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Aronian: "What would the French do?"

Right after 29:00 minutes in, Levon Aronian asks what the French would play in his position. He then comes up with a move and a room full of GM's oh la la, whilst Yasser Seirawan quibs, " what a trashy move!". I missed the joke, but maybe someone on this site might understand and appreciate it. Not saying someone French or anything... ;)

www.youtube.com/watch?v=yfLpejANj_8

Most likely a reference to the common joke about the French always retreating/surrendering, owing to Rc7 abandoning the open file and preparing a further retreat of the knight to d7 :)
Yes, I thought of that at first, then I thought about "Esprit" (NOT to be confused with the perhaps more common phrase "esprit de corps") and thought maybe it could have been that.

I also imagine it could have been simply referring to the opening, maybe he saw some similarity in structure or some stylistic similarity to the French defense and he was just going for a "double entendre"....

I don't know, maybe it was just an Armenian(ie racist ) thing.

I may have given more weight to the critical importance of that period of a few moments than it really has.

Actually, I tend to give too much weight to the game a lot, the moves can seem so heavy and unfree, bound limited, restricted, doomed, inevitable, critical....so perhaps Aronian was also just trying to free himself of this "spirit of gravity" and play as the French would play, with "Esprit", as a free-spirit rather than a man locked in a serious game.

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