The French Defence

Publisher: Chessbase, 2006, DVD

The French defence is a very powerful opening against 1.e4-players who plays aggressively. Against the French you have to understand the underlying positional themes, if not you will quickly get a difficult position. As all major openings the French defence is full of concepts and variations. Many books leave the students with lines and ideas that are easy to mix up. In this DVD you will be presented a coherent strategic opening repertoire against 1.e4. The main theme is to always attack White’s centre with the f- and c-pawns, and then with the pieces until nothing is left of it. The recommended repertoire is based on understanding rather than memorization. The pedagogic idea is to give you an integrated understanding which will help you to solve all kind of problems over the board. You will learn which pawn formations in centre to strive for, to be able to implement powerful manoeuvres and to recognise small strong moves. You will also learn when it is time to switch to an attack against the opponents king. The recommended lines are solid and it will be able to play the lines many years without having to bother too much about recent developments.

This DVD covers:

• 1.e4 e6 2.d4 d5 3.e5 c5

• 1.e4 e6 2.d4 d5 3.Nd2 Nf6 4.e5 Nfd7

• 1.e4 e6 2.d4 d5 3.Nc3 Nf6 4.e5 Nfd7