The Most Boring Opening?

The Exchange French is a very broad term that describes the position after just three moves: 1. e4 e6 2. d4 d5 3. exd5 exd5 (or even 3...Qxd5!?). It's notoriously boring despite that black can choose from a number of exciting plans. In this post I've gathered a few exciting games from the Exchange Variation of the French Defense.

This first game was between Stockfish 13 and AnMon 5.75, a weaker engine included with Arena. Stockfish won with white, but as the pawn structure is symmetrical many plans can be applied by both sides.

Here's another game with Stockfish playing black:

Though you'll never find the engines doing it, castling queenside is viable for black in some lines. The pioneer of this aggressive strategy was Alekhine, who made it look easy with games like this:

Here's Nimzowitsch beating slightly better opposition:

This last game is quite interesting. It is between Tal and Korchnoi, and Tal, for the only time in his life according to him, played for a draw with the white pieces, so he selected the Exchange Variation against Korchnoi's French. Why did the great Mikhail Tal play for a draw in only his fourth ever encounter with Viktor Korchnoi? It seems Tal already could tell that he was going to have trouble against Korchnoi, which he did throughout this career, finishing with a -9 score against Korchnoi. Perhaps it was based on their previous encounter:

Clearly a very frustrating game for someone like Tal. So Tal decided to play for a draw the next time around, but unfortunately things weren't so simple:

The move Korchnoi relied on, 30...g3, doesn't work, so black has nothing better than a perpetual. Can you see how white wins after 30...g3?

So although Tal escaped with a draw, Korchnoi could have made it a win were it not for that unfortunate miscalculation.

Hopefully these games give you some new ideas in the Exchange French.