Blogs
The French Defense (Opening Study)

The French Defense (Opening Study)

Avatar of Xhive24
Xhive24
| 7

Hello Everyone! Hope Your Staying Safe! Today I'm Coming With Another Blog About Openings But This Time For The Black-Colored Pieces, The Famous French Defense! Without Further Ado Let's Get Started!

This Blog Will Contain: 

  • A short-minilesson
  • 2 Puzzles
  • Additional Materials

                                                The French Defense

The French Defense is one of the most common openings I see played. The French is a decent opening although it blocks black from developing his bishop it keeps the position slightly a bit more closed! We start of with the standard e4, followed by e6!

The opening goes as below: 

The objective for this opening is to keep things closed, so let's show a different variation of the French Defense but with a better lines for black! Now I'm going to show a few lines which keep the position still slightly closed but help black develop, one of which changes the opening but it's still quite fun to play!
Below we have The French Defense: Normal Variation and then the d5 by black, the position is now quite aggresive, and black takes a slight sort of gambit but it is still good! 

The objective with d5 is to either get a push from white and gain a tempo but lose development this is called The French Defense: Advanced Variation. Following this we have the exchange variation which opens the file for the king's and allows black to go back to developing his pieces. Now, let's take a look at how white can decline black's french defense ideas and go for developing pieces. This varitaion is called The French Defense: Knight's Variation.

Another opening variation that I'm still learning is the Nimzowisch Defense: 2.d4, e6. But to explain the Nimzowisch Defense is for another time wink.png!

A Little Bit Of History: 

The French Defence is named after a match played by correspondence between the cities of London and Paris in 1834 (although earlier examples of games with the opening do exist). It was Jacques Chamouillet, one of the players of the Paris team, who persuaded the others to adopt this defence. 

Credits: Wikipedia

2 Puzzles! Today's won't be related to the opening but more fun ones!

(A Very Simple One!)
*Slightly Harder!*

Below are some more materials for you to study the French Defense!

https://www.ichess.net/blog/french-defense/

https://www.chess.com/lessons/why-simon-loves-the-french

Hope you enjoyed this blog! See you next time!

-

Xhive24