No offence taken the other day. Your just a fierce competitor. There's only one thing worse than losing at chess and that's losing more than once!

thanks for a playing a french structure. Never thought of the kf8 idea before.

I played another one with ...Kf8 just after. I have a stock of 4 videos from yesterday...don't want to spray them all at once, spacing them out a little. This ...Kf8 is an interesting idea and usually you'll catch your opponent i.e. you'll know some ideas and theory and he will not. But with absolute best play white of course retains an edge if he knows what he is doing.

wow, i never thought i would say that the French defense looks interesting.

I play the French quite a bit, it can get very wild. I really like the Qc7 line a lot. I have the Tal vs Botvinnik 1960 book by Tal and the first game of the match was in this line....Tal won so easily that Botvinnik switched to the Caro-Kann for the remaining games! Botvinnik then tried it again the following year during the rematch and lost that one too. Anyway I looked at these games so often I just sort of felt like Qc7 fit me perfectly.

Zibbit, is there any particular reason you played Ne7 before c5?

...Ne7 before ...c5 is just to avoid some lines. Against Bd2 I might play a line with ...b6 instead of ...c5 just to throw them off. Also meeting early Qg4 is easier with ...Ne7. Usually it doesn't matter and just transposes.

Great video and analysis! It's also very nice to see you working out your reporatory.