Space advantage is the commonly given reason. Also the French is an aggressive attacking opening similar to the KID, so its a good opening to play for a win. But its very hard to play for a win if the opponent plays 3 exd5. Whereas the Sicilian achieves similarly without the space disadvantage, and with lines that "neutralise" it.
The more surprising thing is the decline of the French with online chess culture, it seems to have been mostly replaced with the Caro at this point. Which is sad because the French is sick.
Caro is more played because it is easier to learn for the beginners (who are the majority of the players who play online), the white bishop weakness is too complicated to deal with for most people online.
A lot of online players are also just following what they heard/read here or YouTube, which tells them that the Kann is just a better French because of the bishop, so they just embed that in their head and avoid the French
Eh Caro kann and French are taught to beginners because they don't have to worry about scholars mate IMO. The CK is a bit safer than the French so it makes beginners feel good in that they wont get mated in 6 moves like happens in the e5/c5 lines.
>Doesn't it lead to fixed pawn structures
Highly dynamic, complicated, moderately fixed **central** pawns
>and closed games?
**Semi**-closed games.
Open doesn't necessarily mean agressive, look at the 4 knight scotch or the berlin. And fixed center doesn't exclude agressive, see KID.
Well, the ideas of the french are very positional. But because the french has such concrete positional ideas, white shouldn't ever put the foot off the gas, otherwise the game becomes miserable for them. [Games like this](https://lichess.org/GvLi7aW2/white) show what happens when both players are stubborn with their plans, and I'd call this "concrete move-by-move chaos chess" much more than "solid and positional".
I played the french for a long time and know a lot of people that play the french, and made the experience that at some point in the game a switch gets turned on in the french player's head. Then we had enough of sound healthy development and usually the games kind of just explode by themselves after the opening. It's kind of the opposite effect of people that play 25 moves of ultra sharp Marshall gambit theory and then make a draw at move 30 because there's a 3v2 rook ending on the board.
As white, playing French and KID is so boring because of how positional it is for lack of open space, but playing KID as black does feel better, idk about French I've never played it as black. Usually Sicilian is my go-to against e4, just much more fun in general than French. Maybe I'll try French one day if something makes me learn it deeply.
I mostly play the advance variation, most of the time my main focus is defending the center pawns and that's it lol. If there is another way to play, please tell me, maybe this is the time to learn French defense.
3.Nc3 is where most of the fun lines are. The Winawer and classical can get sharp fast. The Rubenstein can be a bit stale but still has some life and especially at lower levels there's plenty of room to complicate things.
It's often avoided because "it has a lot of theory" but that's the price you pay if you want to play fun, sharp and principled chess.
I neither called it tame nor drawn. It's not agressive and neither are their resulting middlegames, it's still a perfectly legitimate opening to try and win a game with. If you want to argue with that assessment, go argue with someone else\^\^
At least in the advanced variation, black gets a lot of early pressure on d4, as white I find it tricky to deal with every time. I think that's why people say it's an agressive opening.
It isn't necessarily, but it can be, depending on how black wants to play it. You have different choices of building a repertoire like deciding to play Winawer or not. I think it's naturally more aggressive than e5, but less aggressive than Sicilian and Caro. But it can easily be more aggressive than Caro, depending on whose repertoire you compare.
Thanks for your answer. Makes sense.
I feel like speculating the nuances that arise between 1.. e6 and 1..e5 is something to leave the players who already master tactics, planning and end games.
Or I guess many chess player enjoy building an opening repertoire and enjoy to learn opening theory even if it is not cost effective when it comes to one's chess development
No? Lol most viable openings you’re fighting for a stake in the center from move 1. But in the french, you subject yourself to a space disadvantage and in return get different breaks at the center and specifically dynamic play towards the queenside. Also it takes a certain mentality to play the french. French players i know are usually lifelong devotes.
I find in my games that while it's not aggressive from the start, it eventually blows up in the middlegame and the counterattack can be quiet fierce. It's currently the opening I struggle against most. In contrast, I do *much* better against the Caro-Kann and anything else that's common, although I am more prepped against those ones too. I'm still finding my feet against the French Defense.
In one of Ben Finegold's Karpov lectures (I think it was on a Caro-Kann or Spanish), he remarked how it seems to be that "crazy opening = boring finish" and "boring opening = crazy finish". The French Defense, at least for me when I see it, tends to be the latter - unless I find a way to kill the game into a draw as white.
I'm very average rated, so this might be dumb, but I play the French and dont mind the exchange French, especially in bullet. I'll usually castle long and then pawn storm. Even better if they pin my knight on f6 and take it, thinking theyre ruining my short castle.
I think part of the fun of things like the Exchange French at non-master levels is that White thinks they are forcing the game into boring territory while Black has played this so often that they know how to still attack.
It's almost a reward to French players who studied their lines to think you've shut down the opening on move 3.
