The French Defence is a very powerful opening against 1.e4-players who play aggressively. Against the French you have to understand the underlying positional theme, otherwise you will quickly get a difficult position. As all major openings, the French Defence is full of concepts and variations. Many books leave the students with lines and ideas that are easy to mix up. In this DVD, you will be presented a coherent strategic opening repertoire against 1.e4. The main theme is to always attack White's centre with the f- and c-pawns, and then with pieces, until nothing is left of it. The recommended repertoire is based on comprehension rather than memorization. The pedagogic idea is to give you an integrated understanding that will help you to solve all kind of problems over the board. You will learn which central pawn formations in centre, so that you will be able to implement powerful manoeuvres and to recognise small strong moves. You will also learn when it is time to switch to an attack against the opponent's king. The recommended lines are solid and you shouldl be able to play the lines many years without having to bother too much about recent developments.

This DVD covers: 1.e4 e6 2.d4 d5 3.e5 c5 1.e4 e6 2.d4 d5 3.Nd2 Nf6 4.e5 Nfd7 1.e4 e6 2.d4 d5 3.Nc3 Nf6 4.e5 Nfd7 1.e4 e6 2.d4 d5 3.Nc3 Nf6 4.Bg5 Be7 1.e4 e6 2.exd5 1.e4 e6 2.Nf3 d5 3.Nc3 1.e4 e6 2.d3 (King's Indian Attack) 1.e4 e6 2.Qe2 1.e4 e6 2.Nf3 d5 3.b4 (Wing Gambit)

Video running time: 6h 48min

The International Master Ari Ziegler is a renowned theoretician in Sweden. He has a long career as a chess teacher; here he happily shares his own repertoire and some unplayed novelties with the viewer.

System requirements: Pentium-Processor at 300 Mhz or higher, 64 MB RAM, Windows 98 SE, Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Media Player 9.0, DVD drive