Who should play the Catalan opening?

Ive always been told that if you arent a titled player you should stay away from the Catalan which is why i always did, but recently ive been playing a little with it against the slav in longer games just for fun and i have never done so well against it, so now im not sure

I can't imagine why someone would make that recommendation - unless you're a super casual player the Catalan is great. It has a reputation for having a slow build-up that may make some players impatient, but the queen's gambit in general is pretty slow. There are also fearsome tactics available to white if black isn't careful - especially at the lower levels. Just think about how the King's Indian Attack is considered a system for people who don't want to learn any theory at all (yeah if you're Kasparov they may be very different but for lower ranking players similar themes). As long as a Catalan player has the temperment and some ability to hold onto and build on the advantage if black tries to shut up shop then I see no reason why it should remain at master level or above. 

I downloaded a beautiful book - The Powerful Catalan a while back where the openings were all explained so well, it's the old-fashioned style of an instructive chess book without the modern computer engine dumping you get with so many books these days this guy shows all the ideas and you can see his passion for the opening flowing through the pages, great book. I believe he even went to Catalan and learned the language - that might be a bit overkill lol. 

very interestning! i might check it out

i play the catalan and i am not a titled player. i've been doing good with it and also scoring well as far as i know. i have moved away from it in order to learn how to play the more direct and forceful  1 d4 2 c4 lines. 

you can cut down the theory you have to learn by not playing c4 early. i used sielecki's keep it simple repertoire as my reference and it has held very well for me up to now. he advocates playing c4 a bit later to avoid some of those dxc4 lines that are super sharp.

basically i can oversimplify the catalan by saying that you have to study and understand white's compensation when he gives up the pawn on c4, and you also have to be comfortable playing for positional compensation and not forcing matters.

even when you don't lose the pawn you are usually playing for queenside pressure. another typical position reached is the closed catalan which is worth studying in detail too. the position leads to a kind of french advanced structure is one to focus on in my opinion. white is better with more space but he has to get the regrouping right.

lastly the thematic c5 idea in the catalan to stop c5 from black and practically bury the bshop on b7. also worth investigating.

If you’re lower rated (untitled in this case) I think a problem is that you might have difficulty with the positional play needed to compensate for the lost pawn on c4. I’ve played some blitz games with it, and honestly think that I’m not quite strong enough to play it in a classical game.

If only they made that for every opening...

12 parts nice. thanks for tips guys

omg i have paid money for dvds with less information than this on openings

Actually, Stjepan is doing this for many openings...

He has done that for every e4 opening and is nearly done with every d4 opening 

Don't know how he only has only 80 thousand odd subscribers. Should deserve at least as many as Agadmator.

bruh I have seen youtubers with 1,200 subscribers and getting 10 likes on a video that deserve to have a million subscribers.

The only relation youtube views/subscribers seems to have with quality is that over time the good ones finally seem to get appreciated more and mediocre ones usually tend to fade away.