Don’t let the fancy names confuse you. These openings for black are both good responses to play when white does E4 (king’s pawn two spaces) as their first move. I am teaching these two openings together in one post because I want to talk about their strengths and weaknesses. Depending on what your goals are, you may prefer one or the other.
I will show you pictures of each and then talk about their pros and cons. Note that both of these have a similar goal of moving the queen’s pawn two squares but defending it with a pawn.
French Defense
Caro Kann Defense
You may look at these pictures and wonder what the point of all this is. The point is that you want to move your queen’s pawn but then the white pawn will take it. You can of course always try the Scandinavian Defense if you like to live dangerously, but the idea here is to not risk bringing out your queen before it is ready.
We don’t know what move white will do next before we have a chance to move our queen’s pawn. For the purposes of this lesson, let’s assume.
Therefore, if you move your queen’s pawn two squares and white captures it, no matter which of those pawns you decided to move, they can now capture the white pawn. The results will look something like this depending on which you chose.
French Defense: Exchange Variation
Caro-Kann Defense: Exchange Variation
As you can see, the main difference between the results is which pawn is missing on your side and which direction your queen can move diagonally. Therefore, plan accordingly to what you plan to do with your queen.
But if you are a new player, you may be thinking “But I don’t know what my plans are yet! Which do you personally recommend, Chastity?”. If this is you, then I offer my advice! Go with the French defense! Notice that in the French Defense Exchange Variation above, both bishops are able to move out. This gives you options so you can decide later how you want to attack white. I seem to win more of my games with the French Defense instead of Caro-Kann Defense for this very reason.
But in either case, watch out because it is white’s turn. You can almost guarantee that white will attempt to put you in check in some way. But you have knights and bishops to defend either way!
Also, white could totally move a pawn to C4 and bring you into the Queen’s Gambit.
I also did a short video on these openings as part of my June 2 2024 stream.
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