The Caro-Kann Defence

I've recently started playing the Caro-Kann defence when white opens with e4. I was previously playing the French defence against that opening, but I was finding that many players at my level (around 1400) tend to play the advance variation against it, which I found challenging. I was ending up with plenty of space on the queenside but at best even with my opponent and more often very vulnerable on the kingside, blocked off by the pawn chain from responding to threats there. Meanwhile, white had usually castled kingside, significantly reducing my threats.

Switching to the Caro-Kann allows me to play a more balanced game by ensuring that the white-squared bishop escapes to the king side before a pawn chain develops. I feel more comfortable with this, as when playing the French I'm not good enough to attack the queen side without blundering or releasing the pressure and allowing a kingside attack. It also helps that lower level players such as myself seem to be a little flummoxed when they encounter the Caro-Kann, presumably because the c6 first move looks a bit strange. I'll probably get found out pretty quickly against higher level players - the fantasy variation in particular requires a lot of memorisation to emerge unscathed from so I'll need to work on that. For now though, I'm pretty happy and will be experimenting more with it over the next few months.