Am I wasting my life away studying the French?

I've seen some of your games, and I can assure you, openings are the last thing you need to worry about.

I desire/like the Winawer just fine.  My question wasn't about likes or dislikes, or about the armchair-GMs' opinions of it. 

Always nice to get the opinion of a 1500 player.

You are confused. 1500 player would be you. Listen kid, you can play whatever you want, you are still going to lose to 1200-1500s here on a regular basis, unless you put a lot of effort in improving all aspects of your game, which is probably never going to happen.

OK, enough time wasted on the irrelevancies spewed out by trolls, thanks to nescitus for the comment, and for being able to read English, and to inkspirit for his comment way back when.

Eh, let him be stupid enough to call out the almighty French on one game.  Make him think it really is bad when it is not, and instead he is probably playing openings that actually are bad, like the Smith-Moron Gambit!

I would say the improvement in Sicilian structures would be reflected more in other openings. The French is its own beast, in my opinion...yet Korchnoi almost got there with it! 

The French is useful to study. But, like all defenses, its usefulness dwindles the more specific your variations get.

Try not to tumble too far down the rabbit hole of specific lines. If you're starting to get confused, you're probably going too far.

Yeah, I have no idea why people might assume I'm studying specific lines.  That's not the way I study.  I study whole games that start French or whatever, with a lot more effort on the endgame or middlegame.  Gotten too old to try to stuff my head with useless tree branches.

Right on on the Moron part.

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How do I get these last two comments deleted? 

studying the french should improve your chess in general. i have a book on most common pawn structures and one of the chapters is dedicated to the french types. it is not as universal as the tarrasch qgd however, and so what you learn will be in part primarily applicable to structures specifically reached within the french. i know that the french structures can be reached from other openings so there is some practical value there as well. it allows for a switch later on to an e6 type sicilian vs specific setups, or a closed catalan for black among other things. however, in my opinion both the open games and the sicilian allow for a more comprehensive improvement of a player's overall chess skill. there are many reasons for this but i could just point out the number of pawn structures that can be reached are quite varied and most of the time even transcends 1 e4 or 1 d4 positions. but i could say for certain that the french is far more compact than those two. 

As a French player myself, other than the center Sicilian and a few reverse cases, not sure where else you will get a French structure unless you count the Advance Caro (main difference is the Bishop, not the pawn structure.

That said, here is a funny one:

Now instead of White playing 8.e3 and allowing this direct transposition with no gain of tempo and colors reversed, he ought to take advantage and play 8.Bf4! Nf6 9.e3 as in Howell(2639) - Pijpers(2338), Leiden NED 2013 (1-0 - 37)

I guess that's what I was driving at, but what the hell, I guess most openings will leave you lacking somewhere, so might as well play an odd one that I used to find frustrating to meet when I played 1. e4.

And while I was never a Korchnoi fan, I do love Petrosian!

Funny.

But u forgot to put blah blah blah in there too.

We can quibble over the details, but Mikey disregarded my very specific request, thereby showing utter disrespect and even contempt for me, and I think that should be funny enough whether or not he included the blahs!