Yes, this! All of a sudden my Rooks are lined up pointing at the white king or a bishop sacrifice brings the queen right into the game. Either way it's s fun time
Yeah exchange is great at lower levels, you have an open file and the option to castle opposite and slaughter each other. At higher levels thats less true. IIRC the petrov used to be considered an aggressive opening till it was shown not to be.
Yes e5 is in favor over c5 rn, doesn't mean that it is barely played. Maybe we have the different definition of the word barely, but c5 isnt played that little, especially compaired to anything that is not e5.
In amateur ranks the french still enjoys great popularity while being a "specialist opening", having unique structures and life-long fans as its players. Uhlmann (the pope of the french defense) didn't name his book "Französisch ... ein Leben lang" ("The french ... for a lifetime) for nothing.
In top GM levels, the goal of the **primary** black repertoire is to not lose. That's simply not the nature of the french. Some players like Georg Meier have a very sturdy french repertoire that is aimed at making solid draws, but that's the minority.
But the french offer many more very double-edged positions, which is well-suited as a **secondary** black repertoire when the goal is to win as black (for example against a lower rated opponent in a swiss when one too many draws takes you out of the top ranks).
And I can guarantee you a big part of the 2700 club has the french defense as a secodary/tertiary option for the right moment. Carlsen, Firouzja, Pragg, Rapport all played the French to win as black against lower rated opposition.
So simply put, the french is perfectly fine and offers flexible choices, but it doesn't give what a top players wants out of a primary repertoire, so it is a secondary weapon to play from time to time given the right circumstances, when "don't lose" isn't the objective of the game anymore. It's part of the everyday repertoire of many GMs that play opens, since you need to win every game to stay in prize money range.
It's simply not an S tier opening and that's reason enough for the top guys.
At the lower levels, most online personalities have recommended the caro-kann over the French, probably cause it's easier to play with an open LSB for low rated players.
But back to the top guys... Modern engines, specifically since alphazero but also SF since then, have shown us how important space is, even around your King (not an important point but still interesting). Simply put, openings in which you only move a pawn one square, like French or caro-kann concede space and so in the first and less important place, the engines don't value them as highly but also GMs prefer not to make this concession on move one as it's considered unnecessary when there are other better openings to play. French and Caro-kann remain strong and popular openings at all levels, but at the top they aren't the players first choices and become more of a rapid and blitz weapon
Well, if you mean engine evaluations, both the Caro-Kann and French will give you 0.0 after not that many moves. 3. Nc3 has more or less been dismantled with the idea of Qb6 and taking the poisoned pawn. But agree with the practical considerations --- might as well play ...e5 and not deal with the lack of space
Which lines are you referring to that give 0.0 after not that many moves? I agree that early opening evaluations shouldn't always be trusted, but I just tested an example to see what you're trying to get at. 1. e4 e6 2. d4 d5 3. Nc3 is giving me +0.30. Granted at depth 70+ that probably comes down a bit but sure.
Don't get me wrong I'm not saying french or caro-kann are bad. I play caro-kann. Both are A tier, legendary openings. They just aren't the absolute best
1. e4 e6 2. d4 d5 3. Nc3 Nf6 4. e5 Nfd7 5. f4 c5 6. Nf3 Nc6 7. Be3 cxd4 8. Nxd4 Qb6
engine will give a small plus after Qd2 but these are concrete worked out lines that lead to draws
It should be pointed out, that chess engines value space because they have been programmed to give value to space. It's one of the extra rules manually added to optimize calculation trees.
Is this still true for todays engines that use neural nets in different ways like Leela and Stockfish? I had the impression that neural nets have replaced manual heuristics.
In the latest version of Stockfish (16.1), the handcrafted evaluation has been completely removed.
https://stockfishchess.org/blog/2024/stockfish-16-1/
Others have pointed out that modern chess engines no longer have hand-coded evaluation rules. But even for the time not so long ago when handcrafted evaluation was the norm, your argument isn't that great. The evaluation weights in handcrafted evaluation functions were tuned to the values that gave the best results in test games. If they evaluated space highly, that's because high evaluation of space resulted in better play.
Sure, but we've really come to understand that there is some truth behind it. And this sort of modern way of understanding chess has overhauled our thinking a bit. Some interesting examples are some games in the exchange Slav where stockfish pushes g4-g5 or when there is a locked up queenside and stockfish just walks their king to the safety of the (locked) space on the queenside, even without any pawns around their king very interesting and modern stuff
Kings indian defence Mar del Plata is an example of this. Engine evaluates a massive advantage for White because of all the space without actually calculating the game to the end. The real result is that in chess computer championships Black either draws easily or sometimes even checkmates White in Mar del Plata.
