This is the third article in the series analysing the game presented in The Resilience of the French Defence. I took a brief look at the opening in The Resilient French - A Quick Look at the Opening, where I was critical of my early opening play, and I suggested an improvement based on transposing into a position resembling a Classical French - with the difference that white has played an unnecessary move (a2-a6) thus making it more favourable for black.
Regular commenter Kevin then pointed out the alternative possibility for black, taking on e4 and transposing into a position reminiscent of the Rubinstein/Byrne variation - see the first diagram.
This position occurs after the moves 1.e4 e6 2.d4 d5 3.Nc3 a6? 4.a3 4…dxe4 5.Nxe4. It strikes me that black’s …a7-a6 is more meaningful than white’s a2-a3. Also, in this system white has aggressive variations involving castling long - and castling long is something white will be more reluctant to do now the queen’s side pawn formation is disrupted. White will be reluctant to place the king where it is more vulnerable to a black pawn storm.
The following is a typical example of play - and in particular of piece deployment - in this system:
From the first diagram,
5…Nd7 6.Bd3 Ngf6 7.Bg5 Be7 leading to the position in the second diagram.
To me, this - the position in the second diagram - looks fine for black.
Naturally play needn’t proceed this way, as there are many possibilities for both sides. However, I don’t see a way for white to do black any harm - that is, the best white can achieve is active piece development, while black gets developed, castles, and gets ready to hit the centre with …c7-c5.
Just in passing, another approach for black is to put the light squared bishop on d7 and then move it to c6 - i.e. to fianchetto without moving the b-pawn (after playing …c7-c5). However I think the setup shown in the second diagram is more straightforward.
Anyway, I just thought I’d mention this alternative before moving on to look further into the game itself.
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