is the french practical? how can i play it without not much theory?

recently i have been looking more into the better dutch setups transposing into a stonewall with black with 1.e6 rather than Nf6 due to the annoying Bg5 move white has in a normal dutch. i have found out however that if they instead play e4 it becomes a french or a sicillian and cause i dont like the sicillian that much, i have to understand the french a bit better so any advice?

i have looked at the winawer and think while its pretty complicated, the middlegame and opening phase looks more relatively easier for black to play once its closed. is there any other light moves for black if they dont go into the advanced? i know rubenstein is one but unsure

Also yes i know the french is garbage but if your good you can make it seem less crappy

Who said French is garbage?

the french is seen as a bad opening to some regard in contrast to the caro due to the bad bishop affecting blacks plan and long term goal. for caro players, the approach is much more chill and straightforward than it is for black as now they will have to attack and go for complications. I tried to say the S word but gave me warning so basically the elite have made fun of it for being in the trope of being bad that its "good" with anish calling it massive garbage

"its a S*** opening but i have done so much work to make it kind of basically correct"

I personally don’t like it because of 3. Nd2 and 3. Nc3

I just realized your rating, lol. Yeah man you probably have better options by that point but French should be playable for many of us patzers for a long time.

i prefer these variations tbh cause they seem more easy, doesn't it just transpose when exchanging pawns and treating it like a caro?

In the French, white doesnt need the D4 pawn. As long as it keeps the E5 pawn, it cramps blacks position and is so easy for white to play

yeah... no problem just getting annoyed of playing against d4 nowadays and was looking into the good dutch setups but found out they can make it transpose into french which is trickier. so basically to make the dutch work, i also have to understand the french if they want to go into it which makes it more of a flexible but annoying option for black if they do so gotta study it a bit

theres many chessable courses on the french. 2 LTR's I think (1 from Giri) and a couple other ones. From what I have seen, you only need to memorize like 400 lines

i have seen positions where black trades the dark square bishop for whites, kings on f8 being defensive or simply black barricades with g6 and goes into the attack with no problem. i have played against qg4 OTB sometimes when i rarely play the french and was kinda struggling but mostly cause i didnt understand what to do as black cause i am more of a caro player basically

yeah, i am mostly gonna work on 4 variations winawer, exchange lines, side lines, & rubenstein

I don’t see what’s wrong with the caro tbh

Wow that's an amazing blitz rating for a 17 year old if legit, you probably know more already than the vast majority of the people posting here. I would recommend chesspub for a higher standard of discussion.

I agree that the French is the s-word. I would guess that like the dragon people just learn so much theory and do so much computer analysis with it these days that end up making it work by brute force, so that wouldn't bode well for your idea of getting through it with only a little theory.

no its not about the caro, its about playing the french if they instead dont choose to play into the e6 dutch setups and instead do e4 forcing the french to be played instead WHICH is why i gotta like study it

thanks appreciate the compliment and yeah agree its very annoying to deal with but unfortunately i will have to play into it if they choose to transpose to a french

I don't know this from experience but I hear its a very theoretical opening and you have to learn tons of theory. There are probably lots of openings like that though. It does morph into several other openings too.
Before I started trying to get better I used to beat it a ton at lower levels but now I'm getting around 1400 it can get more difficult to play against. I don't like it cause it calls for lots of closed positions.

Nimzo considered the French almost refuted

according to stockfish french is very good

in the French against Tarrasch or Nc3 you can just play dxe4 and then Nf6. And as for the advance just play c5-Qb6-Nc6-Bd7. you should be getting a really playable position without a lot of theory. And as for the exchange you have to just be good at chess lol