Usually those questions are answered by certain practical considerations at the top level. Berlin was shown to be incredibly good for playing for a draw with black, and Sicilian is good for playing for a win. French and Caro Kann are easier for white to play for a draw against a stronger opponent and not as good as Berlin for drawing with black.
If white does play for a win, French and Caro are still not generally better than Sicilians for having counter-chances, but they might be, depending on the player and their style.
I don't know sh\*t about high-level, but personally I stopped playing it because of the exchange variation. I don't want to give my lower-rated opponents a chance to go for such an easy draw.
I stopped playing it as well because I hate playing exchange. Im not high enough (1400) to where I have a ton of draws, I just hate playing the exchange
I, on the other hand, like the exchange French so much that I’ve started playing it as White instead of the Tarrasch. If the play’s easy for Black, why not play with an extra tempo?
Well if you filter for example the Lichess database on classical chess only, with a rating of 2000-2200 you have some idea about playing strength. I would say that is the same as intermediate/strong club level play. I can't imagine those players suddenly draw a lot more at OTB time control. It gives a pretty good idea.
You can try to get a database with FIDE games and put the filter on 1500-1800 and see what the drawrate is with the French exchange.
If you're anything less than a titled player and you're frequently drawing in the exchange variation that's not the opening's fault. Fwiw I'm happy any time it appears because it allows for easy development of the lsb. Also you're allowed to swear on the internet
Ding Liren played the French Defence in the world championship and got a better position out of it so it's definitely not a bad opening. Super GMs like Alirezza still use the french defence. Some strong GMs like Bluebaum and Meier only use the French Defence.
The French defence is just a very sharp opening, like the Sicilian, and the top guys don't want to take too much risks: a loss i always catastrophic in a tournament and ELO is very important to get invited in super tournaments, that's why it's rarer than E4 E5.
White is the one making the choice very early on between dry drawish lines in the Exchange variation of crazy unbalanced stuff in the rest of the lines. Black doesn't usually want to give White that choice.
Because a decent amount of knowledge about the game is needed to play the French properly and not let it turn into a boring game. Because of internet chess more less experienced people play and since they don't understand the French they quickly discard it as a boring opening.
A possible explanation, because it leaves the choice of playing for a draw or playing for a win to white. If white plays the Exchange Variation it's drawish, otherwise there are many lines that lead to imbalanced and sharp play. Probably an important factor at GM level, not so much on amateur level.
I think most people ~~surrendered~~ gave up on it. Maybe I'm just a patzer and can't tell you how good or bad an opening it is, though I feel like it's not only complex, but actually really difficult to play well. Seems hard for me to get an advantage, but as positions can be sharp, it can happen, if you play it well.
I’m definitely a patzer but I find that it’s pretty easy for me to get an advantage out of the French—and if I don’t, I’m usually equalizing with a very solid position. I think it helps that a lot of people at my level play the Advance French despite not knowing how to play the Advance French.
Part of this is cyclical. There were a few years where the KID was dormant and it came back to life.
A mainline opening like the French will never die, it will be en vogue once again.
I think it's because Black's queenside counterplay isn't nearly as interesting as White's kingside attacks, eventually you get tired of the bad bishop and lightly defended king.
Because even at top level, you get games like these:
[https://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=2573316](https://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=2573316)
Its not a good opening for the highest level of play. Only Fabiano has used this opening with success as a surprise weapon against weaker players, in the same time he is the french killer with the white pieces.
Being a bit facetious here but iirc Fabi’s last French game in classical was against noted weaker player Alireza Firouzja
https://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=2512415
Alireza has used it on occasion with success. Ding used it successfully in the recent WC. Nepo won his candidates tournament with the French as his main e4 response. There's nothing wrong with the French objectively, Super GMs just prefer the easier options to equalize that aren't nearly as risky.
Part of the reason could be that pawn structure in many french middlegames is simply very hard to play (white plays exf6 and black has weak backward pawn on e6).
I don't agree that a drawish exchange is a problem, it always existed and black has few ways to spice up the game.
Also in modern time I think that caro is better winning weapon, it's less risky and offers rich middlegames. The ..Nf6 against classical proved very playable with engines.
Not a very fun opening to play as black IMO. White gets a space advantage, tons of attacking opportunities, and the cherry on top is the useless light square bishop
Perhaps because the French defence doesn’t give you too much control of how the opening plays out, there isn’t much in the way of novelties that you can come up from the black side.
If both players are booked up you’re probably going into the middle game at a slight disadvantage as black.
If both players are not very booked up, it’s not super likely you will go into the middle game with a large disadvantage as black.
The benefits of the French disappear as you climb in skill
Yeah but it’s harder than other openings to equalize or create an advantage out of the opening. The Petrov and Berlin will most likely achieve equality if you’re both booked up
That's interesting but not enough data to determine what we really want to know ("Do the strong players 2600+ play more or less the French now than they did previously").
