FreeRepublic wrote on 11/16/24 at 14:56:53:


Sanity I would think

The Winaver in particular is a crazy amount of work! Black has a huge mass of options but outside the main line PP they're all fractionally on the edge of soundness.

Which is utterly fine in practice - in the worst case you just play 3-4 different lines in rotation or similar. It's not even an absurd amount of work in practical terms that, but books and all these days seem to have the attached expectation of near exhaustive theory and.....

That's honestly a bit weird when we can get the detailed moves from SF in a few minutes! The ideas/what lines are most easily playable in practice etc is all another matter.

I appreciate your comments.

I think I see a trend among authors away from the Winawer towards the Classical. At least that is what we see with the two works by Krishnater mentioned here. In the Tarrasch, there seems to be a similar trend away from 3...Nf6 toward 3...c5. Do trends represent a desire to look at different lines? Or, do they indicate changing opinions about which lines are best? Those who play the French from either side have many opening decisions to make.

I was always drawn towards the Winawer. I currently find 7h4!? to be interesting and challenging. I'm considering playing the McCutcheon. Of course, this means I  have to find a line I like against the Steinitz. I'm trying to catch up to theory on 7...Be7 and 7...a6.

I suppose a reason to prefer 1. e4 e6 2. d4 d5 3. Nc3 Nf6 4. Bg5 dxe4 to 1. e4 e6 2. d4 d5 3. Nc3 dxe is that the former commits White to playing Bg5. Is that important?

1e4 e6 2. d4 d5 3. Nd2 Nf6 4. e5 Nfd7 leads to many lines that are both fascinating and difficult. An old argument for playing 3...c5 was that one could.  By way of contrast, 3Nc3 c5?! is entertaining but dubious. The modern trend is towards 1. e4 e6 2. d4 d5 3. Nd2 c5 4. ed5 Qd5. Analysts and players have shown that this has a lot of merit, but I don't think White players will be greatly discouraged.

I ran across a line that has been played four times.  Evgenij Shuvalov won four games with the Black pieces from the following position:


1. e4 e6 2. d4 d5 3. Nd2 c5 4. ed5 ed5 5. Ngf3 Nc6 6. Bb5 Qe7!? 7. Be2!? Qc7!? 8. O-O Nf6 9. Re1 Be6 10. Bb5 O-O-O!?
This can also be reached after  1. e4 e6 2. d4 d5 3. Nd2 c5 4. Ngf3 Nc6 5. ed5!? ed5 6. Bb5!? Qe7!? etc.

Miedema analyzed 6...Qe7!? though he prefered “9...cxd4!” to 9...Be6.

In this variation, White and Black both lose a tempo. Black spends two moves getting his queen to c7 and White takes two moves to get his bishop to e2. I think this little dance of queen and bishop benefits Black a little. White seldom chooses to play Be2 in the 3...c5 in the Tarrasch. It is not an active posting. For Black, Qc7 is premature, but not entirely unnatural. The question in my mind is:  Can White embarrass Black for playing ...Qc7 so early in the game?

I recently received an email from modern-chess announcing the release of another French Defense database by IM Krishnater. The earlier one, titled Modern French Defense: Complete Repertoire for Black, is the subject of the first two posts in this thread. The modern-chess website doesn't give many details on that earlier database, so I thought it would be helpful to provide some information for those who might be considering the purchase of one or both of these products.

Since I now have Modern French Defense, I can confirm nestor's info that Krishnater's recommendation against  3.Nc3 is the Winawer with 6...Nc6. The Tarrasch is met by 3...c5, with the main line proceeding 4.exd5 Qxd5 5.Ngf3 cxd4 6.Bc4 and now 6...Qd7 instead of the more usual 6....Qd6.  The 6...Qd7 move is not totally unheard of and is the choice in other French repertoires, such as in The French Defense Revisited by Zlatanovic & Jacimovic and Bryan Tillis' Master the French Defense on Chessable. Krishnater's response to the Advance variation is a bit offbeat: 1.e4 e6 2.d4 d5 3.e5 c5 4.c3 and now 4...Bd7. He says his choice limits White's options, although he doesn't go into specifics. After 5.Nf3, his recommendation is 5...Ne7, which he describes as not having been tried by strong players. Apparently its objective is to get the knight to f5 quickly to apply pressure to the d4-pawn. His main line proceeds 6.Bd3 Nbc6 7.0-0 cxd4 8.cxd4 Nf5 9.Bxf5 exf5 10.Nc3 Be6. Krishnater gives plans where in some cases Black is able to play the ...g7-g5 advance and expand on the kingside, while in others Black can play on the queenside and apply pressure on the d4-pawn. Krishnater claims that "in general these positions are not easy for White to play". 

The new French database is titled The Practical French Defense - Top-Level Repertoire for Black. The description on the modern-chess site says: "Kushager takes a bold path by recommending sharp and lesser-explored lines." I don't own this database, but the preview gives more details in this case, indicating that 3.Nc3 is met by the classical 3...Nf6, leading to the Steinitz Variation (Krishnater's main line answers 7.Be3 with 7...a6 intending ...b7-b5 in most cases), while 4.Bg5 is met with 4...dxe4, the Burn variation. The recommendation for the Tarrasch is also 3...c5 with 6...Qd7, but whereas the earlier repertoire goes for a mainstream approach with short castling, the preview for the new product advocates a plan involving ...a6, ...Qc7, ...Bd7, and castling long. Finally, in The Practical French Defense, it appears that Krishnater meets the Advance Variation with the traditional main line: 3...c5 4.c3 Nc6 5.Nf3 Qb6. Now 6.a3 is answered with 6...Nh6 (also recommended in the 4th edition of Watson's Play the French), while the improved Milner-Barry Gambit is covered as well.

The two products also differ significantly with regard to the amount of video content. Modern French Defense has nearly ten hours of video, which is considerably more than most modern-chess offerings. The substantial quantity of video likely reflects the product's origin as a pure video package sold by TheChessWorld. It appears that modern-chess obtained permission to sell the videos and added a collection of PGN files covering the lines presented therein to yield a combination consistent with the rest of their products. (TheChessWorld offers only the videos).  The Practical French Defense has "3+ hours" of video according to the modern-chess site, which is more typical of their opening databases.   

I should note that the PGNs for Modern French Defense are inferior to those provided with other modern-chess products. They only give the moves shown in the videos by Krishnater. There are no annotations to speak of and no text capturing his comments and evaluations. Some of the files list "kk" (obviously referring to Kushager Krishnater) as the annotator, but several others give "staff", which suggests that a member of the modern-chess staff had to watch the videos and transcribe the moves to PGN. Apparently to minimize effort, annotation symbols and text with Krishnater's remarks weren't included when doing this transcription. This is in stark contrast to the PGNs usually provided by modern-chess, which have plenty of symbols and textual content. I find such PGNs are in effect a written version of the video, and they're quite useful since I don't have to wade through a video to find a particular detail. Lacking this, I had to jump around and sit through some minutes of the Advance Variation video to get the Krishnater quote I gave at the end of the second paragraph above. Nevertheless, the bare PGN files still have considerable utility. They can be searched to see if a particular position is covered in the videos, a different search can be made to determine if a position is covered in other databases including those containing ChessPublishing's games, and an engine can be launched for evaluation purposes.

Because I don't have The Practical French Defense, I can't confirm that its PGN files are up to modern-chess' usual standards. I assume they are since this database appears to be a modern-chess product from start to finish and not a "conversion" like Modern French Defense. It's pure speculation on my part, but I wonder if the files Krishnater used to prepare the videos for Modern French Defense weren't available from some reason and had to be reconstructed from scratch.

As FreeRepublic notes in his OP, Modern French Defense is quite expensive at its list price. Those who are considering a purchase might keep in mind that modern-chess usually has a Black Friday sale. Last year the sale was 70% off. Adding in the additional 10% quantity discount that FreeRepublic points out drops the price from 120 EUR to around 32 EUR.

One aside to wrap things up: the final position in the line given above for the Advance Variation in Modern French Defense looked familiar to me. After a bit of checking, I realized that the same position is reached in the more common line with 5...Nh6; i.e., 1.e4 e6 2.d4 d5 3.e5 c5 4.c3 Nc6 5.Nf3 Nh6 6.Bd3 cxd4 7.cxd4 Nf5 8.Bxf5 exf5 9.Nc3 Be6 10.0-0. This is given, for example, in the 4th edition of Play the French. Note however that in this position arising from 5...Nh6, it's Black to move. In Krishnater's line, the position is the same with respect to the placement of the pieces, but it's White to move. Black lost a tempo since the light-squared bishop stopped at d7 before going to e6, while it went from c8 to e6 in one move in the 5....Nh6 line. Black seems to score OK in Krishnater's line - 50% with 10...Be6 in 17 games in the Mega Database. Stockfish gives White a slight edge in the position, while it evaluates the position after 10.0-0 in the 5...Nh6 line as equal. 

I was reminded of Anish Giri's comment in the latest issue of New in Chess magazine. In his annotation of the Gukesh-Wi Yei game from the recent Budapest Olympiad, after 1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 d6 3.Nc3 Nf6 4.Be2 e5 5.Bc4, Giri notes that "White is prepared to play a well-known variation a tempo down". He goes on to explain that White is heading for "a strategic type position in which the tempo is more or less not of great consequence". Krishnater doesn't say anything explicitly about the lost tempo, but he does point out that the position is not particularly concrete, so knowledge of plans is the important thing.

This is available at Modern-chess.com. It is playable on-line and one can download PGN as well as video (ten hours).

There are twelve chapters. Three are on the Winawer mainline. I don't know what direction he chose. 6...Ne7 is more mainline than 6...Qa5, but I would not rule the latter out as a response to White's mainline moves.

It is currently offerred at a good discount. Otherwise it is quite expensive IMO. In the past I have ordered two titles during a website sale and tacked on an extra 10% quantity discount.