FreeRepublic - Regarding your question in Reply #8, Tillis doesn't cover either of those lines in Mastering the French. After 1.e4 e6 2.d4 d5 3.Nc3 Nf6 4.e5 Nfd7 5.f4 c5 6.Nf3, his recommendation is the less common 6...Be7, delaying the development of the b8-knight. In some lines, he proceeds with ...b6 and ...Ba6 to trade off the "French bishop". In one case, his suggested line is 6...Be7 7.Be3 0-0 and now he meets 8.dxc5 with 8...Nc6, which might transpose to your first variation with 7...Be7!? and 8...0-0 in Reply #8.

Tillis does cover your line with 7...a6!?, but he does it in another Chessable course, 1...e6 Against Everything. 

BTW - I've found that you can check the contents of a Chessable course to a limited extent without having to buy it as long as you own any other Chessable course. Go to the analysis window, set up the position of interest, and then use the position search feature to find if it occurs in any courses. This method only indicates if a position happens to be in a course. It won't give any of the accompanying explanations or even show if the particular line is presented as something to avoid. However, given how Chessable can be rather opaque about course contents, it's a useful in making a more informed decision about a possible purchase.

MW wrote on 05/24/20 at 05:57:15:

You guessed right.
We had a discussion here in the forum years ago on the most fitting name for this line and ended up with the name Portisch-Hook variation, which was then taken up by theoreticians like Watson and Moskalenko.

Tillis was apparently unaware of this name and instead named the line after GM Shulman since he had seen him play it several times.

Interesting that he has added some Winawer lines....I'm not familiar with the Shulman Variation but guessing that I probably know it as the Hook Variation 3 ...Bb4 4 e5 c5 5 a3 Bxc3 6 bxc3 Qa5.....?

If so with this inclusion the course seems excellent value. I looked at the Short & Sweet version about a year or so ago but decided against it mainly because I wasn't a Chessable user at that time. I've since brought a few courses and quiet like the format so if this course now includes the Hook Variation I will have another look at it.

TopNotch wrote on 05/23/20 at 21:15:06:

He's a National Master in the US at least. His input probably was by far the biggest, but I think Lenderman provided some analysis on the Classical and the Tarrasch.

While I understand the skepticism, Master the French Defense is actually one of the most popular openings courses on Chessable, with more than 900 users on the Leaderboard right now. I see a couple of reasons for this:

Firstly, Tillis is very generous with his time in responding to questions and adding lines whenever someone feels something is missing. He even added two full chapters on the Winawer because someone requested it! The course used to give the Classical and the Rubinstein against 3.Nc3; now all three main lines are there. So whenever a major hole is found, it's likely to get plugged in short order on request.

Secondly, he doesn't pretend it's a repertoire for titled players: The course is only officially recommended for players up to "Intermediate" level (meaning up to 1800 according to Chessable). There are plenty of courses on Chessable (not to mention books and products from everyone else) that pretend to cater to a too large range of players.

I actually think the upper limit of 1800 is a bit too modest; I have the course and use some of the lines myself. Though admittedly I mostly play the French in blitz. Anecdotally I remember seeing a complaint on Eduoard's Chess24 French videos that a dangerous quick h4 line in the Classical Steinitz wasn't covered. After some database research I concluded that the best move order to neutralize the line was the one already covered by Tillis and Lenderman in Master the French Defense.

HAJS wrote on 05/23/20 at 18:10:58:


My answer is who is Tillis? Yes Lenderman's name is in the title but it is not clear to me how much input is his. Everything is presented by Tillis and that makes me a bit suspicious, he also has a similar collaboration on chessable on the Alekhine Defence this time trading on the name of Dzinzichashvili, lets just say I wasn't impressed. 

There is a lot of good stuff out there on the French from Black's perspective in both print and video, for instance I've heard good things about Edouard Romain's Chess24 course, then Chessbase has something by Yannick Pelletier that was well received, normally I would not recommend Damian Lemos but his French stuff is pretty good, probably because it was his main defence to 1.e4 for a long time.

Some advice, when looking for reliable info on openings its generally a good idea to go with presenters that actually play those openings, as you tend to gain insights not normally available from non-practitioners. Also Chessable Videos are ridiculously over-priced, and only a small select few are worth considering at those price tags, among those would include some of Sielecki's stuff; Shankland's Semi-Slav; Gustafsson's 1...e5 Rep and Harikrishna's French Fried French. One of Chessable's recent presenters that has impressed me a lot is FM Yuriy Krykun, he is very articulate with lots of fresh ideas backed up with original analysis, clear explanation and good evaluations. Krykun is definitely one to keep an eye on.