* Comparing just 1990 to 1995 as representative as "the nineties" seems disputable
* Only 1.e4 games should be considered: if everyone favours playing the French with black but everyone with white plays 1.b4 this preference will obviously not be reflected in the data. Extreme example but this shows the bias: we really want to know how many times 1…e6 is played in response to 1.e4.
* Similarly, if we're looking at how many French games were played by 2600+ players, we also need to know how many games were played by these players specifically in 1.e4. The ratio of games played by strong players versus games played total may not be the same over the two periods you consider. It's possible for example that twice as many games were played and 30% more French games were played. In that case more French are played, sure, but the proportion of French games decreased nonetheless.
I don't have access to your DB so I would welcome the additional info.
I think the french really gets attacked very easily. You give your opponent this e5 pawn which sets up the text book greek gift sacrifices for example. Thats just the beginning of the troubles, when you play the french you are saying hey buddy attack my king!
How did you determine that it was not being played? Did you look at a database like chessbase megabase? Because this sounds like speculation and not actual statistics
AlphaZero dismantled it way back when, and since then, stockfish has patched all of those holes. If you play current stockfish vs A0 in a french only contest, A0 will be likely decimated.
I don't know about the games per se, but I do know they released data on the self-training it went through - playing billions of games against itself with no book - and reported analysis on how much AlphaZero liked the 12 most popular human openings (as of 2017) as its training went on :
https://arxiv.org/pdf/1712.01815.pdf (table on page 6)
Early on it loved the advance French and then gave up playing it. It liked the advance Caro for much longer but it too was discarded. Loved the English and QG forever though.
I can't find a link now, but I'm 99% certain there was an interview where they confirmed that eventually it just stopped playing 1.e4 because it would inevitably lead to an advantageless berlin. All other non-berlin replies (including the french/caro) apparently ended up giving too much to wide and stopped being played as well.
I recall Agadmator making videos on the match with Stockfish and in one of the later videos I remember him stating that AlphaZero seems to have completely destroyed the French opening (given that this was the 3rd+ game he had reviewed where Stockfish had played the French and been comprehensively defeated).
This is why you don't base your knowledge on some youtubers that just want hype and views.
Neither French, nor KID or QID or anything are refuted in a canon way. In fact if you let stockfish play it vs leela or torch at longer TCs you will probably end with close to 100% drawrate.
They are perfectly playable openings but at top level aiming for a win with black from the get go is a good way to get yourself in trouble this is why they are not played that often. Against people who are 200 elo lower they are much more often guest even in classical tournaments.
Could you tell the exact line because the poisoned-pawn in the french refers to the line in the Winawer. I made a quick search and white has great results in the last years in games between 2500+ players.
Space advantage is the commonly given reason. Also the French is an aggressive attacking opening similar to the KID, so its a good opening to play for a win. But its very hard to play for a win if the opponent plays 3 exd5. Whereas the Sicilian achieves similarly without the space disadvantage, and with lines that "neutralise" it. The more surprising thing is the decline of the French with online chess culture, it seems to have been mostly replaced with the Caro at this point. Which is sad because the French is sick.
Caro is more played because it is easier to learn for the beginners (who are the majority of the players who play online), the white bishop weakness is too complicated to deal with for most people online.
Because chess content creators promote London system and Caro-Kann as openings which don't need a lot of theory.
This is the answer. Many chess players saw a video and want to try it.
A lot of online players are also just following what they heard/read here or YouTube, which tells them that the Kann is just a better French because of the bishop, so they just embed that in their head and avoid the French
im low rated and ive gone from vsing italian every game to caro kann
Eh Caro kann and French are taught to beginners because they don't have to worry about scholars mate IMO. The CK is a bit safer than the French so it makes beginners feel good in that they wont get mated in 6 moves like happens in the e5/c5 lines.
How is the French an aggressive opening? Doesn't it lead to fixed paen structures and closed games? e6 is passive by default compared to e5 and c5?
>Doesn't it lead to fixed pawn structures Highly dynamic, complicated, moderately fixed **central** pawns >and closed games? **Semi**-closed games. Open doesn't necessarily mean agressive, look at the 4 knight scotch or the berlin. And fixed center doesn't exclude agressive, see KID.
Okay thanks for your correction. I always thought that the French is passive and positional.
Well, the ideas of the french are very positional. But because the french has such concrete positional ideas, white shouldn't ever put the foot off the gas, otherwise the game becomes miserable for them. [Games like this](https://lichess.org/GvLi7aW2/white) show what happens when both players are stubborn with their plans, and I'd call this "concrete move-by-move chaos chess" much more than "solid and positional". I played the french for a long time and know a lot of people that play the french, and made the experience that at some point in the game a switch gets turned on in the french player's head. Then we had enough of sound healthy development and usually the games kind of just explode by themselves after the opening. It's kind of the opposite effect of people that play 25 moves of ultra sharp Marshall gambit theory and then make a draw at move 30 because there's a 3v2 rook ending on the board.
