Thanks for the link Jonathan, excellent website, I'll never be bored at work again !!!

If white chose an opening like the french exchange it means he gives away the chance to get an opening advantage. When a strong player plays it against me I think for myself :

" Good now show me what you can do,Show me how strong you are and what good opening you choosed to beat me".

The stronger player tend to take more chances the closer to the drawish endgame we get and then I am ready to strike back.


And when I see a weaker player chose it I try to unbalance the opening as much as I can. 

All in all I recommend to study Korchnois game vs the exchange variation. He is very creative and a lot of players have played the exchange against him seeking the draw. Most of them have failed.

Purdy in his book  "24 hours opening repertoire" says about the exchange :

"If the white players plays the french exchange like Morphy the black players should play like Alekhine".

Alekhine was also very good to unbalance the exchange variation.

Well, I just won on the black side in 17 moves... of course, my opponent was 1400. Why do I keep getting paired against low-rated players. It's kind of annoying.  That's what I get for playing in a tournament with no reserve section.

There is a strategy that you could consider trying against stronger players who play the Exchange. Copy their first 10 or so moves (aside from moves such as c4), and once the opponent makes an inferior move, play a better move! The advantage of this approach is not to try and get a draw, but to gain the psychological advantage as Black. Confident and arrogant players may play overambitiously in an attempt to stop you copying them, while solid players may reply innocuously. 

Of course, the limitation to this strategy is that White may well continue to play good moves, including active moves which for some reason you cannot copy. If you change the tempo of the game by no longer copying the opponent once it is no longer favourable to copy their moves, then you could frustrate many of your opponents.

I haven't tried this myself, but it is something to consider as a psychological ploy.

But of course, the best psychological ploy of all is to play good moves for the entire game

Doesn't look so bad; I think Al Bundy would say, "Walk it off."

I tend to share your skepticism about 7...c5 (and perhaps 5...Bb4).  Looking at ECO/NCO there seems to be a shift from 7...c5 to 7...dc (as in Waitzkin-Levitt 1994) as the preferred move; that however seems to give White more or less what he is aiming for, a reversed Tarrasch French with enhanced control of d5.

Raspje wrote on 11/30/07 at 16:23:38:


speaking of pawn scarifices in the exchange heres one i started playing in blitz some years ago. 

1.e4 e6 2.d4 d5 3.ed Nf6?!

My idea comes from fellow gambit player tim mcgrew its similar to a gambit like in the philidor. Not 100% sound but 100% fun to play in blitz games.

I played a similar idea OTB once: 1.e4 e6 2.d4 d5 3.ed ed 4.Nf3 Bg4 5.h3 Bh5 6. Qe2+ and now 6.Ne7. My opponent played 7.Qb5+, but he got nothing after 7..Nbc6 8.Ne5!? f6.  6.Ne7 still seems playable. Taking on b7 is just bad for white.