#30
But #28 is more recent.
French was played by Alekhine
French was seen in Botvinnik World Championship matches, but then Botvinnik switched to Caro-Kann for his later world championship matches.
Korchnoi played French against Karpov.
Then French disappeared from World Championship matches.
So in expert opinion of world champions and their challengers
Scandinavian > Caro-Kann > French
That is only their opinion as it emerged over time and as derived from what they chose to play
Nobody knows anything for sure about openings
#31 I agree with this for sure with french vs caro-kann I didn't mean to ask which was better I meant to ask which one u like u bought Scandinavian Magnus Carlsen's words into it into the debate lets end the debate here it was a nice discussion though @tpr
French is dynamic and questions the center right away with heavy artillery on d4 and/or e5. It's an aggressive response to e4, like the sicilian. Caro-kann is a wall of thorns and has no breaks for black early on- in many lines. By playing Caro-kann your main aim is to get people to hate chess and then get them disqualified when they throw pieces at you in sheer frustration.
#33 So that means Caro Kann is good right ?
On french you take a strategical risk, on caro you take a dynamic one. On average yeah the french is a bit more agressive, since your risk is a bit higher, but it's move 2. You still can play both openings "boringly" or "dynamicly".
If you want a very basic comparison between the French and the Caro-Kann:
Both openings aim towards a solid structure with e6-d5 and breaking the white centre with c5,
If you play the French you accept that developing your light squared bishop will be a big problem but you aim for fast kingside development and you can play the c5 break in 1 move. Developing your kingside pieces early combined with white's space advantage might leave your kingside a bit vulnerable and the exchange variation might be a bit annoying.
If you play the Caro-Kann you accept that you have to spend an extra tempo to play the c5 break, Your kingside development will be slower, you might have less space in the opening and your light squared bishop might be a tempo gainer for white after developing it to f5, But at least you will be able to get rid of the damn thing before closing the pawn chain. This sounds really bad but black's position is solid enough and after completing his development black can think about generating counterplay
"Nowadays the situation is even worse for White. Top players are not anymore fighting for opening advantage - the best they can do against Caro-Kann is reaching a double edged position with many pieces left on the board, and then trying to outplay their opponents in the middle-game." Delchev, Informant 141
French works better against weak players, you can easily win a pawn. Against strong players, French and Caro-Kann are similar strength. The advantage of French over Sicilian is that the French defense doesn't have huge boring variations to memorise e.g. the Bc4 and Maroczy bind lines of Sicilian.
I used to hate the French exchange variation, but now I have developed some methods to spice it up. As Black you may play French exchange 20% of your total games, White only play it 5% of his total games, so Black still has some advantage from familiar positions.
Actually, they all play CK exchange as well^^
I love playing b3 against the french, and Nc3, Nxe4, Ng3, h4 set up against the carro-kann
french is aggresive but caro kann is passive as far as i know. There are really sharp line in the french defense. And if anyone has a aggresive line vs caro-kann Id love to knnow
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