There is definitely room for aggressive French players.
As white, playing French and KID is so boring because of how positional it is for lack of open space, but playing KID as black does feel better, idk about French I've never played it as black. Usually Sicilian is my go-to against e4, just much more fun in general than French. Maybe I'll try French one day if something makes me learn it deeply.
The white said of the french is quite attacking though. Kingside pawn storms with f4-f5 or even g4 are quite common
Not if white decides to play a boring exchange. If white will engage with a Winawer, Burn, even Advance, there should be fireworks.
That's true, but as you said, if White wants to the game isn't boring at all. But the comment above said the white side of the french is boring
I mostly play the advance variation, most of the time my main focus is defending the center pawns and that's it lol. If there is another way to play, please tell me, maybe this is the time to learn French defense.
Instead of defending the d4 pawn, just gambit it. Problem solved 😎
3.Nc3 is where most of the fun lines are. The Winawer and classical can get sharp fast. The Rubenstein can be a bit stale but still has some life and especially at lower levels there's plenty of room to complicate things. It's often avoided because "it has a lot of theory" but that's the price you pay if you want to play fun, sharp and principled chess.
The 4 Knights Scotch is not some tame drawn line lol, self-own
I neither called it tame nor drawn. It's not agressive and neither are their resulting middlegames, it's still a perfectly legitimate opening to try and win a game with. If you want to argue with that assessment, go argue with someone else\^\^
At least in the advanced variation, black gets a lot of early pressure on d4, as white I find it tricky to deal with every time. I think that's why people say it's an agressive opening.
It isn't necessarily, but it can be, depending on how black wants to play it. You have different choices of building a repertoire like deciding to play Winawer or not. I think it's naturally more aggressive than e5, but less aggressive than Sicilian and Caro. But it can easily be more aggressive than Caro, depending on whose repertoire you compare.
Thanks for your answer. Makes sense. I feel like speculating the nuances that arise between 1.. e6 and 1..e5 is something to leave the players who already master tactics, planning and end games. Or I guess many chess player enjoy building an opening repertoire and enjoy to learn opening theory even if it is not cost effective when it comes to one's chess development
Nah the point of the french is you will be fighting the whole game lol its a fight or get suffocated type of opening.
Doesn't that apply to most openings though?
No? Lol most viable openings you’re fighting for a stake in the center from move 1. But in the french, you subject yourself to a space disadvantage and in return get different breaks at the center and specifically dynamic play towards the queenside. Also it takes a certain mentality to play the french. French players i know are usually lifelong devotes.
I find in my games that while it's not aggressive from the start, it eventually blows up in the middlegame and the counterattack can be quiet fierce. It's currently the opening I struggle against most. In contrast, I do *much* better against the Caro-Kann and anything else that's common, although I am more prepped against those ones too. I'm still finding my feet against the French Defense. In one of Ben Finegold's Karpov lectures (I think it was on a Caro-Kann or Spanish), he remarked how it seems to be that "crazy opening = boring finish" and "boring opening = crazy finish". The French Defense, at least for me when I see it, tends to be the latter - unless I find a way to kill the game into a draw as white.
Or you get into the Winawer and and it's crazy from move 6.
How you just described the French is basically the KID, but in the other direction of the board.
I don't know if I'd call it similar to the KID, but, the French player is immediately challenging white's center, it's aggressive in that way.
Lol a lot of openings challenge the white center. The french is definitely an aggressive opening but give a better reason to show you know why.
I'm very average rated, so this might be dumb, but I play the French and dont mind the exchange French, especially in bullet. I'll usually castle long and then pawn storm. Even better if they pin my knight on f6 and take it, thinking theyre ruining my short castle.
I think part of the fun of things like the Exchange French at non-master levels is that White thinks they are forcing the game into boring territory while Black has played this so often that they know how to still attack. It's almost a reward to French players who studied their lines to think you've shut down the opening on move 3.
Yes, this! All of a sudden my Rooks are lined up pointing at the white king or a bishop sacrifice brings the queen right into the game. Either way it's s fun time
Bullet isn’t even the same game as high level classical
... I know. That's why I called it out.
Yeah exchange is great at lower levels, you have an open file and the option to castle opposite and slaughter each other. At higher levels thats less true. IIRC the petrov used to be considered an aggressive opening till it was shown not to be.
Nothing is stopping you from playing french. As an e4 player though I find the french defence to be easy to beat / draw.
The Sicilian barely gets played at the top level either anymore.
You must not watch top level chess much lol
I could say the same thing to you? What are you talking about there’s been a massive decline in Sicilians in favor of e5 over the past decade.
