today in ten minutes or less you're going to learn the French defense for the black pieces a lot of
people requested this after I made my video on the kharak on the French is very similar in the
sense that after efore you play c6 and you want to play the pawn to d5 on the second move the
French defense only works against the King's pawn ecigs d5 can be played against other setups but
when it's the French it is this position so the way we can think about the French is first things
first the most common move you're gonna get when you're playing the black side of this is this move
in the center now your opponents also can play other things like for example the knight move but
then you're just gonna go d5 and it's it's very difficult for white not to do something with this
pawn right away oftentimes the pawn structure is gonna look the same so let's start out with d4 d5
off the bat now just like in the caro-kann they can push they can take and they can defend the
pawn or you know just leave it so let's start with the advance variation once again taking
space and when he five happens you need to lash out immediately in the center with c5 with the
caro-kann we put the bishop here but it's blocked in and this bishop is known as the French bishop
it kind of sits back for now it obviously doesn't have a quite an active role but against this
central pawn push the next move needs to be c5 and you're looking to undermine your opponent in the
center most people here play see three okay they want to keep their Center together and black is
a couple of different approaches in this position but in general the way that you should play this
position is non-stop pressure on the center so something like knight c6 a lot of people will
play Knight of three in this position and your next move can be Queen b6 this is how I like to
play this position trying to maximize my pressure here obviously if the capture ever happens the
bishop just recaptures on c5 now white again has a lot of different moves so for example there's
the very tricky Bishop d3 which at first glance looks like it hangs this pawn but it doesn't
due to this little trick and Bishop b5 which would be a check and when your queen but in general you
just can't take that pawn right away you need to finish your development usually like something
like Bishop d7 is even useful to prevent against that that trick but something like Bishop b2 is
also very solid so the real question is how does White excuse me how does black play this position
right well you do have to know a little bit of theory here just a little bit because otherwise
some of this stuff is gonna look very strange to you there is this idea in this position to
play the Knight to f5 you need to get this Knight to that square and you can do that through h6 or
eise evan and once that Knight gets to a5 its exerting very good pressure on the d4 pawn so
that might look something like for example Knight h6 right now and you might go wait leve this why
would i double my pawns i know that's why i said it it will look a little bit strange if you don't
know your stuff but this actually is okay for black cuz b2 is hanging now and your opponent
put all these pawns on the dark squares and traded the dark squared bishop so in many ways they might
be targets not to mention the open g file for the rook and there is even one more very funny
maneuver here like this and then you put pressure on this pawn anyway so Knight age six is fine and
it might even happen that it does get captured but I gotta get this as this is the way you play this
position and then you try to get your Knight to f5 so something like takes takes Knight a5 boom
now you've got everybody fighting for this so give this a shot this little maneuver the drawback of
moving the knight through east 7 is your opponent can actually just take and we don't we don't get
to take with the bishop now we have to actually take with the Queen but that's not even the
right move because Queen c7 here is a very tricky little move avoiding this pawn and going directly
for the pawn in the center but again you need to build your experience in this I don't want
you to memorize things so crazily just trying to give you a bit of an introduction this is how you
would play the advanced French with the black side Queen b6 try to rotate this Knight to f5
and maybe Bishop e7 and get castled the bishop stay passive for now but you are lacking space
so it is okay another slightly more risky way to play this position is the very early pawn
break f6 but I don't really recommend this it's okay theoretically it's been played by a lot of
grandmasters but it can be difficult to manage such an open King for an amateur player so just
again you have this but maybe you don't want to play it right away the next thing we'll look at
is just the very simple pawn takes pawn takes now just like in the karo con here white can
just develop or white can play c4 c4 is not a very scary move you can just develop all your
pieces naturally one way I do like to play the exchange French for black is I like to Castle
queenside and so what that looks like is something like Knight f3 knight c6 Bishop g4 Bishop f5 27
and long castles and oftentimes what you'll do with these two pieces if you're trying to Castle
queenside is you'll play like this you need to put your knight on e7 to shield excuse me from
this check and then play something like Bishop g4 Queen d7 and start launching all these pawns at
the enemy King that's why you Castle queenside because you want to attack your opponent but
obviously you don't have to play like this you can just play Bishop d6 and you know get like a
totally symmetrical position but this to me is boring you know and in general if you're gonna
play somebody who's trying to take the life out of the opening you they they want the calm game
so you try to go after them so in general french exchange is not too scary so you can play long
castles or short castles well what really is a bit more challenging in the French defense
is two of the more classical main lines so this is Knight c3 it's known as the classical Knight
f6 here is the main line and then you know there's a bunch of theory after here here white plays f4
this is called the Steinitz variation I'm not gonna go super crazy on the theory here cuz I
mean ultimately for that you'll need a French repertoire tool you know you go c5 Knight c6
and Bishop e7 and try to play from there expand on the Queen side with a6 b5 another thing that
you can do is play the win over Bishop b4 with the pin but listen some of these variations are
pretty insane so when a word defense variation I should say go explore it one thing to do to
kind of I should say but centrally cut back your need for study is against 92 or 93 just
take the pawn and then it'll become the same thing because the knight has to take and here
there's two setups that you can employ there's the Reuben steam French which is when you want
to play this move but you play 97 first and your setup here is a little passive but pretty easy
to play Knight f6 b6 Bishop b7 so your Bishop is strong and Bishop e7 and castles that's it
very solid system you can play it against both of them it's a little bit more passive but well
that's that's chess and another one is a funny one called the fort knocks the fort knocks you
play Bishop d7 let's say they play Knight f3 you play Bishop c6 and you basically just trade this
Bishop so you play like this takes which is like what that's crazy and then c6 and you just develop
the rest of your pieces so Knight f6 97 in Bishop d6 and you're saying that okay I trade it off my
poor Bishop now I can set up a solid way this might be too solid for you but I wanted to give
you a weapon Fort Knox variation with the black pieces this little Bishop maneuver to take might
confuse your opponents as well or the Rubinstein French with 97 Knight f6 and then you know just
play a solid setup with Bishop e7 and Bishop b7 of course you don't need to go for this but 92
tarush French is again also very theoretical so one way you can comeback your study is to take
and if not the you need to explore these knight of six positions or the main line here with c5 but I
can't cover that in 10 minutes what I like to play against Knight d2 is this c5 move but I've messed
around with even h6 in this position which just tries to play g5 g4 very early so another main
line here is Bishop e7 with the same idea g5 g4 to target this Knight if it ever gets to f3 the
way you learn these middle games is you go study the games of some of the best players Nicky DeVito
Gough is an exceptional French player and other top grandmasters have played French defenses in
the past go look at their games and one last thing I will leave you with is basically the
sidelines of the French - something like the two nights which actually I recommend in my course as
well as the b3 French you know though it's hard to give you a one-size-fits-all solution but to those
be principled and play in the center d5 Knight f6 Bishop e7 castles you know c5 Knight c6 and so on
there's also even ridiculous stuff like Queen e2 out there which makes you play this and now you
can't take back with the pawn but against this I mean you can play c5 for example knight c6 and
just if you follow basic opening principles you should be absolutely okay as long as you're not
getting it yourself into a mainline variation and they play a sideline just follow your gut
and you should be absolutely alright hopefully you enjoyed in this video hop into the comments
obviously once again let me know your thoughts how you're liking the 10-minute videos on these
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below like the video if you haven't already and I will catch you in some of the other ones