Any player playing the french has an uphill battle...
As a diehard french fan that was very hard to say.
The French Defense?
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ericmittens wrote:
Any player playing the french has an uphill battle...
As a diehard french fan that was very hard to say.
I disagree. The Tarrasch is absolutely nothing against the French. Black can play c5 and equalize quickly. Or Black could play the Rubinstein and have a good game. I would say it's an even battle.
KillaBeez wrote:
ericmittens wrote:
Any player playing the french has an uphill battle...
As a diehard french fan that was very hard to say.
I disagree. The Tarrasch is absolutely nothing against the French. Black can play c5 and equalize quickly. Or Black could play the Rubinstein and have a good game. I would say it's an even battle.
Do you have any support for this or is it only your opinion ? I lean more towards Eric's opinion and I have many years experience in the french , from both sides. My data base says that the tarrasch scores 57% for white while 3 Nc3 scores 1% less. As for the Rubenstein it scores under 40%. So , what are you basing your opinion on ?
Most White players who call the French boring either always paly the exchange variation or have difficulties playing against it because play is unlikely to become ultra-sharp in many cases.
The hardest test for the French seems the Tarrasch variation (1.e4 e6 2.d4 d5 3.Nd2 (rendering the typical Bb4 idea useless), but that requires quite some theory study.
Of all these other suggestions I like especially Spassky's plan 6.dxc5 mentioned above. To reach this position, you can employ a sneaky move order: