---

Today, I played quite a smooth game to a win against the French Defense. I don’t know any theory against the French Defense, so I was curious as to why I seemed to do so well. In the analysis, what I considered to be fairly natural moves ended up being the Steinitz Variation of the French Defense, which has been described as an aggressive response by white. My opponent’s response on move 4 to my e5, with the pawn attacking their knight on f6, was the point where they diverged from theory. The consequences here were interesting as white ended up having quite a favourable position.

One of the fun things when I analysis my games and create a video, is that I do some reading about positions that I’ve played against. It seems that the French Defense can be quite protean – it can be sharp, positional, or quite aggressive. This seems to depend on what happens to the central pawns.

I don’t know how true this statement is, but as a heuristic, it seems that when the centre is closed, for instance, when I played e5 on move 3, it isn’t good for black to attempt early aggressive manoeuvres with their pieces. This can be seen in the Stockfish evaulation of the game – even though I didn’t really know the position and played some inaccurate moves, at almost no time did Stockfish not rate the game as equal, or give the advantage to white. My bishops and queen had some strong tactics with their diagonals, most of which I missed in the actual game. The turning point of the game happened when my opponent hung their knight, and their position was lost from that point onwards.

I hope you found this game interesting, and thanks for watching!

Game on chess.com: https://www.chess.com/game/live/41472616025

[Event "Live Chess"]
[Site "Chess.com"]
[Date "2022.03.19"]
[Round "?"]
[White "vitualis"]
[Black "King_sungi"]
[Result "1-0"]
[ECO "C11"]
[WhiteElo "1306"]
[BlackElo "1413"]
[TimeControl "1800"]
[EndTime "17:02:32 PDT"]
[Termination "vitualis won by resignation"]

1. e4 e6 2. d4 d5 3. Nc3 Nf6 4. e5 Ne4 5. Be3 Bb4 6. Ne2 Nxc3 7. Nxc3 Nd7 8. a3 Ba5 9. b4 Bb6 10. Bd3 f6 11. Na4 fxe5 12. Nxb6 axb6 13. dxe5 Nxe5 14. O-O O-O 15. f4 Ng4 16. Qxg4 d4 17. Bd2 e5 18. Bc4+ Kh8 19. Be6 Bxe6 20. Qxe6 exf4 21. Rxf4 Rxf4 22. Bxf4 d3 23. Rd1 dxc2 24. Rxd8+ Rxd8 25. Qc4 Rd1+ 1-0