Tackling the French Defence

At the moment I'm playing in the Victorian Championship Reserves competition, and after a draw in the first round today I played white against the French- a pretty quick loss after an early miscalculation where I saw a couple of ghosts.

I don't have a lot of experience playing against the French and I found calculating all these possible variations in the center quite difficult- it's often not as simple as takes, takes back, next move! Often it's more like: takes, ignores the take and pushes pawn, piece moves, Queen moves with a tempo attack etc etc etc. So I recommend having the variations all worked out after exf6 before-hand.

Hopefully i'll win the next one against this guys son!