The French Resistance

I had the black pieces. My opponent opened 1. e4 and responded 1...e6. The French Defence.

What's the idea with the French? Well, after White plays 2. d5 to try and establish the "ideal" centre we challenge it with 2...d5.

Black threatens to take on e4 which requires some action for white. White has three or four main choices to address the threat.

• Move out of the way, advance the e-pawn with 3 .e5 (Advance variation)
• Take the d-pawn with 3. exd5 (Exchange variation)
• Defend the e-pawn
  • with 3. Nc3 (Classical variation)
  • with 3. Nd2 (Terrasch variation)

So why am I playing the French at the moment? Well, I'm working through an online book on the French Defence¹. There are large sections devoted to each of White's choices. The only one I've not touched is the Terrasch, 3. Nd2. And what did my opponent happen to play? The one from the chapter I haven't got to yet!

So because of this I had a several minute long think. These are long games 80+10, but if you spend longer than 5 minutes on opening moves, it's amazing how fast that clock runs down. I thought there were two candidate moves, 3...Nf6 or 3...c5 (and looking through the Master level database, on lichess those are the right ones).

I went with 3...Nf3 since in the French the plan is to draw white into playing e5 at some point. As Black, you try to undermine e5 by attacking d4. So we had a few normal looking moves in the position. 4. e5 Nd7. 5. Nc3 c5.

I thought this was okay for Black. By playing 5...c5 Black is executing the typical French plan of attacking d4. I actually thought White's knights were slightly misplaced. The knight on d2 blocks his dark square bishop in on c1. And his knight on f3 prevents him from supporting his pawn on e5 with f4. Some more normal moves followed. 6. c3 Bd7, moving my dark square Bishop in preparation for castling. After White played 7. Bd3 I embarked on a plan suggested by the aforementioned book for the advance variation. In a position very similar (if not identical) to this.

The plan is to play b3 and put the light square bishop on a3. If White castles then his light square bishop is pinned to the rook on f1. This naturally leads to a trade of the light square bishops ².

This happened in the game. 7...b6, 8. O-O Ba6, 9. Bxa6 Nxa6.

After the knight recaptured we had some more normal moves. 10. Re1 to make room for White's knight to manoeuvre, 10...O-O. 11. Nf1, White begins to move his pieces over to the kingside.

It's interesting to note here that the engine thinks this position is perfectly equal. But there's a practical difference here in that White has a clear plan, bring the pieces to the kingside.

For black it's less clear what to do. Even playing the best moves as black, I would probably feel more comfortable as White as he has more space. (Although perhaps this feeling is just a lack-of-experience thing³?) Anyway I played 11...Rc8. Since at some point I will play cxd4 the c-file will become open or half-open⁴.

Aside: I'm always interested to see how far into my games we follow previous master-level and above games. This was the last move in which we followed any such game, Warakomski, Tomasz (2288) and Socko, Bartosz (2554) in 2004. Their game ended in a draw.

At this point however White has another simple plan, to try and take advantage of my wayward knight out there on a3. I have to defend the knight if I don't want to drop the pawn on a2. 12. Qa5 Nbd8. It's a bit awkward as it feels like an under-developing move, putting a knight back on b8.

So white continued with his plan of moving his forces to the kingside. 13. Ng3. With my rook ready on c8 I decided it was time to take open thing up a bit. 13...cxd4. White chose to recapture with the knight, 14. Nxd4, perhaps to limit the scope of my rook. This makes it harder to defend e5 in the long term.

To challenge the white knight on d4 I need to get a knight to c6, but it's a well defended square.

I offered a queen trade 14...Qa5, which he declined 15. Qd1 sending her majesty all the way home. I was then free to challenge the knight 15...Nc6. White then played a thematic move in the French, 16. Qg4

Black tends to not have any pieces in front of his kingside pawns in the French which allows kind of move. The plan for white is clear, Ba3 threatens mate, Qxg2#. Black can't get another piece to defend g2 and so something needs to be done. This was the first critical moment of the game and I felt a bit uncomfortable.

Options:

1. g6:
   • Prevents mate, good
   • But Bh6 is coming anyway and White will win an exchange as my rook on f1 can't move, so bad.
2. f6 or f5:
   • If White plays Bh6 I can defend with my rook, good
   • If White captures with exf6 I can recapture with either the rook or bishop, I have space to get a defender (e.g. my queen) to reinforce g7, good.
   • However in all these lines e6 is undefended and will be captured by his queen or rook, bad.
3. Kh8,
   • Sidesteps the attack. I could also reinforce g7 with Rg8 good.
   • Leaves h7 weak … bad?

