Exchange French

Many ways to break the symmetry. The fastest (and 100% sound) one:

I call it the "Laissez-Faire Gambit", as White captures on d5 and Black just "lets it happen".

Definitely dubious...black gains development in exchange for the pawn, but doesn't really get any initiative to make use of it, and White has plenty of opportunities to exchange pieces, shooting for a quick end Game conversion where the extra pawn could be decisive. Stockfish gives it about a 0.65, so there are worse openings out there. Great psychological weapon to use on someone who's hoping for an easy, drawish game with the Exchange French.

As a long time French Defense player, best advice I can give you about the Exchange French is...improve. Lower rated players play 3. exd5 because they don't know what else to do. I'm currently rated in the 1300-1450 range, and when I play the French, I get the Exchange version maybe 1 game in 10, if that. You'll.see it a lot less as you climb the ratings ladder amd run into more players who have studied the French.

@KamikazeJohnson

Yeah i figured that the higher the rating, the less exchange French will occur

whites attack is actually weak. All they have is their rook, queen and bishop. Sometimes just pushing one pawn or creating an escape route is enough to evade the attack. We can even use their b5 move as a reason to transfer our c6 knight to our attack. Meanwhile we have ALL of our pieces in the attack(except for c6 knight and d8 rook, the e7 knight can join the attack in 2-3 moves), so our attack is actually stronger, and the position is more dangerous for white. They still have F3 knight and h3 bishop on the defensive tho, so breaking them won't be as easy

lets take this random game that I found on lichess

@lassus_dinnao

Well in this case yeah black had a better and fastter attack. Anyway thanks for the help I'll definitely try opposite side castling as it seems to me the best try

The ratings here mean nothing.

Over the board is all I look at. I am 2033 in the February supplement.

Here is proof about my post early on. I had 3 exchange Frenches in a 1-week period over the board, and won all 3. They may not even have been winning entering the endgame, but none of them were lost for Black, and as mentioned before, KNOW YOUR ENDINGS! Two of the three were knight endings, the other still saw the Queens, one set of Rooks, and opposite colored bishops when the game ended.

This third one was a weekend tournament where I faced the same player I played that previous Tuesday night.

Play it like Frank Marshall.

https://youtu.be/ZKPZX6gGRug?list=PLAwlxGCJB4Nfej7e17QSS0LxrCBOCUpYu Watch Anish v Pragg! Alireza, Nodirbek, Wei Yi & Ian Hunt For The Lead! | Tata Steel 2024 Rd 5

Ju WenJun won against Firouja in exchange French so the arrogant dogmatists who say something like "as White it is impossible to win against a GM in exchange French in time long ", they talk ***

Another nasty win by Black that I played tonight (I was Black of course, wouldn't play this trash as White). The Exchange Variation SUCKS!

I play 4.c4, which leads to a similar position to the Panov Attack Caro-Kann. I like getting the French players into a wide open game, but it still has a French flavor. Similarly if you play 2. c3 or 2Nc3 in the Sicilian, it is still a Sicilian with double-edged positions sometimes resulting.

This is very different from the Panov (where Black has an e-pawn, not a c-pawn). Actually if Black takes on c4 before the Bf1 has moved there's a transpisition to Queen's Gambit accepted, but of course Black need not comply. Usually he has an easy game answering 4.c4 with 4...Nf6 and ...Bb4.

@ThrillerFan

Very nice games, thanks for the help 😁

Yeah, the engine evaluates 4c4 as even and the Panov Attack as +0.09. I agree there are more opportunities for black to screw up in the Panov Attack. I just don't like playing the closed game after an eventual e5 and find the regular exchange variation boring. I could try the Tarrasch Variation, which usually results in an open game.

what if white is lower rated? now im forced to play for a win or i lose rating. How do i play for a win when the 0-0-0 lines are dubious and the c5 lines just give white an advantage?

The c5 lines are so dubious, that Anish Giri advocates them at his Chessable French course.

you arent supposed to play c5 until Bd3 is played. It goes not nf3 c5, but nf3 nf6 bd3 c5