French repertoire advice

Thanks everyone 

I forgot about a very good book. Try getting a copy of winning with the French or the French Defense Properly Played. A long time French Defense player, who played nothing but the French for his whole life, Wolfgang Uhlmann, wrote it, and it really helped. He suggests the main lines of the Winawer, the Closed Tarrasch, a Bd6 Nc6 Ne7 set-up against the Exchange, and the main lines against the Advance. He provides a collection of his own games, all deeply annotated, and against good opponents. There are two games where fischer is featured. 

A few examples of his games. 

Actually, Mr_Winawer, he does not recommend the Closed Tarrasch in his original work, Winning With the French, that originally had 60 games.  I cannot speak for what his updated book has in terms of the 16 new games, but in the original work, he covers 19 games of the Tarrasch.  Only in the first 4 does he play 3...Nf6, and the first one has a line that is now dubious, giving the check with the Bishop on b4.

The vast majority of the Tarrasch (Games 5-19 in the original work) he gives and recommends 3...c5.

Then the second chapter is all Winawer.

The only real downside to that book is he gives other critical lines the cold shoulder.  In the original work, out of 60 games, only 5 featured the Advance, and another 4 the King's Indian Attack.  He probably could have avoided the 4 Closed Winawer games, especially the first one, which I assume was more for show than anything else.  It is full of mistakes, and just sees White fall into a cool mate where all of his own pieces block his own King from escaping I believe the e3-square if I remember right.  Use that space for additional games in the Advance or KIA.

if those games are any indication, those books must be fascinating. I can’t find the books at a decent price on Amazon right now, but I will keep a lookout. Those games were eye-openers. 

Have you seen the French repertoire video course on the GingerGM website? It looks interesting. They also have an interesting one on the Caro-Kann. I may commit the ultimate heresy and get both.

Thank you for posting.