Why would anyone play the French defense?

I’ve been playing the French for 20 years. When I started I was a USCF C Class player. I’ve been USCF A Class since just before I turned 50. I’m in my 60s.

I’ve beaten quite a few titled players with the French. Of course, I’ve lost many games with it as well.

Robert made the comment that when he started playing the French he won with black like no other opening.

He also said when a French defense goes bad, "You don't want to be there."

French is a good defensive opening with counter attack possibilities. If you want a quick and relatively even position against 3.Nc3 or 3.Nd2 you exchange pawns and go for Fort Knox with Bd7 Bc6 Nbd7..If 3.e5 you make 3.-c5 and later 5.-Bd7 and the bishop is active. The results with the French are as good as with the Sicilian.

Just remember that if you play french, u will have to be prepared to see some low accuracy games in the winawer and advance

Every database I have ever checked shows that no opening is as good as sicilian against 1 e4 . After sicilian the databases pretty much all show that the next best is among 1...e5 , french , and carokann ........ not necessarily in that order .......

there are games black likes in it. 🤷‍♂️ white, against the prepared french player, best case is pretty meh.

sometimes that's the recipe you need, sometimes it is not an aggressive enough play for the win. it depends on what kind of match you are in.

the stuff you must learn for it, is generally less than other options, and more of it will be good to know regardless. so it's kind of time well spent, if you like the resulting games enough. some other openings demand a lot more theory and a lot of it feels pretty specialized and arbitrary.

third, it's good if you can play the french because then you can 1. e3 against some players, transpose to french in other cases or stress your opponent to avoid letting you do so, and require your 1. e4 opponents to learn a bunch of french or give up their openings. so it's good if you are a threat to play the french. it can chip away at your opponent when you play something else.

All black defences are hard. French is stallet and slow. Not bad.

French has countertack chance

I’ve won thousands of games with the French.

anish giri is my favorite and soo is his favorite opening is my favorite opening too

If they're like me , they use the 1.e6 of the French against 1.d4 known as the Horwitz Defence and then their opponent transposes into a French after 2.e4 after which they try to leave the French by means of 2.c5 transposing to a Franco-Sicilian Defence and eventually either to a Franco-Benoni Defence or to some other Horwitz Defence line or some other random Queens Pawn line .

I always play the French because it's easy and puts a decent amount of pressure on your opponent. most of my opponents always blunder a center pawn or something and the people at the lower levels would blunder more. even if they don't blunder you still have decent ideas and a safe king.

Nf3. period.

I got dat taimanov prep and dat kan prep

to play french d efense you need to resign after first move.

Call 1. e6 2. d5 the french attack at that point.

the counterplay you get in the french as black is amazing, its incredibly straitforward and you can often with the 2 central white pawns

it effing drives me nuts! I hate it!

In a topic with this many responses, doubtless it's all been said already, but I'll put in my two cents anyway.

The thing is that every black defense to 1. e4 involves compromise and concessions to White. It doesn't matter if you play 1...e5 or 1...c5 or whatever. If White plays to apply maximum pressure you're likely going to end up doing things you'd rather not or end up in structures you'd rather not. Maybe you'll end up with a half center, or a small center, or a weak d-pawn, or having to lock in your KB with d6. Or maybe (in the Sicilian) you'll lock in your QB w/ e6 anyway... There's no free lunch.

The thing with French players is they understand Black has to make concessions and they've decided on making those concessions on their own terms. They'll do it in a way where they know all about the positions they're getting into. They know the French's strengths and its weaknesses and they've seen games where the QB zig-zags its way to freedom on the kingside and where the king walks its way to safety on the queenside. They're betting they'll beat you with familiarity and with knowledge of how to maximize the defense's strengths and how to mitigate its weaknesses.