Tree path 3 levels French Defense › Normal Variation › French Defense
- Chess Codex
- French Defense C00
- Normal Variation C00
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French Defense
Overview
French Defense is a variation within the Open Games family, indexed as ECO C00.
The Open Games group covers open games — classical 1.e4 e5 openings where both sides contest the centre directly with pawns.
It begins with 4 plies and takes 1. e4 e6 2. d4 d5 to reach the canonical position.
It is a variation of French Defense: Normal Variation, which itself descends from the root opening French Defense.
It is the root of 10 named variations, with Advance Variation, Alapin Gambit, Diemer-Duhm Gambit, and others among the most studied.
Across every depth of the tree this branch holds 176 documented sub-variations, reflecting decades of analytical work.
Step through the moves on the interactive board below, review the live Lichess statistics, or play this position against Stockfish at one of six difficulty levels.
- ECO code
- C00
- Group
- Open Games (C)
- Plies
- 4
- Direct variations
- 10
- Total in subtree
- 176
This overview is generated automatically from the opening's metadata. Know this line well? Write a description — submissions are reviewed before publishing.
Statistics from Lichess
75,437,698 games · White 47.8% / Draw 5.3% / Black 46.9%
| Moves | Games | W / D / B |
|---|---|---|
| e5 | 23,836,374 | |
| exd5 | 22,189,223 | |
| Nc3 | 17,418,200 | |
| Nd2 | 8,978,047 | |
| Bd3 | 1,714,155 | |
| c4 | 371,448 | |
| Be3 | 251,598 | |
| f3 | 223,822 |
Source: Lichess Opening Explorer · cached 2026-09-26 01:00:31
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Variations (10)
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