French (Opening) Players

Play an open position and watch French opening players wither and contort.

They hate open positions, they want a long pawn chain in the center, they want the player with white pieces to submit, I say no!!! No submission anymore.

The best anti-french opening is to turn the position into an open one and make the french players suffer.

Suffer french openers!! suffer!!! you are not a real chess player and suffer

Clearly you don't know French players.

Any French player that says they hate the Exchange Variation is a complete fake!

The Exchange French, which avoids the closed, blocked position, is the easiest line to play as Black. All it takes to master the Black side of the Exchange French are very basic defensive moves and strong knowledge of minor piece endings.

I myself have switched to the Petroff, but the Petroff can actually transpose to the Exchange French (1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nf6 3.Nxe5 d6 4.Nf3 Nxe4 5.d3 Nf6 6.d4 d5 - this is a direct transposition to the Exchange French - 5.d4 and 5.Nc3 are stronger).

So don't just think that French fanatics love blocked positions. The Advance and 3.Nc3 are far harder to defend than the Exchange or Open Tarrasch (3...c5).

So don't just assume French players hate Open positions.

French opening is on par with the scandinavian opening and its an inferior opening all together. And French opening players are inferior chess players.

It can be proved through the games of any player who mainly plays French.

Now that's a bunch of BS and you are just some meaningless 1500 player running your mouth.

In the most recent World Championship match, the French was played 3 times. Two were draws, and BLACK won the other one (Round 1).

Every opening goes through trends. A lot depends on what the top players play.

The French was all the rage in the 50s and 60s with Bronstein, Botvinnik, Uhlmann, and Petrosian playing it religiously then.

The 70s and early 80s it was the Caro-Kann with it being Botvinnik's main opening in his older years along with Karpov.

Then the mid-80s to 2000, it was the Najdorf.

Then in the 2000s, the rage was the Berlin.

The 2010s, it was the Sveshnikov Sicilian

None of these openings are Subpar and in line with the Scandinavian. 1...e5, 1...e6, 1...c5, and 1...c6 are equally sound and each of them go through waves of being popular. The other 16 responses to 1.e4 are all weaker by varying degrees, like 1...f5 is clearly worse than 1...d6.

But for a 1500 to spew the complete bull that you spew just tells me that you hate facing the French and don't know what to do against it, just like Fischer, who made dumb comments about the French when his worst record as White was against the French. You sound just as clueless as Fischer! Go climb a tree!

I say you got some nerve telling me to climb a tree! Fischer hated it because he knew to play the mainline he will have to follow black's lead which he didn't want to do.

If white agrees to surrender and follow black's lead in the beginning then French ends up in a normal game, but white has to surrender first , which to me doesn't make much sense.

Now go break a leg!

Anybody that is so naive that they say the French is in-line with the Scandinavian from the perspective of soundness can go climb a tree!

I'd say trying to open the game would likely work against inexperienced French players who have only studied the closed lines. They might not have looked at the Exchange and might feel dismayed that the game isn't following the variations that they've studied.

But experienced French players would know that the Exchange just resolves their opening difficulties right away. "Thanks for making things easy!" they'd say.

If you truly want to try to punish Black for playing the French, take the extra space and try to prove White's advantage. This doesn't mean you'll succeed - but it's a more ambitious try than the Exchange.

Crash ahead and embrace the trench warfare, and see who comes out on top!

I like the way you talk, unfortunately lots of theory around fighting the good fight with the french. I myself find the exchange very boring but I acknowledge it is the only valid rebel against the French in mainline.

I am also trying out 2. c4 which I also play against the caro kann (a distorted cousin of french i must say) with some success.

If you're gonna cede equality in the french there are many alternatives to the exchange - KID, chigorin, steiner variation, horwitz attack, la bourdonnais variation - all these are alot less common and more interesting than the exchange. Though I don't dislike the monte-carlo.

But still Nc3 remains my go-to line for a reason - I find white just always gets good pressure in this line... my recommendation would be to just learn the theory. Not usually a thing I'd recommend but with the french... you have to just accept it.
But don't play into the winawer, avoid that one.

That makes the french annoying for white... it's an argument against your point, not for it.

Fischer was an egomaniac, alot of his comments can be accurately interpreted in that light. He also played the game a long time ago... before engines existed. Chess has changed alot. Yes he was good but I don't take his comments very seriously.

I take nothing Fischer said seriously. He was a freaking maniac.

Paraphrasing: "I may yet be forced to admit that the Winawer is sound, but I doubt it! It is anti-positional and weakens the Kingside."

And yet, still to this day, my favorite game? Fischer - Uhlmann, Buenos Aires 1960.

Guess what the opening was? French Winawer

Guess who won? BLACK!

That move 30...e3+! was just absolutely NASTY, which can only be truly understood by looking at all of White's possible responses and only then seeing how strong that move is compared to the simple recapture on h1.

Fischer sucked. He could only beat Spassky in a private room, not on stage. Sparky would have won if they made Fischer do like everyone else and not give him those special conditions. Would likely have been like 1975 and 1975 would have been a real match between Spassky and Karpov.

Some French girl broke your heart?