What are some good defensive openings for white?

Concentrating on openings will not per se make you a stronger player.  But it just might burn you out.  Only 10 percent of active USCF players are above 1800.

I usually wait until the endgame to "play for a win."  It's a lot easier on my nerves, especially at G/10 or G/15 speed.  It reduces my mistakes, and wins a lot more games than playing 19th century Lasker-like battles, and trying to force through mating attacks in the middlegame.

Less thrills, but more wins.  Simple.

For rapid games the player with good endgame knowledge has a huge advantage.I recently won a rapid tournament in my club winning all games on endgame against young talented players which had memorised dozens of opening books.Truth is, they had a "slight edge" in the opening , even as black.

At your level (I'm just above 1300 USCF, which would probably translate to maybe 1500 or 1600 chess.com, and I still don't really study openings too much, excluding my pet ones), you don't really need openings. What you need to know are opening principles and tactics (checkmates, pins, forks, skewers, etc. I would highly recommend Winning Chess Tactics by Yasser Seirawan, which I've been reading through after huge mistakes in a recent tournament, and I've heard Silman's books are great as well.)

Principles-

1. Don't bring the queen out early. It wastes SO much time and accomplishes little.
2. Develop your pieces.
3. Don't move your knights to the edge of the board.
4. Generally speaking, don't make moves that block your own pieces.
5. Fight for the center (So-called hyper-modern openings do it as well, just at a later time)
6. Develop your pieces. It needs to be done.
7. Get your king to safety early (Castle) Even though I repeated rule #2, I feel that this rule is really the most important one. Your king is the MOST valuable piece; lose him and you... lose. Sure, if your queen's gone and there's not a mate threat, the game's probably over, but look at the below position.

Completely ridiculous, but it illustrates a point.

Tactics are really what ends up killing pretty much everyone for long stretch of rating, though. Thus them being paramount.

Anyway, if you want a quiet opening, b3 or g3 are certainly quiet in the beginning. There's no such thing as a completely quiet game. Positional games? Yes. But not quiet ones.

I have several times ventured the defensive 1. c3 against stronger players. With this unpromising Saragossa opening, I have beaten the master Jude Acers in a serious, 1-hour-per-side game with a ten dollar bet riding on it and drew the master Neil Harris in a club tournament game. Since I am only a Class A player, those were great results. Both were vicious attacking players that I would have had no chance against in a tactical slugfest; I had to box, do the rope-a-dope, and hope they would slip on a spot of their own sweat. Sometimes it makes sense not to open yourself up for attack by playing aggressively, but just defending, going for a closed position, and drawing the opponent into protracted trench warfare.

Yeah, 1.c3 can be interesting if you're a Caro-Kann and/or Slav player with Black, as here you get an extra tempo IF the position transposes... Of course, if you feel like teasing your opponent, you can always :choose: to play the Black side of the Sicilian with 1.c3 e5 2.c4 - but there is no particular reason to do this, as the English opening is certainly better.

What I would recommend is either the Maroczy setups in the English (c4+e4) OR 1.d4 2.Nf3 3.g3 (without an early c4, so that you only choose to transpose into Catalan waters if your opponent plays some line that you know well) - this is especially effective if you are well versed with Gruenfeld/Dragon/Pirc/Modern with Black (or any other fianchetto defense, for that matter)

You can play c4, then g3 and Bg2

I prefer a more solid one, a e4 - Nf3 - Be2 - O-0 themodern variation and scandinavian e4 e5 d4 exd4 Qxd4 can be followed by Nc6! getting tempi are not suggestable

the  only scandinavian version i think is satisfactory is e4 e5 d4 exd4 Nf6 modern g6 bg2 etc

zborg thank you for your facts they are very good :)

And here is more background on the Reversed Slav system, discussed in another thread of 11 posts.

http://www.chess.com/forum/view/chess-openings/full-circle-with-the-london-system?lc=1#last_comment

why wanna play defencively with black???the first move is given for a reason howeven if you want something defencive you cantry the stonewall attack formation with c4 d3 e4 f3 or KIA except of playing e4 play e3 d3 which willslower your development and will give black more space however it can give you the defence you want to play as white...

Yes, you can always play the Dutch from the white side.  It's a matter of personal preference, nothing more.

Ditto with a dozen other reversed systems.

There is no such thing as defensive openings or aggresive opening.These are book titles of clever writers so naive chesplayers will buy the book.

@MickeyG, I like the way you play Live Chess with folks rated 400 points below you.

You like to beat up on the kids.  Duh?

They are friends and the games are actually lessons.Someone a little smarter would have understand that by himself but your low intelligence is not actually your fault.

Yeah.  You (only) do it out of the goodness of your heart, not your oversized ego. 

Try letting your "students" win sometimes, numb-nuts.  You'll be a better man for it.

You waste entirely too much time "getting lessons" at Dupont Circle.  At your rating level the advantage of the first move, is utterly irrelevant for your choice of opening.  Please make a note of it.

Add a 5 second delay to your Blitz Obsession on Chess.com, and you might learn something, beyond your empty-headed assertions about chess openings.

Nuff said?

Einstein was right:

"2 things are infinite , the universe and human stupidity"

How stupid can you be?They are friends, not students.They ask something and I answer.Then we play a game so that they see what I mean.There is no "goodness of my heart".I wouldn't care to talk to them if I didn't knew them.Is that clear enough for you? 

Methinks the gentleman doth protest too strongly.

Try not to be so "upset" by what you read in these forums.  Otherwise readers might believe that the criticism hit home. 

On balance, the OP asked a perfectly reasonable question, but you were unwilling to offer anything constructive, and you got criticised along the way.  Nuff said?

Have a Nice Day.

I tend to play attacking openings as white and black (but I also like hypermoderns as black strangely). This seams to be my natural style. But Im also a perfect mind perfect body nut - so I agree 100% with Michael thats its about improving yourself but theres nothing like a bit of competion to stimulate that further.

Id also disagree with zborg I always play for the win white or black, Id also never recomend any systems for either side to beginers. Play the italien and spanish games, maybe try the queens gambit if thats the way you role or the english (prepare 5 move depth for the sicilean if you are going to play e4). Its important for beginers to play with common openings to become familar with opening theory and to familarise themselves with ways to play against these openings too.

The only time that I would try any system would be for  a tournament  that I didn`t have time to prepare much in the way of openings for or for bullet chess...

Thats my opinion, I disagree but respect others and can understand the temptation for beginers to use a systems instead of looking over opening theory. Ive been there before, this is what I did and Im a better player for it.