French Defense: STEINER Variation | The Best Response? 🥐♟️😏
#french #steiner
Do you like playing against the French Defense? I certainly don’t! As a (1. e4) player, the French Defence (1… e6) is my Achilles’ heel. When I look at my stats, I lose against the French Defense around 55-60% of the time! Indeed, one of my insights in my 2023 Year In Review was to learn a more effective response to the French Defense. Historically, I tended to enter the French Defense Main Line (2. Nf6) because I didn’t like the Advance Variation with (2… e5), which closes the centre immediately. However, this results in playing INTO the French Defense player’s comfort zone. I thought about the Exchange Variation with (2… exd5), but Black just seems to be better in that position.
So recently, I decided to have a closer look at the Lichess community database, and I asked myself the question – do I need to play (2. d4) at all? Clearly, this is allowing the French Defense player to call the shots. And this is where I found something very interesting! There are over 300 million games of the French Defense on Lichess, and overall, White and Black are equal winning at 48% vs 48%. However, there are two uncommon responses for White that clearly perform better than all the others. The first is the Steiner Variation (2. c4) occurring in 2% of French games, with a win ratio of 51% vs 45%. The second is the Chigorin Variation (2. Qe2) occurring in less than 0.5% games, with a win ratio of 53% vs 43%!
As I was already slightly familiar with the Steiner Variation, having previously had a brilliant quick win submitted from a subscriber and liking the feel of the line. So, I have decided to try this first!
And looking at my very limited number of Steiner Variation games (four!), it has been my most successful response to the French as I’ve won 3 of them! This might be a fluke, but I want to learn more, and this could even become my standard approach!
Let’s have a look at two very recent games down a specific line that I really like: (1. e4 e6 2. c4 d5 3. cxd5 exd5 4. Qa4+!?). Now, Stockfish doesn’t like this queen check at all, giving it an evaluation of [-1.1]. However, it’s one of the most winning lines against the French Defense on Lichess – with White winning 54% vs Black 42%. Moreover, this might be the OG Steiner line!
Historical note:
What we now call the French Defense: Steiner Variation (1. e4 e6 2. c4) was played and known by the 19th century chess masters, including by Cochrane, Staunton, Loewe, Paulsen, Lasker, and into the early 1900s, by Nimzowitsch, Tartakower, Alekhine, and Rubinstein. So, it has quite a pedigree as an aggressive counterattack against the French Defense. It can be understood as c4 immediately challenges Black’s desire to control the centre with d5, potentially opening the centre in a more favourable way for White. What I would say, however, is that for many of these historical games, (2. c4) didn’t seem very successful with White typically losing when a master was playing another master.
This is where Hungarian chess master Endre Steiner (1901-1944) enters the scene. The first game of him playing the Steiner Variation was in a tournament in 1928, where he used it to beat Réti! However, it is his victory against Tartakower in a tournament in Budapest the following year using the novel (4. Qa4+!?) Line that was notable and had his name attached to the opening. Have a look at the amazing game (Steiner — Tartakower, 1929, Budapest), where Steiner scores two brilliancies!
Sadly, Endre Steiner's story ends tragically in the Second World War. As a Hungarian Jew, he was captured by the Nazis and sent to a concentration camp near Budapest, and died on 29 December 1944.
Interestingly, there is an Australian connection; Endre’s younger brother was also a very strong chess player. IM Lajos Steiner (1903-1975), emigrated to Australia in 1939, lived in Sydney, and became the Australian chess champion four times (1945, 1946/7, 1952/3, and 1958/9) and the New South Wales champion nine times!
Game 1:
I played this game a couple of weeks ago and entered the Steiner Variation opportunistically. After (4… Bd7), I slid the queen back (5. Qb3), which places pressure on Black’s d5-pawn and their b7-pawn. This position transposes potentially to an opening that is more familiar to modern audiences, the Orthoschnapp Gambit, where White plays (4. Qb3) earlier in the Steiner Variation line. The Orthoschnapp Gambit is a contemporary invention of FM Stefan Bueckner in 1983, and I couldn’t find any evidence that it has been previously played by others.
Black plays the expected move (5… dxe4) and here, I mis-remembered the trap line and captured Black’s b-pawn (6. Qxb7?), a mistake, but only if Black finds (6… Nc6). Fundamentally, my queen can be harassed and even trapped by Black. However, Black didn’t find the optimal move, playing (6… Bc5??) instead. I could see what Black was trying to do – it looked like they had a trap after I captured their hanging rook with (7. Qxa8 7. Bc6!). This was indeed a good move for Black (and suboptimal for me), but I saw that I had (8. Bb5!) pinning their bishop to their king! These positions look almost a bit like a reverse Englund Complex, so I had some familiarity with them. And here, a very interesting phenomenon happed. Black is still slightly ahead, though it was mostly equal at [-0.2]. However, the loss of the rook in the opening seems to have been devastating for my French Defense playing opponent, and they resigned on move 8! Emotional damage!
This demonstrates a particular notion and idea in the romantic style of chess – you can win by making your opponent believe that they’ve lost!
Game 2:
Black responded to my wayward queen check by blocking with their c-pawn (4. Qa4+!? c6). In this game, I had no quick win aspirations, but the opening still transformed in the manner that I wanted. Black had to recapture in the centre with their queen, and then with the fully open e-file, I forced a queen trade. This wasn’t the most accurate according to the engine, but it meant that by move 9, I had gained a small advantage in the opening, and the game had taken an open and tactical flavour. I had transformed the French Defense into something that didn’t look very much like a French Defense at all. I like it!
And this bore fruit almost immediately in the early middlegame. Black made tactical errors against my attack and lost a rook and the right to castle. I carelessly blundered right back [+3.8 → -3.5], but Black didn’t capitalise on my mistakes. This gave me the opportunity to strike back and regain the initiative. On move 23, Black didn’t realise that their b3-knight was about to be trapped (admittedly, not easy to see), and blunders by playing an innocuous pawn advance [-0.9 → +3]. The gave me back numerical piece equality (3 vs 3 pieces), instantly making the game easier to play.
We then entered an endgame where I had the rook pair, and Black had a rook and knight. I knew that I was better, but I found Black’s knight rather tricky and annoying to manoeuvre around. And so, on move 36, I made a calculated gamble to trade one of my rooks for Black’s knight with (36. Rxe5+!?). Stockfish considers this a mistake, with the evaluation dropping back to equality [+5 → 0.00]. However, my logic was that I had three passed pawns on the kingside, and I was confident that Black would not be able to prevent one of them from promoting or be forced to trade their rook for a pawn). It was interesting to see that Stockfish believed that the position was defendable (and thus, a draw), but in the game, I was right. It was very difficult for Black to find the correct rook moves, and they couldn’t prevent my f-pawn from advancing gradually, supported by my rook and king. On their penultimate move, Black placed their rook to defend their back rank (50… Ra8), but it was too late as my pawn was on the seventh rank, a step from promotion. Black had no checks so couldn’t gain a step of tempo. With (51. Re8), it was over. Promotion came next turn (51… Rxe8 52. fxe8=Q) and Black resigned, GG!
The big take away from this game is that the Steiner Variation with (2. c4), especially down the OG line with (4. Qa4+) is potentially a really promising approach to playing the French Defense for people who prefer open tactical games! Give it a go!
Game 1: https://www.chess.com/game/live/107612649773
Game 2: https://www.chess.com/game/live/108346247457
