Ah, Those Wily French!

The French Defense is gritty; confrontational. It challenges White's centre from the 2nd move, daring White to take an advantage in space, and also an attach on the kingside!

However, in life, nothing is free. You must pay the price! In chess, for every square conquered, you must yield another one. For every attack, you must wither create weaknesses in your own camp as you advance, or worse, you must accept some permanent weaknesses which will tell in the endgame, if you do not win before then.

"Chess is not a battle of ideas; chess is a war of nerves!", exclaimed the great Bronstein, and he was right!

I have always been fascinated by defenses such as the French, the King's Indian Defense, the Caro-Kann, the Modern Defense and the Pirc. All of them allow White to take up greater space, and then they strike back! The art of pawn-chain leverage and strategy is applied in these setups.

Many years ago (maybe 1975 or so) a Master was explaining to a group of beginners like me certain concepts. One explanation made so much sense, I wondered why I had not heard it before! Of course, in Puerto Rico our chess culture has never been very deep. There was no structure for coaching of budding talent. What we had was weekly tournaments, lots of blitz, and an occasional informal talk, in which I heard the following:

"The pawn structure determines where you are going to attack. Wherever your pawn chain is pointing to, that is where you should attack." It is a simple concept, which every Soviet schoolboy knows since the age of 6, but to me, it was a revelation!

For example, in the French Defense we get the following possible pawn chain:

or this one:

It is clear that White has the leverage f4-f5, and Black can either play c5-c4, or c5xd4 and open the c-file.

I do not know why, but recently I was thinking about Vlado Kovacevic...ah yes, I remember! Someone gave a an old Informant, #47 (1989), and glancing through the pages, I came across the following diagram, and I found the tactic to be quite entertaining, and the game quite energetic! It was Kovacevic!

and then I remembered...this is the same Kovacevic who beat Fischer with a French Defense!

Then, of course, I thought of Wolfgang Uhlmann and Viktor Korchnoi, two of the greatest exponents of the French Defense! And Uhlmann ALSO beat Fischer with it!

And other players suffered at Uhlmann's hands....even Adorjan, who would get to the Candidates!

And the great Korchnoi, at the age of 78, beat Timman real hard with it! Take a look!

Even my hero, David Bronstein, suffered at Uhlmann's hands!

If you had White against Uhlmann, and you played 1.e4, you could almost bet he was playing the French! And there was nothing you could do about it. You had better be prepared!

Ah, those wily French!