The History and Use of the Alekhine's Defense

History

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 defense introduced by Alekhine ... . Although opposing to all tenets of the classical school, Black allows the 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 center pawns.

In addition to Alekhine, another early exponent of the defense was Ernst Grünfeld.

Use

The Alekhine's Defense was more popular in the past. For instance, Fischer used it in two games against Boris Spassky in the World Chess Championship 1972.

Viktor Korchnoi also included the defense in his repertoire, leading to its respectable reputation.

Nowadays, Alekhine's defense is not so common at the top level. 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 GM 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.

Currently, grandmasters Shabalov and Minasian use the opening with regularity, while Aronian, Adams, and Nakamura will use it on occasion. Carlsen does not employ the opening frequently, but he has used it occasionally in competitive games, most notably he defeated the former World Chess Champion Topalov in Linares 2008 employing the Alekhine's defense.

A game by Napoléon Bonaparte from the 19th century shows the oldest known example of Alekhine's Defense being employed in a game. 

Napoléon won the game.