French Defense

Named after a correspondence match between London and Paris in 1834, in which the Paris team played it. Black builds a solid pawn chain with ...e6 and ...d5 and strikes at the centre later.

It is reached after 2 moves: 1. e4 e6.

White is to move and has 30 legal moves. Over the next four moves — two for each side — the game can branch into 822,484 different games. Those games reach 271,695 different positions: most positions can be reached in more than one way, 3 on average.

The Lichess opening list names 214 further lines after this position, such as Normal Variation (2. d4) and King's Indian Attack (2. d3).