Amazing article! I agree with your takes on the French Defense - it is a madly underrated opening that can be used to cripple most unprepared intermediates. As this is my primary opening as black against 1 e4, I can confirm that the French Defense is very much playable at the 1600-level, with the possibility of obtaining superior positions out of the opening. Since I lack the braincells to formulate a full formal reply to this post, I figured I would just post an annotated game of mine against a lower-rated player to demonstrate the merit of this opening.
While all my games don't turn out like this, it demonstrates that this opening is a very lethal weapon if you are aware of its main ideas and positional plans. Anyways, thanks for taking the time to write this; hopefully more people can get to learn from this instructive post over the coming months.
I have an opening which I have played and when I was between the rating points of 1200 and 1300 with it I had a huge success with this opening. However, it is rarely preffered by players.
It is the French defense
Here since I have personally played and had a score with it so I can say others can too.
My personal experience
I had started with rating when I was around 1230+ (Not the first time), and initially I began to have completely dull and depressing (and obviously worse) middlegames but as I analyzed my games and played more and more then I began to know what I'm doing and it turned out my opponents didn't.
The whole point why good French defense practioners do good against 1200s is because players at this level don't know how the handle the centre where they've extended their pawns a bit more. The whole point of french defense is that white enjoyes a strong centre and space advantage with pawns but black c5 and f6 pawn break and strong pressure tries to counterattack the centre. And there white players fail to find the right moves against them.
I most of the time just ended up winning the d4 pawn and having white e5 pawn weakened.
Some basic introduction to the opening
Exchange variation
For me it is the variation that always killed my hopes and dreams.
Just study this much a little bit.
Remember you may not perform well but will eventually began to crush with it
Beyond 1300
When you go from 1300-1400 and further players no longer begin to have worse position out of openings and they began to play exchange variation but this opening is still worth continuing to be played as I still do