When to not castle

       Hey, I've been playing the London system for the last week, and am trying to make it a little more aggressive (for those of you who don't think that's possible in the London, go watch Simon Williams videos). I've done this by either not castling and hiding my king behind the center or castling queenside and pushing the h pawn. However, there have also been games where I just castled kingside.

     I've got a good idea of what positions I can castle queenside and kingside in, but I don't have that much experience playing in an opening where you have the option to just not castle at all. 

      I was wondering what kind of indicators (moves, types of positions, etc.) I could look that show that I can skip castling, or if I should only do so in existing lines of theory that involve it.

Good advice, thanks. What about not castling at all?

anyone?

I don't know... a sheveningen sicilian like structure comes to mind though. Where white takes on f6 and black recaptures with the g pawn. The king is often most safe on a square like e7.

There are a number of French variations where the black king hides on f8.

I vaugly recall some KID type structures where the center is closed by locked pawns, and white (and sometimes black) just leaves their king in the center all game long.

Even if the king is safe though, it can be a hindrance to piece coordination. If the king stays on a square like e1 the most obvious annoyance is to your rooks who can't protect each other on the back rank. This can be a hindrance even in the endgame, when the liability of having a king in the center due to mate has long since passed.

So usually I would consider having your rooks connected and king castled as a benefit to a mating attack. Lets say both of you castle kingside and for the sake of an example lets say you open your f file. Ok maybe you can play Rxf6 to damage his pawn structure then bring the other rook to f1 and continue the attack. That's not such an uncommon idea. But if your pieces are not coordinated it at the very least makes your attack slower because it will take more moves to bring all your pieces into the attack.

You want to play the London aggressively, fine, but just imagining a few positions, it seems not castling will only make your position less aggressive in most cases.

If you want to turn that into rules of thumb, a king is most likely to be safe in the center when the center is locked, and there are very few (or no) fully open files (so rook coordination is not a big issue). Half open files, fine. Fully open files, not so much.

Yeah, I mean, it's probably good at least sometimes. He'd have to post stuff.

But you're right looking for gimmicks doesn't work out in the long run.

I mean... I'm guilty of that too. Chess is hard so we like to find tricks

Last night I was thinking how annoying the Italian is sometimes, when the position is boring. I was thinking about learning some new opening.

I finally decided I should just keep playing 1...e5 and not worry about it... if I hate it so much I should study it more. That usually gives a player enough winning chances vs non professional opponents

Yeah, openings are the most boring to me. Making a proper repertoire (or at least giving it a shot) was the last thing I did.

I mean, I always reviewed my games to see where I left book, but I never sat down and thought, ok, after 1.e4 e5 what are all the things I have to be prepared for?

Turns out there were a lot of basic options I knew nothing about, but they're so rarely played it didn't matter 

I think London Colle and Stonewall have lines where the center gets locked (or in all practicality so) white charges kingside, black charges queenside and the white king hangs out in the middle?