French Defence lines by ICS

Bilbo wrote:I get Month 9 in a couple weeks so havn't seen it yet. It's probably consistent with their usual recommendations of choosing something slightly unusual to throw your opponent a little.

I've not had the chance to play many of their lines in OTB play as I rely on my tried and trusted QGD and 1.e5 and 1.d5 as Black but those openings that I have used tend to work out pretty well.

I liked their KID material and I've thrashed many people online with their Nc3 Dutch in under 20 moves, that seems a great little system if an opponent is unprepared.

If you want to play the French I'd play their lines, your paying for the course so you may as well use it.

So far I'm using their reportoire for the Indian Defences, basically anything after 1.d4 Nf6, apart from 2....e6 and Black transposing into a QGD or Queens Indian.

I also plan to study and use Catalan in the future but it might be a while. Catalans is a very sophisticated opening that requires players to have good positional understanding. I'm not there yet but I'm quickly progressing. For now I play the English.

The good thing about the Catalan is that you don't need to study huge amount of separate theory on NID/QID but you still have to study on how to face the Slav! But I will have to do that anyway even with English.

I intend to study their Catalan material though as I feel much of their White reportoire is built around that, the Slav lines and Benoni for example are all structured to match up with the Catalan.