Masters of the French Defense?

It is said that the best way to study an opening is by going through the games of grandmasters who play it.

Can you tell me grandmasters who used 1...e6 as their main reply to the king pawn opening?

Thnaks

Viktor Korchnoi

Igor Glek

Nigel Short

Mikhail Botvinnik

Note that for many GMs, the same opening is not used exclusively throughout their lifetime, even as their "main weapon".

Take Kasparov vs 1.d4.  In the 80s, before he became World Champion, he favored the Modern Benoni.  Mid 80s thru Mid 90s, it was the King's Indian Defense.  Mid 90s thru the start of the 2000 match, Grunfeld.  After Kramnik shalacked his Grunfeld, he never really had 1 defense he stuck to.  He played QGA's, Slavs, just about anything you can think of.

So if you look at the players above, and it seems like they aren't playing the French, look at a different time period in their career, like I know Botvinnik had a long stint with the Caro-Kann at one point in his lifetime.

Life Long French GMs?  There aren't many.  Not even sure if Wolfgang Uhlmann played it for his entire lifetime!

Also, your statement about studying GM games is on the assumption that they are annotated.  If all you are doing is running thru database games with no annotations, you won't get far.

Also, better to study on an actual board rather than on a computer.  Being forced to move the pieces actually does more for you than clicking a mouse, especially when you go through a side variation and you have to go thru the moves again to get back to the position you were at.  Drills the lines into your head doing it that way.

I believe Uhlmann played only the french defense for his entire career and there is likley noone else who has greater experience with it . Petrosian also used it frequently but not as much as Uhlmann . 

Funny thing is, first opening book I ever read, and the fourth overall chess book I ever read, was "Winning With The French" by Wolfgang Uhlmann back in the mid-90s.

Ten years I played that opening, and pretty much won't go back except via Transposition from the Veresov, which I can then force a MacCutcheon and avoid lines like the Advance Variation or the Steinitz Variation, two lines that I think heavily favor White, and hence why I've said in many other posts that White's only two good options are 3.e5 and 3.Nc3 (answering 3...Nf6 with 4.e5!, and the main lines in the Winawer I think are dubious for Black).

Even if they are not annotated, I can analize them myself and recognise middlegame patterns, let alone memorise the main moves

Morozevich

That won't cut it.  It's not about memorizing main moves.  So what if you can reel off the sequence 1.e4 e6 2.d4 d5 3.Nd2 Nf6 4.e5 Nfd7 5.Bd3 c5 6.c3 Nc6 7.Ne2 Qb6 8.Nf3 cxd4 9.cxd4 f6 10.exf6 Nxf6 11.O-O Bd6 (or 7...cxd4 8.cxd4 f6 9.exf6 Nxf6 10.O-O Bd6 11.Nf3 and now 11...Qb6 or else 11...Qc7 or 11...O-O).  That won't cut it.

White plays 5.f4, now what?

White plays 7.Ngf3, now what?

In the line with 7...cxd4, White plays 9.Nf4, now what?

In the line with 7...Qb6, White plays 10.Nc3, now what?

All of those are fairly common side variations.  This doesn't even account for when White does something stupid.

You need to understand, not memorize.  If you want to be any good, you need something that has annotations by someone far stronger than yourself!

That's how I've figured out which openings I have no business playing.  I can memorize any main stream opening or defense.  But if memorizing is all I can do and not truly understand it, and know what to do when the opponent deviates, then it's not an intelligent idea to play it.

I "understand" the Old Indian, King's Indian, and QGD.

I can "memorize", but still don't "get it", when it comes to the Grunfeld and Nimzo-Indian.

There are lines of the Grunfeld or Nimzo-Indian that I could regurgitate 15 to 20 moves deep.  Still doesn't mean I understand it!

So again, the ability to memorize main moves and not actually understand it is going to do nothing more than take you one step forward and two steps back!

I can understand, and I will understand more and more when I have looked at more games.

You are being somewhat despective

Not "somewhat". This bozo is always despective. 

Uhlmann!

Morozevich has played it and has developed some innovative ideas.

Alexander Morozevich, Ding Liren, Wesley So and Hikaru Nakamura frequently play it. Other strong players to follow are the German Grandmaster Matthias Bluebaum and the French GM Fabien Libiszewski.

Source here (and pretty good French Defense resource in general)

Paul Morphy Varuzhan Akobian

still getting suggestions to material almost 5 years after the question asked its a very helpful forum we have xD

Maroczy, Botvinnik, Petrosian, Korchnoi, and Uhlmann all were good French players.

I'm not aware of a single recorded instance of Morphy playing the French as Black.

He is known to have played the French only once, against James McConnell in 1850. The way his play focused on attacking the base of White's pawn chain makes one wonder if the 13 year old Morphy somehow got ahold of an advance copy of "My System".

http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1340106

absolutely stunning play by Morphy!  It's depressing.

botvinnik would be an excellent choice.

http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1340106

One of the comments on this game was pretty funny.  It suggests that playing an unfamiliar opening Morphy becomes confused and checkmates white's queen instead of his king.