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Normal Topic Top Players and the French (Read 4683 times)
ReneDescartes
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Re: Top Players and the French
Reply #4 - 12/29/15 at 18:27:53
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I don't know; Alekhine, Botvinnik and Korchnoi all relied on the French in world Championship matches. It will be back.
  
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JEH
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Re: Top Players and the French
Reply #3 - 11/20/15 at 18:35:18
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Pingudon wrote on 11/20/15 at 18:07:24:
But it seems 1...e5 is always fashion.


  

Those who want to go by my perverse footsteps play such pawn structure with fuzzy atypical still strategic orientations

Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right, stuck in the middlegame with you
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Pingudon
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Re: Top Players and the French
Reply #2 - 11/20/15 at 18:07:24
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People always talk about "fashion" as the explanation for the top players not playing the French. But it seems 1...e5 is always fashion. People play the french until they get to the ELITE and the they forget about it. Examples, Short, Dreev, Bareev and even the great Kortchnoi
  
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Keano
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Re: Top Players and the French
Reply #1 - 10/31/15 at 12:19:09
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The top players tend to move around a lot as Black but quite a few still play the French regularly - Nakamura, Ivanchuk etc. 

If we go down to the standard very good 2600+ GM then everbody plays it Smiley
  
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Top Players and the French
10/28/15 at 23:04:25
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I noticed that Ding Liren has recently been employing 1...e5 instead of the French (such as his draw with Anand at the Bilbao Masters.)  I've always enjoyed his fighting repertoire as Black with the French/King's Indian and he is one of the few top players who regularly uses the French these days.   It seems he may be looking for more solidity as Black against 1e4 (which certainly makes some sense in a double round robin event like Bilbao) or he simply wants to be less predictable with his openings. 

I presume that the lack of top players playing the French is more a matter of fashion than an inherent issue with the opening as our moderator, John Watson, has consistently pointed out.  To me, the French is more likely to lead to a decisive result (much like the King's Indian) and perhaps most top players prefer to have a larger margin of "safety" with their openings (which may partly explain it's current lack of popularity at the highest levels.)  The French has such rich variety within the opening complex (between the Winawer and classical 3...Nf6 lines for example) so I hope some day the top players will get tired of their Berlins and theoretical duels in the Sicilian and we will see some new champions of the French emerge.
  
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