So... which one is faster (NULl value is not an issue), and are indexed.
SELECT * FROM A
JOIN B b ON b.id = a.id
JOIN C c ON c.id = b.id
WHERE A.id = \
Use EXPLAIN to see the query plan. It's probably the same plan for both cases, so I doubt it makes much difference, assuming there are no rows that don't match. But these are two different queries so it really doesn't make sense to compare them - you should just use the correct one.
Why not use the "INNER JOIN" keyword instead of "LEFT JOIN"?