With my 20-20 hindsight, it's clear what the best move is here. I did see option 3 at the time, however I rejected it instinctively for the … bad? reason I gave. h7 is weak but how exactly does White attack it? White needs his queen and something else to attack that h7 since my king protects it⁵. So Kh8 felt unsafe, but it wasn't.

14...Kh8, 15. Nh5 Rg8 and Black is solid. How does black get another attacker in on either h7 or g7? All the squares he needs are covered.

• Nf3 to attack h7 ? gxg3 or Bxg3.
• Bh3 to attack g7 ? gxh3.
• Ng4 to attack g7 ? exg4.

In the game I was significantly down on the clock and there were quite a few lines to consider. Foremost in my mind was that it would take me a few moves to attack on the queenside or bring my knights over to defend. I should have calculated this one out instead of assuming White could organise some attack on h7 or g7 quickly enough.

The engine says this position is dead even. Just like other times in the French black feels cramped but is actually fine.

I went with f4 (as opposed to f3) to force White to move his queen or capture. Capturing here is great for white 17.exf6.

Now f3 is undefended and triple attacked. It's definitely going to fall as the best Black can do is add one defender next turn. Also White has a mate threat Qxg7#, which must be addressed.

I recaptured with the rook, 17...Rxf6, preventing mate and defending the pawn⁶. 18. Nxf3, White captured on f3 with his knight. I took this opportunity to try to deflect the pressure on g7 with 18...Rg6.

I was under no illusion that I was definitely on the back foot. White's knight on e6, though not attacking anything other than g7 directly, severely restricts my movement. White sidestepped with 19. Qf5 and here I had a good long think again. And I eventually chose a move to muddy the waters. I like the move, although the engine marked it as an inaccuracy⁷, because it complicated the situation and made White think. I played 19...Bc5.

The complication here is that White has some back rank issues. His rook on e1 is undefended. My bishop is lined up with White's King, which suggests some future tactics. White played a sub-optimal (but understandable) move here. 20. Re2. On this square the knight on g3 defends the rook, the rook defends f2 and he has discoveries against my queen should he move his knight on e3. I then did something fun and played 20...Bxf2+, check.

This posed my opponent a practical problem. He's in check so he must take the bishop on f3. If he recaptures with the rook or queen, his knight on e6 is double attacked and this removes one of his two defenders. I win the piece back and White's pressure is dissipated. If he recaptures with the king then I can play Rf3 pinning his queen to his king. (In fact this second line was unsound, neither of us spotted it at the time but a few moves on, White can win my queen back⁸!) White recaptured with the rook 21. Rxf2. I reclaimed my piece and offered a queen trade 21...Qxe6…

… and White accepted 22. Qxe6 Rxe6. After this there was material equality and I felt the position was even. The engine agrees giving +0 for White.

I won't torture you with a blow by blow account of this phase of the game as I don't think there's much to learn. Soon after our queen trade we traded off a pair of the rooks, heading further into a very even endgame. I was still significantly down on the clock and a bit tired after the excitement of nearly losing the game and just escaping.

I made a move order mistake as we continued to trade which lost my last, hope for the barest of edges.

I planned to take on e1 with my knight and then play dxc3 to split his pawns. However, as I have noticed I do when I'm tired, I decided a move order in my head, then proceeded to do the opposite move order on the board, 27...dxc5. A bit frustrating, but not terrible as there wasn't much on the line at this point.

We danced around for a while like one does in draw-ish endgames. At one point I underestimated the possibility of him forcing my king, as did he. And so play continued. After a some more dancing, trades, with 30 minutes left on his clock, just over 10 left on mine, my opponent offered me a draw. I accepted.

Here's the game in full.

I was lucky to escape a losing position. I won't show my mistakes/blunders as most of the stem from the complications following 14...f4. But I will show the engine analysis, which confirms that White had a comfortable lead.

That happened because I didn't trust my (admittedly partial) calculation that 14...Kh8 worked. After writing this up I certainly won't forget that. If black has removed the light square bishop in Advance French type positions, then Kh8 is a nice move.

In fact, looking through that game I linked to earlier (Warakomski, Tomasz (2288) and Socko, Bartosz (2554) in 2004), Black plays Kh8 preemptively! I've embedded that here for you.

Perhaps this is a thematic move for black?

I'm sure I'm only the millionth person in chess history to call a French Defence that barely holds out a "French Resistance". Be kind, I'm new to this!