Alekhine Defence

The advancing of the knight on the f6 square was already applied in the last century as an answer to the opening beginning with the move 1. e4. But this defence is indebted to Alekhine for its name and popularity, who played it first in 1921. Since that time this defence was played several times by many chess players, who tried to search for new ways, improve some of its main lines with more or less success. It has also a good reputation nowadays. The experts of this opening are Bagirov, Alburt, Baburin, Komarov, Blatny, P. Shabalov, but some of the super grandmasters (Timman, Adams, Ivanchuk, Yusupov, Miles Vaganian, Svidler) choose the system to play in great tournaments.
The basic idea of this opening is modern. Black provoking White`s pawns lures them forward where they can be attacked easily. White has a considerable space advantage at the beginning of the game and tries to keep and strengthen it. Black has to do its best to counter­balance this drawback, i.e. having less space in the middle game it has to mobilize its forces to attack White`s centre. Resulting from the character of the defence weaknesses come into being in White`s position, so Black has better chances in the endgame. The other important feature of the opening is that it has got very few lines leading to a draw, in which most pieces disappear from the board, thus the sides has no chance to fight for a win. Who, leading the black pieces, wants to win against his opponent striving just for a draw in the age of ChessBase and computers that knows how important it is.

• Casa editrice Caissa Hungary
• Codice 4340
• Anno 1999
• Pagine p. 278