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I'm looking for a set of openings that are more likely to lead into positional play where my side castles king side and have king side majority. Theoretical advantage is not required.

The plan is to not worry about king safety too much (unless opponent significantly weakens his structure to attack, e.g. IQP), swap pieces in equal positions and save myself time in middle game calculations. I can try and win in endgames.

Please suggest openings for white and for black against e4/d4/c4. Suggestions accompanied by book/video would be best. To start with, Caro-Kann against e4 seems a good choice.

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  • Here's the weird thing. Most of the openings where you castle kingside and have a kingside majority are actually positions where the other side launches a kingside attack with pieces. Queen's Gambit Exchange with minority attack, Sicilian, Classical lines of Caro-Kann - these are all lines where the player with the kingside majority gets attacked on the kingside by an opponent who has enough control of the center to do so.
    – Alexander Woo
    Commented May 23, 2022 at 3:07

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The Sicilian would be the obvious choice for black. I'm not an expert in every Sicilian line but I play several and encounter the same kingside majority theme in all of them nearly all of the time. One idea that occurs frequently in a lot of Sicilians is the Boleslavsky position. Black accepts a backward d pawn on a semi-open file but typically gets compensation in terms of activity. Positionally though, black will push d5 at some point and that will leave black with a kingside majority and a very good endgame.

So, I would think you could come up with something similar with the English/queen's gambit as white. What's going to give a kingside majority is trading your c pawn for the opponent's d pawn. That will happen often in those openings. You can pick and choose the transpositions that fit what you're trying to do.

I don't think you could do it playing e4 because the e4 pawn will frequently get pushed and/or traded for the d pawn leaving you with 3 kingside pawns. You want an opening that holds the e pawn back because if you trade the e pawn you will have a hard time getting a kingside majority.

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