What is the most played opening among grandmasters?

Hello! I would like to know the most common opening played by grandmasters. Please tell me if you know.

This is basically unaswerable question because the term opening is very vague. For example some people might call the Sicilian defence (1. e4 c5) an opening. We might also call the Rossolimo Sicilian (1. e4 c5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bb5) an opening. Obviously the first one will be more common than the latter. In general the earlier the said opening is reached the more common it will be.

Question like what is the most popular first move in GM practice during last 5 years can sensibly be answered by studying a chess database. Question 'what is the most popular opening' cannot unless we first agree on exact definition about what constitutes an opening.

It's not really that deep, it's a simple question.  

OP the answer is the queen's gambit and the Ruy lopez as white. the Nimzo-Indian and Morphy defence as black. 

If you go to https://lichess.org/analysis#explorer and click on the moves you can see the frequency of each move/opening. 

Also Indian openings, like BId, QID and KID no?

NID

Thank you to all of you, everyone will get a trophy for their help!

Ruy Lopez Berlin

Today popular among Super GMs are

• Berlin
• Sicilian (Najdorf, Sveshnikov, Rossolimo)
• Catalan
• Nimzo/QGD
• Grunfeld

Italian opening has also gained a lot of attention lately. Also Petroff because of Caruana I guess.

Berlin

According to the lichess masters database the most common openings are the indian game and the sicilian. Granted, both openings (or families of openings) are reached on the first move giving them an unfair advantage over something like the italian which takes 3 moves to be reached however the most popular responses to e4 and d4 on the database are c5 and Nf6. If you want to get more specific I believe the most popular sicilian is the najdorf and the most popular indian is the nimzo. The ruy lopez/spanish probably takes third place with the morphy and berlin defenses being popular variations but there are many more openings that are popular among grandmasters.

Queen's gambit

sicilain queen gambit and ruy lopez

At Yekaterinburg Candidates:
10 Ruy Lopez
8 Sicilian
6 French
6 English
5 Grünfeld
4 Italian

Nimzo Larson modern, reti, van krutz. Queens pawn. English.

Your answer is impossible!

Both sides determine the Opening!  Not one!

Therefore, it is physically impossible for the Queen's Gambit and the Nimzo-Indian to be the most popular at the same time.  1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 is NOT the Queen's Gambit!

The answer to the OP's question depends on trends.  What is trendy at the given time.  The French was extremely popular in the 3rd quarter of the 20th century.  Today, it is seen, though not nearly as often!  For every French game at the GM level today, you probably have double digit games with 1...c5 and double digit games with 1...e5 against 1.e4.

During the 90's, the Najdorf was played by virtually everyone.

Then came the 2000's and it's the Berlin

Then the Rossolimo Sicilian took center stage.

Even for about a year or so, in the 2000's I want to say, it was the Sveshnikov Sicilian!

Long story short, there is no one answer.  It's whatever the trend is at that time!

Queens gambit

Ruy lopez 

Catalan 

Sicilian najdorf 

Grunfeld 

On other words my opening repetoire are gramdmasters favourite repetoire

And yeah there are lot more it just depends on trend 

There isn't a one-for-one match of black and white openings, that's not really how it works. Even if all openings were perfectly symmetrical, you don't want to treat losing variations the same as winning variations, or 2200-rated players the same as 2800-rated players. People want to know what the highest-rated players go for, regardless of continuation.

Example: If Magnus Carlsen plays 1. d4 and 2. e3 in 50 different games against a 2200-rated player, and wins 100% of the games, but black makes a whole laundry list of losing moves...

...you'd be hard-pressed to convince me that all of those 50 losing combinations from black were just as "popular" as 1. d4 2. e3; since Magnus played it and won with it each time.

Obviously, the most popular opening will change because people still play Chess; therefore there's more and more opening being played. Like I said, this is just semantics. People want to know what's popular and many people understood the question and gave useful answers.

Most importantly, if *you* aren't playing an opening *at all*, but you realize it's one of the most popular, easiest, and winningest, and favored by your favorite player, then chances are you'd probably *want to know about that*. That's what this thread is about.

There's more nuance to openings than this. It depends where each player deviates from the main line, if they play a known variation, whether variations change the structure, move order, or outcome, and of course, whether or not the moves are any good are among a few things of import.

Throwing our hands in the air and exclaiming "no one can possibly know! it's different every day!" could be considered true, on an aggravatingly pedantic level, but it's unhelpful and misses the point.

Someone tell me why the Catalan is so popular at higher ELOs? Is it about preserving your ELO because ELO is basically broken for players with the highest ratings? I really wish they'd use Glicko or Glicko 2, like Chess.com. I know people complain about the "inflated ratings", but the truth is that the wider range of rating points you have, the better match-making you can do. Glicko is more accurate, and Glicko 2 is arguably even more accurate. Elo is old and broken, and simply not cut out for the computer age.