English demographic. Either way I've moved passed this onto slightly more complicated questions about openings.

Even though I had about 57% winrate with the London and 50% with queens gambit thus far on another chess game with about 50 games a piece, I'm seeing that the engine doesn't like many of my little tricks with the London, so in a sense I am developing bad habits, I'm also leading to these very closed up scenarios with incredibly long games, where I am just making fewer mistakes than my opponents. I don't want to bank on mistakes when I eventually do become good at this game.

Where I often could improve with the London system was, I hit many board situations where nothing looks like a progression-based move, the opponent has already castled into safety and I don't know whether or not to play the value based game or the positional game, the system at this point just looks very divided, you've kicked your kings mistress outside of your home, then if your opponent realizes you have 1 good bishop and 1 bad bishop, or that one of the knights can just abuse your gaps, idk are there really answers for these problems or is it just prone to weaknesses that you won't see in other more flexible openings.

The London isn't stopping you from improving. It's a sound opening that can lead to a devastating attack on Black's kingside, if Black isn't careful.

What's stopping you from improving is all the mistakes you're making after the opening phase -- tactical and positional missteps that you're not currently aware of.

Case in point: if you gave a Grandmaster the London opening and told him that he was only allowed to play it, he'd be fine. Maybe he'll feel a bit bored, from only being allowed to play one opening every game, but he'd still stomp all the way up to the 2500+ level with it.

So it's not the opening that's the issue.

If you feel that the London is too drawish, it could be because you're playing it in a drawish way.

One suggestion would be to always castle on the opposite side of your opponent. Then the game, by default, won't be "drawish" anymore -- it'll become a race on both ends of the board to see who can deliver checkmate first!