Georg Meier's recent game against Anand was a quite good illustration of Rubinstein. Is known as a solid line with not much, but turned out opposite sides castling with attack for both.

Reminds me sometimes of Caro-Kann Capablanca with ...0-0.

I have been looking at this as well. I have Vitugov's book on the french-- a bit dated by now. 

I am a bit put off by how worked out 7.c3 (kasparov - ponomariov) line is when black plays 7..c5. Is the 7..Be7 line fine for black? I've clicked through some of vitiugov's analysis on it and it seems hair raising. His main game for that line is MVL - Tratar, Herakio, 2007. 

The highest rated players that I compete against are typically FM's. I'm not even sure that they would know much in these lines. I was recently at a large Open SWISS in America, and of all the French games I saw only I and another guy braved anything but the exchange variation with white.

I have been playing the Rubinstein and studying with Georg on and off for a while now. He's a super nice guy, and has sold me on some of the virtues of it. Of course, it requires a certain temperament that most don't have. 

There are lines that pop up here and there that are quite annoying, e.g. the Kasparov line with 7.c3!? or the line Caruana used against Meier in Dortmund. You need to be very well prepared in places to survive if White really knows what he's doing. The Negi line has been defanged in my opinion, the MVL-Meier game being the key. The good news is that I've actually never faced anyone who's known what they're doing. The 1.e4 lexicon is just so large that I think for the most part the 1.e4 are simply spending all their time elsewhere. Sensible, really!

Hi, 
I kept wondering what could be the reasons for prefering to play the Caro-Kann, or French Classical over the Rubinstein. They often reach similar positions but the nuances are not obvious to me. Hence this question.

From what I gather, with the Rubinstein, you get a compact repertoire but need to accept the exchange :
1. e4 e6 2. d4 d5 3. Nc3 dxe4 4. Nxe4


You can build around a similar structure around the Classical, but 
with the exchange still and the Steinitz added:



The Caro-Kann also reaches similar positions in the Smyslov variation, with even more early deviations, but with no symmetrical line. For instance ;