French or Caro Kann?

Question

I find the French more aggressive, as black gets easy queenside play with pieces and generally a pawn avalanche. However, my friend debates that the Caro is better than the French because the Caro allows a queenside expansion as well, but "you get to play with all your pieces" (referring, of course, to the bad light squared bishop in the French). We both realize that the French bishop can be traded off in many lines with maneuvers like b6, Ba6, where either white trades the bishop, or has a difficult time castling kingside/coordinating kingside pieces. But its not always possible, and even avid French players will admit that its difficult to activate the slacker on c8. What would be a good argument to counter my friend's argument? Are there any other arguments (from an objective perspective, preferably) to support playing the French or the Caro Kann?

Answer 1

I can think of a couple counter arguments against what your friend says:

1) Sure in the Caro-Kann you can easily develop your Bishop outside the pawn chain, but there are several variations where the Bishop ends up being a target when developed to f5. The most prominent example is in the advance Caro-Kann:

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1. e4 c6 2. d4 d5 3. e5 Bf5 4. Nc3 e6 5. g4 

1. The fact that the pawn is on c6 means the b8 knight is deprived of its best square to pressure the base of the pawn chain on d4. Essentially you are trading your traditional bad bishop for a bad knight. You can't have everything!

2. Because black played c6 first, a further c5 to pressure the center if not well timed is a loss of tempi compared to the french where you play c5 in one go. This means that in a lot of lines, black must do a lot of prep work before he can afford to play c5, meaning there is also less pressure against white's center. This allows white a lot more leeway as to how he wants to organize his forces. Compare this to the french advance where you quickly play moves like c5, Nc6, Qb6 to pressure the center. Those moves certainly aren't possible to play as quickly in the Caro-Kann. Furthermore, if black opens the center too quickly in the Caro-Kann, he may wish his bishop were back inside the pawn chain to guard against annoying checks on the a4-e8 diagonal!

Ultimately, a debate over whether or not the Caro-Kann is better than the French is fruitless. They are both good openings of equal strength, and your choice to play one over the other is a purely stylistic choice.