Alekhine's Defence
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| Moves | 1.e4 Nf6 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| ECO | B02–B05 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Origin | Alexander Alekhine, Budapest 1921 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Named after | Alexander Alekhine | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Parent | King's Pawn Game | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Alekhine's Defence is a chess opening which begins with the moves:
Black tempts White's pawns forward to form a broad pawn centre, with plans to undermine and attack the white structure later in the spirit of hypermodern defence. White's imposing mass of pawns in the centre often includes pawns on c4, d4, e5, and f4. Grandmaster Nick de Firmian observes of Alekhine's Defence in MCO-15 (2008), "The game immediately loses any sense of symmetry or balance, which makes the opening a good choice for aggressive fighting players."
The Encyclopaedia of Chess Openings (ECO) has four codes for Alekhine's Defence, B02 through B05:
The opening is named after Alexander Alekhine, who introduced it in the 1921 Budapest tournament in games against Endre Steiner and Fritz Sämisch. Four years later, the editors of the Fourth Edition of Modern Chess Openings (MCO-4) wrote:
Nothing is more indicative of the iconoclastic conceptions of the 'hypermodern school' than the bizarre defence introduced by Alekhine ... . Although opposing to all tenets of the classical school, Black allows his King's Knight to be driven about the board in the early stages of the game, in the expectation of provoking a weakness in White's centre pawns.
In addition to Alekhine, another early exponent of the defence was Ernst Grünfeld.
The popularity of Alekhine's Defence waxes and wanes; currently it is not very common. De Firmian observes, "The fashion could quickly change if some champion of the opening takes up the cause, as the results Black has obtained in practice are good." The opening's current highest-rated proponent is Grandmaster Vassily Ivanchuk, although Lev Alburt played it at grandmaster level almost exclusively during his career and was responsible for many contributions in both theory and practice. De Firmian writes, "Currently Grandmasters Shabalov and Minasian use the opening with regularity, while Aronian, Adams, and Nakamura will use it on occasion. In the past, great players such as Fischer and Korchnoi included the defence in their repertoire, leading to its respectable reputation."
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