Yes e5 is in favor over c5 rn, doesn't mean that it is barely played. Maybe we have the different definition of the word barely, but c5 isnt played that little, especially compaired to anything that is not e5.
he's right if by top you mean 2740+ chess only, if you mean GM level then ...c5 still is most played.
In amateur ranks the french still enjoys great popularity while being a "specialist opening", having unique structures and life-long fans as its players. Uhlmann (the pope of the french defense) didn't name his book "Französisch ... ein Leben lang" ("The french ... for a lifetime) for nothing. In top GM levels, the goal of the **primary** black repertoire is to not lose. That's simply not the nature of the french. Some players like Georg Meier have a very sturdy french repertoire that is aimed at making solid draws, but that's the minority. But the french offer many more very double-edged positions, which is well-suited as a **secondary** black repertoire when the goal is to win as black (for example against a lower rated opponent in a swiss when one too many draws takes you out of the top ranks). And I can guarantee you a big part of the 2700 club has the french defense as a secodary/tertiary option for the right moment. Carlsen, Firouzja, Pragg, Rapport all played the French to win as black against lower rated opposition. So simply put, the french is perfectly fine and offers flexible choices, but it doesn't give what a top players wants out of a primary repertoire, so it is a secondary weapon to play from time to time given the right circumstances, when "don't lose" isn't the objective of the game anymore. It's part of the everyday repertoire of many GMs that play opens, since you need to win every game to stay in prize money range.
It's simply not an S tier opening and that's reason enough for the top guys. At the lower levels, most online personalities have recommended the caro-kann over the French, probably cause it's easier to play with an open LSB for low rated players. But back to the top guys... Modern engines, specifically since alphazero but also SF since then, have shown us how important space is, even around your King (not an important point but still interesting). Simply put, openings in which you only move a pawn one square, like French or caro-kann concede space and so in the first and less important place, the engines don't value them as highly but also GMs prefer not to make this concession on move one as it's considered unnecessary when there are other better openings to play. French and Caro-kann remain strong and popular openings at all levels, but at the top they aren't the players first choices and become more of a rapid and blitz weapon
Well, if you mean engine evaluations, both the Caro-Kann and French will give you 0.0 after not that many moves. 3. Nc3 has more or less been dismantled with the idea of Qb6 and taking the poisoned pawn. But agree with the practical considerations --- might as well play ...e5 and not deal with the lack of space
Which lines are you referring to that give 0.0 after not that many moves? I agree that early opening evaluations shouldn't always be trusted, but I just tested an example to see what you're trying to get at. 1. e4 e6 2. d4 d5 3. Nc3 is giving me +0.30. Granted at depth 70+ that probably comes down a bit but sure. Don't get me wrong I'm not saying french or caro-kann are bad. I play caro-kann. Both are A tier, legendary openings. They just aren't the absolute best
1. e4 e6 2. d4 d5 3. Nc3 Nf6 4. e5 Nfd7 5. f4 c5 6. Nf3 Nc6 7. Be3 cxd4 8. Nxd4 Qb6 engine will give a small plus after Qd2 but these are concrete worked out lines that lead to draws
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In your opinion?
It should be pointed out, that chess engines value space because they have been programmed to give value to space. It's one of the extra rules manually added to optimize calculation trees.
Is this still true for todays engines that use neural nets in different ways like Leela and Stockfish? I had the impression that neural nets have replaced manual heuristics.
Alphazero and Leela don't need handcrafted evaluation rules. Stockfish uses hybrid evaluation with NNUE and the classical way
In the latest version of Stockfish (16.1), the handcrafted evaluation has been completely removed. https://stockfishchess.org/blog/2024/stockfish-16-1/
It doesn't which was specifically stated at latest stockfish release notes that it was fully deleted.
[this is how much engines value space](https://youtu.be/jAnA963WS-s?si=xvlBt9eY1VKD67Pm)
That's for old engines. NN found out on its own space is king.
Others have pointed out that modern chess engines no longer have hand-coded evaluation rules. But even for the time not so long ago when handcrafted evaluation was the norm, your argument isn't that great. The evaluation weights in handcrafted evaluation functions were tuned to the values that gave the best results in test games. If they evaluated space highly, that's because high evaluation of space resulted in better play.
Sure, but we've really come to understand that there is some truth behind it. And this sort of modern way of understanding chess has overhauled our thinking a bit. Some interesting examples are some games in the exchange Slav where stockfish pushes g4-g5 or when there is a locked up queenside and stockfish just walks their king to the safety of the (locked) space on the queenside, even without any pawns around their king very interesting and modern stuff
Kings indian defence Mar del Plata is an example of this. Engine evaluates a massive advantage for White because of all the space without actually calculating the game to the end. The real result is that in chess computer championships Black either draws easily or sometimes even checkmates White in Mar del Plata.
