What is he recommending for the exchange French?

Ametanoitos wrote on 04/03/12 at 10:54:00:


White's fifth move is lame. He can do better.

You'll know it as soon as you see the overall idea behind it. If you can't find it, well...it'll be in the book!
 
Quote:


The CBM article pushes 3.c4 cxd4 4.cxd5 Nf6 5.Nxd4 Nxd5 6.e4 Nb4?! - best is 6...Nf6! with much stronger drawing chances where black just has to deal with light pressure. I've worked on the resulting positions more than is probably healthy, and I'm leaning towards white's pressure dissipating later into the middle game, allowing black to equalize. It requires accuracy, but the point is black's defensive concept is viable.

5.Qxd4, on the other hand, is completely neutered regardless of white's 8th move (8.g3 or 8.Bg5 both lead to nothing, but not because of CBM analysis - following that would get black in trouble).

I had the impression that 1.Nf3 d5 2.d4 c5 3.dxc5 Nf6! 4.c4 e6 5.cxd5 Bxc5! is just fine for Black. Maybe Bryan has found something on this though. I still don't like 3.c4 cxd4. Where did i see an improvement over an old CBM article? Was it Kaufman? Was it Bronznik?

Ametanoitos wrote on 04/02/12 at 21:20:49:


The Symmetrical Defense is something I've been working on the past week in writing the book. Without revealing anything - black's drawing chances after 3.c4 cxd4 4.cxd5 Nf6 are quite real. White's pull is very small if both sides are accurate. Small enough that I have been very hesitant to make it the recommendation, because I don't want to deal with, "BPaulsen claimed a small pull here, but in X-X, E-Mail 2013 black held the draw without too much difficulty, how dare he give false appraisal of positions!"

On the other hand, I've made some amusing discoveries in 3.dxc5 that may very well turn theory of the variation on its head (black has been considered totally okay there for a long time)...one of those discoveries also has relevance to the French Defense: Monte Carlo Variation because it is just a reversed position (which means if my research holds up I might have just dust-binned the line Markovich recommends to his students against the French Defense ). Also, white has another rare try that, as far as I can tell, forces black to take on sub-optimal IQPs if he's going to recover the pawn on c5. This one appears even more promising, and black cannot sidestep it.

It's been a very fun chapter to work on.

So, what after 3.c4!? Of course i'd aprove 3...e6! The Tarrasch Defence! Yes, indeed this is disapointing....

Straggler wrote on 03/31/12 at 19:24:24:


I cannot understand. What is 1.Nf3 d5 2.d4? What does he recommend then?

How is the level of detail? I always found Gambit to have a lot of detail, like Chess Stars and Quality Chess books.

Also pleasantly surprised that 3...c5 4. exd5 exd5 5. Nf3 Nf6 is given. I said previously how the last book I remember on this line was in the 2003 Psakhis 3. Nd2 book, and how the French repertoire books were not analysing this line. Is the analysis updated compared to Psakhis?