French...2. c3 or 2. f6

 Recently I've been playing 1. e4 e6 as black where white usually plays d4. Beyond that I do know some theory. However, I am unsure of what to play if white develops a knight on either c3 or f6 or what the name of that opening would be?

Does anyone have any input I can't seem to find any high level games like this and my chess engines suggest totally diferent responses so I am guessing it's a mater of personal taste a bit.

I'm not a grandmaster or anything but I've been playing the french for most of my chess career and 2...d5 seems to be the correct response to almost any 2nd move white plays. The game may still transpose to a standard french defense opening later and it still follows general opening principles. ie have some control in the centre early and it still allows further development of your pieces.

For actual grandmaster games its best to refer to the many opening books you can pick up 2nd hand for a reasonable price. In my opinion anything but placing the 2nd central pawn forward is handing a comfortable game to black. Queen's pawn opening players will probably disagree but I had good results against those that didn't.

I actually played 1...e6 to just about any opening e4 d4 c4 in my early chess playing and it nearly always transposed to a french later in the game or a line of the queens gambit or torre attack that i was at least familiar with.

Good luck with the french, it's a cracking opening.

Yeah I throw the French in every now and then. I always root for the advance variations. Grumpy's right, just respond d5 with just about any second move of white and you should be fine, haha though 2. b4 might be an exception.

mmm okay thanks guys, that's actually what I have been doing and it seemed to work well...even if white doesn't play an immediate d5 white will probably play it after a knight move so its somewhat the same I guess

I think when they play Nf3 they are probably trying to use the King's Indian Attack (KIA) as an anti-French. I do not play it often and do not know it very well, so if you can only feel comfortable with theory, then look it up.

Feldmm1 wrote:

I think when they play Nf3 they are probably trying to use the King's Indian Attack (KIA) as an anti-French. I do not play it often and do not know it very well, so if you can only feel comfortable with theory, then look it up.

KIA move order is 2.d3. White needs to play this followed by Nd2 after ...d5 to avoid the exchange of queens. As much as i dont like the KIA, it works best against the French. e5,d5,c5 set up is probably most prefered among top players but French leads to e6,d5,c5.

As Black you can cut down alot of opening work by playing the Rubenstein variation against 3.Nc3 and 3.Nd2. KillaBeez has some new findings in this line thats worth checking out. If you play this, then all you need to learn is the Advance variation and the exchange variation and some (few) other sidelines.