French Defence
1.e4 e6 · you play black
3 chapters, 8 moves deep, get you to 91% of what you will actually meet. The other 2 cover the last 6%.
Course progress
0 of 288 decisions
0 still learning · 288 not asked yet
2 more chapters are below the depth for your level, together 6% of what you meet.
Drill this opening
Any chapter or study, asked cold — whether or not you owe it. Nothing here is unlocked by anything else.
At your level
Level
Improving
Depth
16 plies of this opening
Chapters
3
Decisions
288 of 325
0/288
How this goes wrong at your level
Counted from 4,500,000 games by players in your band. These are moves that get played often and then lose — no engine was asked for an opinion.
What you are most likely to fall for
1.e4 e6 2.d4 b6 3.d5
exd5 — played 20% of the time here.
You score 20% after it, against 52% for everything else played from this position, over 58 games.
Instead:
Bb7
53%
1.e4 e6 2.d4 b6 3.Nf3 Bb7 4.Nc3 Bb4 5.Bd2 Bxc3 6.Bxc3 Bxe4 7.d5
Bxd5 — played 29% of the time here.
You score 10% after it, against 53% for everything else played from this position, over 35 games.
Instead:
Nf6
58%
1.e4 e6 2.f4 d5 3.e5 Nc6 4.Nf3
f6 — played 12% of the time here.
You score 24% after it, against 53% for everything else played from this position, over 49 games.
Instead:
Bd7
60%
Bc5
53%
Nge7
43%
1.e4 e6 2.d4 d5 3.Nc3 dxe4 4.Nxe4 Nf6 5.Nxf6+ Qxf6 6.Nf3
Bb4+ — played 5% of the time here.
You score 18% after it, against 43% for everything else played from this position, over 50 games.
Instead:
h6
50%
Qd8
49%
c5
44%
What your opponents fall for
1.e4 e6 2.d4 d5 3.Nc3 Nf6 4.Bg5 dxe4 5.Nxe4 Be7
Nf3 — played 3% of the time here.
They score 22% after it, against 52% for everything else played from this position, over 44 games.
They should play:
Bd3
61%
Bxf6
55%
Nxf6+
51%
Found by testing 94,688 decisions in your band’s games and keeping only those where the drop in score is more than four standard errors below the alternatives. About 3.17 of these would be expected by chance alone.
Your moves are chosen by the engine and checked against 3,439,091 games (Lichess Elite (2500+ vs 2300+), 2024-12 → 2025-11); their replies are what people actually play. Evaluations from Lichess Stockfish evaluations (database.lichess.org) (CC0 1.0 Universal), covering 88% of this course.