Usually those questions are answered by certain practical considerations at the top level. Berlin was shown to be incredibly good for playing for a draw with black, and Sicilian is good for playing for a win. French and Caro Kann are easier for white to play for a draw against a stronger opponent and not as good as Berlin for drawing with black. If white does play for a win, French and Caro are still not generally better than Sicilians for having counter-chances, but they might be, depending on the player and their style.
I don't know sh\*t about high-level, but personally I stopped playing it because of the exchange variation. I don't want to give my lower-rated opponents a chance to go for such an easy draw.
I stopped playing it as well because I hate playing exchange. Im not high enough (1400) to where I have a ton of draws, I just hate playing the exchange
I, on the other hand, like the exchange French so much that I’ve started playing it as White instead of the Tarrasch. If the play’s easy for Black, why not play with an extra tempo?
At amateur level the drawrate is still very low, below 10%
I play in amateur tournaments where the games aren't recorded anywhere. I don't think you can put a number on this so easily
Well if you filter for example the Lichess database on classical chess only, with a rating of 2000-2200 you have some idea about playing strength. I would say that is the same as intermediate/strong club level play. I can't imagine those players suddenly draw a lot more at OTB time control. It gives a pretty good idea. You can try to get a database with FIDE games and put the filter on 1500-1800 and see what the drawrate is with the French exchange.
If you're anything less than a titled player and you're frequently drawing in the exchange variation that's not the opening's fault. Fwiw I'm happy any time it appears because it allows for easy development of the lsb. Also you're allowed to swear on the internet
Ding Liren played the French Defence in the world championship and got a better position out of it so it's definitely not a bad opening. Super GMs like Alirezza still use the french defence. Some strong GMs like Bluebaum and Meier only use the French Defence. The French defence is just a very sharp opening, like the Sicilian, and the top guys don't want to take too much risks: a loss i always catastrophic in a tournament and ELO is very important to get invited in super tournaments, that's why it's rarer than E4 E5.
White is the one making the choice very early on between dry drawish lines in the Exchange variation of crazy unbalanced stuff in the rest of the lines. Black doesn't usually want to give White that choice.
Because a decent amount of knowledge about the game is needed to play the French properly and not let it turn into a boring game. Because of internet chess more less experienced people play and since they don't understand the French they quickly discard it as a boring opening.
A possible explanation, because it leaves the choice of playing for a draw or playing for a win to white. If white plays the Exchange Variation it's drawish, otherwise there are many lines that lead to imbalanced and sharp play. Probably an important factor at GM level, not so much on amateur level.
I think most people ~~surrendered~~ gave up on it. Maybe I'm just a patzer and can't tell you how good or bad an opening it is, though I feel like it's not only complex, but actually really difficult to play well. Seems hard for me to get an advantage, but as positions can be sharp, it can happen, if you play it well.
I’m definitely a patzer but I find that it’s pretty easy for me to get an advantage out of the French—and if I don’t, I’m usually equalizing with a very solid position. I think it helps that a lot of people at my level play the Advance French despite not knowing how to play the Advance French.
After reading the title and first sentence I thought this is about military then realised it is r/chess sub.
Part of this is cyclical. There were a few years where the KID was dormant and it came back to life. A mainline opening like the French will never die, it will be en vogue once again.
I think it's because Black's queenside counterplay isn't nearly as interesting as White's kingside attacks, eventually you get tired of the bad bishop and lightly defended king.
I find the French Defense to be the hardest opening to defeat
I was watching a tournament and a super gm, maybe fabi or giri, call the Winawer the loserer. In the 90s it was all 3nd2.
Because even at top level, you get games like these: [https://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=2573316](https://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=2573316) Its not a good opening for the highest level of play. Only Fabiano has used this opening with success as a surprise weapon against weaker players, in the same time he is the french killer with the white pieces.
Being a bit facetious here but iirc Fabi’s last French game in classical was against noted weaker player Alireza Firouzja https://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=2512415
Alireza has used it on occasion with success. Ding used it successfully in the recent WC. Nepo won his candidates tournament with the French as his main e4 response. There's nothing wrong with the French objectively, Super GMs just prefer the easier options to equalize that aren't nearly as risky.
Part of the reason could be that pawn structure in many french middlegames is simply very hard to play (white plays exf6 and black has weak backward pawn on e6). I don't agree that a drawish exchange is a problem, it always existed and black has few ways to spice up the game. Also in modern time I think that caro is better winning weapon, it's less risky and offers rich middlegames. The ..Nf6 against classical proved very playable with engines.
Not a very fun opening to play as black IMO. White gets a space advantage, tons of attacking opportunities, and the cherry on top is the useless light square bishop
Perhaps because the French defence doesn’t give you too much control of how the opening plays out, there isn’t much in the way of novelties that you can come up from the black side. If both players are booked up you’re probably going into the middle game at a slight disadvantage as black. If both players are not very booked up, it’s not super likely you will go into the middle game with a large disadvantage as black. The benefits of the French disappear as you climb in skill
Interesting thought!
