Minev Nikolay. The French Defense New and Forgotten Ideas

Thinker's Press, 1988. — 254 p. — ISBN: 0-938650-36-X.The French Defense today is in its Golden Age. In almost all tournament Black achieves good results with this opening. Its popularity increases continually. It attracts the player of the black pieces with its complicated strategical fight, unbalanced positions, lasting counterplay in almost all variations, and its great number of tactical possibilities. Naturally, many books on the French have recently appeared on the market Unfortunately, many of them strive to impress the public with bold, definitive conclusions, but present nothing new, or even worse, they mislead the reader with recent, but badly played games. I don't believe in such extremes as, "How to refute the French Defense", or," After 1. e4 e6 Black has at least an equal game and White must fight for his life.The truth lies somewhere in between. The French is an opening in which the potential resources of the majority of positions are very great and will not be exhausted soon. It leads to a fight with chances for both sides. In short, the French Defense is a contemporary weapon against 1. e4, the theory of which is continually enriched and changed, and which needs independent work from the moment you meet it for the first time.In front of you is a book which represents the study of the French Defense from a different format. Those of you who have experienced the tedium of attempting to read through theoretical treatises dense with variations will, I think, have a pleasant surprise. The variations are structed according to the internationally accepted ECO opening code system, and illustrated with 450 short games from my collection. Contrary to current trends, my experience as a chess teacher has shown that students of opening theory more readily grasp the ideas and variations when their study includes short illustrative games.