Reti French games

Here's a cool one where I was completely winning and then just blundered checkmate at the end due to a distraction lol.

My best game in a bad day of blitz yesterday! Admittedly some strange moves from my opponent.

Well what do we have here? Will be bookmarking this to study later and a big thank you for taking the time in updating this thread! 

Waller, thanks for sharing all this examples, it opened up my eyes! I am not afraid of french defense anymore, actually I wanted my opponents to play it against me now ;) I have a friend which used to beat me easily with his frech defense and yesterday you should have seeing him rolling up his eyes when I pulled this weapon out :) It was a 5min game and unkown waters for him. Thanks a lot for your blog!

Yeah, I know it's been a while, but these games were a lot of fun to go through.  I think I'll have a new try that's not my standard boring french lines.

These are a joy to watch. I too struggle to gain an advantage with the Tarrasch but this system looks more to my style. Thanks for the heads up.

 Great to see the Reti has found some more followers! 

Just thought I'd update this thread again - I brought out the Reti in an OTB tournament last month against high-level opposition. I did go for a more positional game this time (just my mood at the time) but still came out with the better side of a draw. Here's the game (note that 192 ~ 2150/2200 in FIDE).

Thank you very much for this thread mate, I'm in hospital bored as playing the French

I'm a Reti gambit practitioner too and I don't win every game but I win loads, and more importantly, i get To play a fun game whereas playing into the French without proper preparation (and I'm not intending to prepare) is simply not fun for me.

My best result with this was actually OTB against Regional Master and French expert Ian Hunnable in a blitz club championship at Wanstead and Woodford chess club. The game was 5+10 so it wasn't that quick. He played well but went to try on my q side castle neglecting his k side which was soon stormed by my pawns. He also overlooked a subtle positional tactic that allowed me to enter his position from the centre and he had to give up his queen for a rook in order to survive. I went on to win and most other games were finished so basically the whole club was watching our game (also coz he was the reigning champion and I was the new unrated promise, I was doing pretty well overall). I have to say, that was sweeeeeeetaaaaaa!!!

I think one has to find openings that suit his/her style. I play e4, so I have alternative responses for most defences. To e5 I play the king's gambit, to c5 I play the Grand Prix attack or smith-morra gambit, to c6 I play nf3 and then after 2 ...d5 3 exd5 cxd5 4. Ne5! The so called apocalypse attack (because of the white horse). This is a great way to throw your caro-kann opponent out of book and I get great results too! 

I have recently found my response to d4 as black too. I used to play d5 expecting a queens gambit and if so the Albin countergambit, which is not totally sound but again throws white Into not so familiar positions. I like it but white can play other things such as the London system and other boring lines which I hate, so I found the solution for this... the Dutch! It can also be played against the English (not a fan either) and again, white has to play chess and not book.

The point of all this, as you say is to switch the game to your territory. For example if you play KG, chances are you've played it with white a lot more than your opponent with black, therefore, even if your opponent has done some homework and has a decent defence for it, your experience will make all the difference and your opponent can easily go wrong especially in the early stages.

 I'm now on the mission of finding side lines to the pirc and modern defences, but they're rather unusual, at least at club level.

Thomas Johannson has really nice books on both the reti and king's gambit, he also has some videos on YouTube.