french defense question

Maybe black plays ...c6/...c5 here

Only if black takes the Bb4 line and takes the Knight on c3 (an odd duck) do you see a double pawn formation. i do not even know what you would call that line other than yuck. i would definitely play c4 as Back in that line likely. Almost ant other and c4 is anti-thematic and bad usually.

nice line in #31

I want to especially thank Estragon and Snape for there excellent responses.

uhh..... you would call it the winawer.

Immryr wrote:

vengence69 wrote:

Only if black takes the Bb4 line and takes the Knight on c3 (an odd duck) do you see a double pawn formation. i do not even know what you would call that line other than yuck. i would definitely play c4 as Back in that line likely. Almost ant other and c4 is anti-thematic and bad usually.

uhh..... you would call it the winawer.

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I prefer to pronounce it (WIN-A-WAR)

Hence why i play the French as little as possible.

In reply to kavanam's line 1 e4 e6 2 d4 d5 3 e5 c5 4 c3 Nc6 5 Nf3 Qb6 6 a3 c4. This seems like a good place to play ...c4 because black gets to dominate the light squares on the queenside, and I think wiebelenstra's comment about castling very much applies here: it is very difficult for white to open the queenside here. If black didn't have good control of b3 with the knight and bishop, white would play b3 and open lines against the black king on the queenside.

I believe the best move after 1 e4 e6 2 d4 d5 3 e5 c5 4 c3 Nc6 5 Nf3 Qb6 6 a3 to be 6...Nh6, because it has the support of some famous french players (IM John Watson for example) and it seems to score best for black. In the chessgames.com opening database the scores for 6...c4 are (whitewins-draws-blackwins) 40%-30%-30%, and for 6...Nh6 31%-32%-37%, suggesting that ...Nh6 is the better move. This, however, doesn't mean that 6...c4 is bad, in fact, here it seems to be quite a good move.