The French is imo underappreciated. It is definetly sound and playable (and being played) at the highest levels.
There is nothing wrong with playing 1...e6 against d4. However, you must be prepared to play against other moves than 2.d4 :)
#6 @ DrHack
"There are several players rated 2700+ that would disagree ;). Radjabov, Ponomariov, and Caruana to name some. It's such a good opening! :D"
I think I phrased it wrong. I absolutely agree, I really love the french defence :) What i wanted to express, is hoping on higher rated games for a 1. d4 and a 2. e4 is probably not the best option, like some mentioned.
Thank you all, for your feedback and thoughts :)
На d4 нужно играть кf6
Botvinnik and Bronstein used to play 1...e6 against 1 d4, also in their match for the World Championship. In case of 2 e4 they went French with 2...d5 and in case of 2 c4 they went Dutch with 2...f5.
So you could ask why not Dutch 1...f5 right away? One reason is avoidance of the Staunton Gambit 2 e4. Another reason are systems without 2 c4: lines with Nf3, g3, Bg2, Nd2 where it is possible to use square c4 for the Knight: Nc4 and Ne5.
1 d4 e6 2 c4 d5 makes less sense to me. If you have to learn queen's gambit declined then you can play 1...d5 right away.
1.d4 e6
If 2.e4 then d5 and French
If 2.c4 then you have some choices:
2.c4 Nf6 with the opportunity to go into the Nimzo/Bogo/Queen's Indian Defenses.
or 2.c4 f5 to go into the Dutch.
Those are the main ideas. I would recommend looking into Nf6 and the Nimzo/Bogo stuff. The ideas and plans are very easy to understand as far as what's going on (trade off your dark square bishop and then put your central pawns on dark squares).
If you play Nimzo/Bogo stuff and French 1...e6 is also a good move as it prevents Trompowsky. You just reduce number of possibilities for White:)
thank you very much for your feedback :), almost forgot about this thread...I got to take a look at the dutch, I guess.... Meanwhile i got kind of comfortable with the nimzo indian defence for black, when not playing against e4, which seems kinda great :) ... yeah, I guess at that point, when i posted, and still,, i love the french so much :3 I always want to play it :P
... I have to add, ... i always felt really uncomfortable at the d games, but now with the nimzo indian i have kind of a feeling like the french... like getting out the best, with playing black :D