French Defence/ Winawer Variation

Hello everybody.

 I really try to learn to play against the French as white at the moment. Got really beaten up in a real life game last week, and now I am trying to understand the theory and ideas.

 There is a book move move I do not understand in this opening! After the first e4 e6 2. d4 d5 3. Nc3 Bb4 4. e5 c5 5. a3 Bxc3 6. bxc3 7. Ne7 and then... a4???

Why???

Is there someone who is nice and explain this to me?

Thanks.

Hi RichardGunne,

The main idea of 7.a4 is really simple: to gain space on the queenside. But it has more benefits:

- It frees the a3-f8 diagonal for the bishop of c1. The black bishop of dark squares has gone, so now black is week on the dark squares, and in some lines the move Ba3 can be annoying for black. One good example is game Fischer-Larsen, candidate match 1971.

- It prevents the a4 square to be ocuppied by a black piece. This can happen in some lines, like 7.Cf3, Bd7 with the idea of Ba4 in some cases, or 7.Cf3, Qa5 putting pressure on the c3 pawn and with the possible idea of Nc6 and Qa4, putting pressure on d4, or maybe c4 (after Bd3 of white) and then Qa4 blocking the queenside for a very long while.

- It supports the move Bb5, which can be a useful move in the future.

Hope this helps :-)

Cheers.

Hi MyrddinEmrys.

It helped a lot. (I assumed that development of the Knights and Bishop were the first principle.) But I can see the logic behind the "strange" move now.

Just to generalize this a bit. Developing Knights and Bishops is only principled if they take a proper plan into action. The "strange" move isn't strange at all if you take a good look at it: black has just weakened his dark squares, so it would only be natural to place a beastly bishop on a3 somehow which eyes many of the meaty dark squares in black's camp.