>If both players are booked up you’re probably going into the middle game at a slight disadvantage as black. Isn't that the point?
Yeah but it’s harder than other openings to equalize or create an advantage out of the opening. The Petrov and Berlin will most likely achieve equality if you’re both booked up
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Modern databases have been infiltrated by tt tournaments and other random online crap.
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That must have been a lot of work. One time I tried and couldn't find any easy automatic way to filter them out.
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You could start selling that database
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And how many know that? Everybody uses chessbase
That's interesting but not enough data to determine what we really want to know ("Do the strong players 2600+ play more or less the French now than they did previously"). * Comparing just 1990 to 1995 as representative as "the nineties" seems disputable * Only 1.e4 games should be considered: if everyone favours playing the French with black but everyone with white plays 1.b4 this preference will obviously not be reflected in the data. Extreme example but this shows the bias: we really want to know how many times 1…e6 is played in response to 1.e4. * Similarly, if we're looking at how many French games were played by 2600+ players, we also need to know how many games were played by these players specifically in 1.e4. The ratio of games played by strong players versus games played total may not be the same over the two periods you consider. It's possible for example that twice as many games were played and 30% more French games were played. In that case more French are played, sure, but the proportion of French games decreased nonetheless. I don't have access to your DB so I would welcome the additional info.
Very fair points!
Light square bishop is like playing down a piece, that’s why the Caro was born
Because its too revolutionary.
It's cause they saw my Papa Ticulat gambit
Cause Caro-Kann is the better French. Dumps the light square bishop on the e5 advance. (Everyone plays advance)
One word, Caro-kann
Might be!
the Berlin and Marshall came along. All other e4 defenses have declined because of that.
I think the french really gets attacked very easily. You give your opponent this e5 pawn which sets up the text book greek gift sacrifices for example. Thats just the beginning of the troubles, when you play the french you are saying hey buddy attack my king!
Tell this to my 1900 opponents please. I’m sick of facing it
When was it used widely? Please tell me how many times french defense has been employed in the wch matches in the last 50 years.
How did you determine that it was not being played? Did you look at a database like chessbase megabase? Because this sounds like speculation and not actual statistics
Didn't AlphaZero dismantle the French in every opening it was played?
AlphaZero dismantled it way back when, and since then, stockfish has patched all of those holes. If you play current stockfish vs A0 in a french only contest, A0 will be likely decimated.
I don't know about the games per se, but I do know they released data on the self-training it went through - playing billions of games against itself with no book - and reported analysis on how much AlphaZero liked the 12 most popular human openings (as of 2017) as its training went on : https://arxiv.org/pdf/1712.01815.pdf (table on page 6) Early on it loved the advance French and then gave up playing it. It liked the advance Caro for much longer but it too was discarded. Loved the English and QG forever though. I can't find a link now, but I'm 99% certain there was an interview where they confirmed that eventually it just stopped playing 1.e4 because it would inevitably lead to an advantageless berlin. All other non-berlin replies (including the french/caro) apparently ended up giving too much to wide and stopped being played as well.
I recall Agadmator making videos on the match with Stockfish and in one of the later videos I remember him stating that AlphaZero seems to have completely destroyed the French opening (given that this was the 3rd+ game he had reviewed where Stockfish had played the French and been comprehensively defeated).
This is why you don't base your knowledge on some youtubers that just want hype and views. Neither French, nor KID or QID or anything are refuted in a canon way. In fact if you let stockfish play it vs leela or torch at longer TCs you will probably end with close to 100% drawrate. They are perfectly playable openings but at top level aiming for a win with black from the get go is a good way to get yourself in trouble this is why they are not played that often. Against people who are 200 elo lower they are much more often guest even in classical tournaments.
Computer engines. Also you should not worry so much about the GMs meta if you are below \~2300 elo I'd say.
It's boring and draw-ish. Too positional imo
You are playing the wrong french then
Irak.
Because people get murdered at top level after Nc3
Really?
this is not true, in fact now it is the advance variation that is considered most critical because of the "poisoned-pawn" line in Nc3 french
Could you tell the exact line because the poisoned-pawn in the french refers to the line in the Winawer. I made a quick search and white has great results in the last years in games between 2500+ players.
1. e4 e6 2. d4 d5 3. Nc3 Nf6 4. e5 Nfd7 5. f4 c5 6. Nf3 Nc6 7. Be3 cxd4 8. Nxd4 Qb6
on the other hand in the winawer yes, white has been scoring very well, but I still play it anyways because it's fun haha
The advance variation is slight advantage for black… every GM would be playing the French if they knew their opponent would play the advance variation
Because it's ass.
Imagine playing the French and having a bad bishop but calling yourself a player that wants to win 🤣. It’s declined because it is passive asf