French Defence - Rubinstein Variation

I doubt Jeremy Silman said that.  There is no b7-a1 diagonal!  h8-a1 or a8-h1.  b7 is light and a1 is dark!

Oh yes I'm stupid! It's h1 of course. 

Hannes Langrock said that the Rubinstein shouldn't be one's first choice against 1.e4 (because it is drawish). But why? I mean that for instance he Caro-Kann is really often drawish (there is one exception, the Larsen variation), but many players have it as their first choice against 1.e4.

So if I have more agressive second choices against 1.e4, why would picking the Rubinstein as my first choice be a bad idea? 

Because the Rubinstein really is more drawish than 95% of the lines of the Caro-Kann.  Just because you can pin point one drawish line of the Caro-Kann doesn't make the whole opening just as drawish as the Rubinstein French.

You going to say that 1.e4 c6 2.d4 d5 3.e5 Bf5 4.Nc3 e6 5.g4 is drawish?

You going to say that 1.e4 c6 2.d4 d5 3.Nc3 dxe4 4.Nxe4 Nd7 5.Ng5 is drawish?

You going to say that 1.e4 c6 2.d4 d5 3.f3 Qb6 4.Nc3 dxe4 5.fxe4 e5 6.dxe5 Bc5 7.Qf3 is drawish?

The Rubinstein really is drawish, and you will notice in his book that Black is almost always playing for a draw, and most winning chances belong to White via Black missing a potential piece sacrifice on e6 or f7.

I only play it on occasion, typically either against a local player that I know is bad at positional play and bad at endgames - you "wild child" type of player that needs the fireworks just to maintain attention to the position, and then sometimes in Correspondence where a draw with Black is usually a good thing - bank on getting your wins in your White games, though I did win one game because my opponent ended up in a bad endgame:

http://charlottechesscenter.blogspot.com/2020/04/the-french-connection-volume-36.html

But this type of result for Black is the exception, not the rule.

"You going to say that 1.e4 c6 2.d4 d5 3.e5 Bf5 4.Nc3 e6 5.g4 is drawish?

You going to say that 1.e4 c6 2.d4 d5 3.Nc3 dxe4 4.Nxe4 Nd7 5.Ng5 is drawish?

You going to say that 1.e4 c6 2.d4 d5 3.f3 Qb6 4.Nc3 dxe4 5.fxe4 e5 6.dxe5 Bc5 7.Qf3 is drawish?"

IMO we should not compare the Caro-Kann advance to the Rubinstein French, but to the French advance. It seems more logical to me.

I should not have said "one exception". As far as I know, Nd7 can lead to very sharp and aggressive lines (the dubious 5.Qe2?! can lead after 5...Ngf6?? to 6.Nd6#!), however I didn't hear about lines in which black is rapidly leading an attack in this variation, and this is why I didn't compare it to the Larsen.

The 3.f3 line doesn't come to my mind when I think about the Caro-Kann, but I trust you if you say that it leads to sharp variations.

Being one that plays the Fantasy Variation myself AGAINST the Caro-Kann, I can safely say yes, most lines get to be highly sharp.  Probably one of the "least sharp" lines is a direct transposition to the Steinitz French, and even that is sharp.

You get there via 1.e4 c6 2.d4 d5 3.f3 e6 4.Nc3 Nf6 (main line is 4...Bb4) 5.e5 Nfd7 6.f4 c5 7.Nf3 Nc6 8.Be3 and you are in the Steinitz with both sides behind a move, so it is now Black's 8th move rather than 7th line the normal Steinitz.  The difference is both White's f and Black's c pawns took 2 moves instead of 1 to get to f4 and c5, respectively.