Alekhine, or Modern defence?

Hi, I must confess that I am tempted to switch from my main defence against 1.e4, the modern 1...g6, to Alekhine.

The reason? No strong such, but, sure, I think the 150 attack is easier to play for white than for black. Any slight move-order "error", and you are dead. Not so for white.

I am not in any way prepared to play some BIG main defence, like Sicilian, or French, or Roy Lopez. I want to get up-and-running, in some slightly less usual system.

When I played 1.e4 myself, I always found it hard to get real pressure against Alekhine

2...Nc3 e5 (the modern way to deal with 2.Nc3 since 2...d5 is having an hard time lately) is far from being a draw; it's a trasposition to the vienna game, which can get quite interesting. Alexlaw is right, they will play 2.Nc3 against you very often, but i often feel like those white players (leaving aside the very occasional vienna/4 knights player) are just trolling themselves. The typical 2.Nc3 player at our level has no experience whatsoever in the vienna and often ends in trouble in a few moves; so as long as you do a little homework 2.Nc3 is nothing to fear.

If you decide to pick up a book on this subject,I strongly recommend the older book "starting out:the alekhine defence" (john cox) over the newer one written by taylor. 

Going into the Vienna is not a draw necessarily as it takes two to cooperate.  For example:

1.e4 Nf6 2.Nc3 e5 3.Bc4 Nxe4 4.Qh5 Nd6 5.Bb3 Nc6 6.Nb5 is a very complicated variation.

Now unless you base your openings around the Vienna, I don't really see a reason to shy away from the Alekhine.  So in other words, black has a psychological advantage over white.

2.Nc3 d5 is perfectly fine for Black. Nevermind the stupid comments in Taylor's Alekhine book, they are too shallow to be taken seriously. He just saw a few games by Hector playing white, and went on discarding 2...d5 without any serious analysis.

I've told to my non-advanced students to play 2.Nc3, but objectively speaking white has NOTHING after the natural, and best 2...d5.

Oh, and 1.e4 Nf6 2.Nc3 e5 3.Bc4 Nxe4 4.Qh5 Nd6 5.Bb3 Be7 (!) is one of the fastest CLEAN equalities Black can get in the 1.e4 e5 openings.

Thanks for the information, pfen. My claim was not based on taylor's book but on the cox one, where a similar disbelief in the variation is expressed(too lazy to chech now, but if i remember correctly he considers 3.e5 Nd7 the only decent follow-up, 3...d4 and 3...Ne4 being supposedly inferior, and overall he suggests 2...e5). I guess both 2...d5 and 2...e5 are acceptable then.

Taylor's book is IMO poor: Too much biased towards Black, too shallow analysis, much quoted contunuations missed completely.

The problem is virtually in any variation he deals with, e.g. against the exchange variation he recommends 1.e4 Nf6 2.e5 Nd5 3.d4 d6 4.c4 Nb6 5.ed6 ed6 6.Nc3 Nc6, but he completely fails to deal with the correct move order for White: 7.Be3 Be7 8.Nf3 Bg4 9.h3! Bh5 10.b3! (10.Be2 Bxf3! 11.Bxf3 Nxc4 12.Qa4 Nb6 13.Bxc6+ bc6 14.Qxc6+ Qd7 15.Qf3 is a tad better for white, but Black should hold this) 10...0-0 11.Be2 Bf6 12.0-0, when his stock 11... d5 plan does not work due to 12.c5 Nc8 13.b4!, and if Black plays first something like 11...Bf6 or 11...Re8, then 12.Rc1! is strong (12.Qd2 also goes, but looks less accurate).

You will find countless such cases in the book. I have not read Cox's book, but he is surely a much better writer than Taylor (his Berlin book which I have is simply excellent).

Another problem with taylor is that he used a lot of space to deal with relatively unchallenging white moves (like 4.Nf3 dxe5 5.dxe5, or 2.d3). So in the end even if he covers a much more limited ground than cox in the same space (cox book is inteded as a guide on the alekhine for both sides, so for example he covers not only the miles and kengis but also 4...Bg4 (both with 5...e6 and 5...c6), 4...g6 and 4...Nc6!? to some extent) the book is not really more detailed where it counts. In general i have seen amateurs being equally happy with Taylor or Cox, and strong/titled players preferring Cox's book by far.

Guys, thanks to all of you, for so many enthusiastic answers! 

I have noticed that many play 2...Nc3, whice I certainly don't consider to be as difficult to meet as e.g., the 150 attack in Pirc, or the Saemich in KID. 

So, Taylor's book isn't that good; hmm. 

Did any of you play the Modern Defence too? Any ideas what is the best pragmatic choice here? I reckon that Modern is not well known by white, roughly as studied as Alekhine by most players. 

Just to add a little statistical reality to things, over on chesslab, where it's pretty easy to sort games by level, in games where at least one player was over 2200, the 2...d5 line of the Alekhine scored +7 -9 =5 so far in 2012.  Which is to say, about 55% for black.  So even if it's under a theoretical cloud, it's still scoring really well even at the high levels.  So in a club, it's going to be more than fine.

Contrast to the Vienna, which has led to known paths to equality in all lines since dinosaurs walked the earth.  This has scored +27 -17 =22.  Or about 54% for white across games at that same level.

Personally, the idea of handling the black side of the Voronezh variation does not appeal to me at all.

And factly, I think the modern is better than the exchange for white. Taylor's coverage of both the Kengis and Miles variations is flaed, and annoyingly biased. I wouldn't blame him that much, after all he does have to make his product appetizing to his audience- but he does wrap it with a very thin tissue...

It's just that a newbie who can understand the principles of a couple of basic pawn structures, can handle very well the white side of the exchange variation without the need of memorizing move strings.

I can't really tell if 5...ed6 is better, or worse than 5...cd6. It's probably just a matter of taste: Both are depressing.

And yes, I would suggest 1...e5 or 1...e6 as your first move.

Pfen is a strong player who certainly meets strong chess professionals in his own games; as far of club level chess is concerned, i always played 5...cxd6 and never had particular trouble against the Voronezh. It takes a considerably strong white played to handle this setup in a poisonous way.  Also i tought that the latest theoretical developments have been rather benign to black in this variation (which was once considered absolutely deadly, with black scoring around 25%); the mainline with e5 if i remember correctly has been more or less worked out to a draw in correspondence chess, white Bf5!? has received some attention too on another website, the mainline feathuring an unclear piece sac; i don't know if it's going to be proven fully sound, but certainly not depressing on the face of it. On the whole i don't think a club player should fear the voronezh, although i'm sure that pfen is right in saying that in a higher sense it's a very challenging line to face.

Just a hint: Get the two DVD's on open games made by GM Leonid Kritz. Both by Chessbase, quite short, aimed at not-so-stong players. They cover briefly a complete SOUND repertoire based on 1...e5/ Berlin Wall.

Or get Sakaev's superb book on the Petrov, which is clearly targets more advanced players.

Here's a link to the Berlin DVD:

http://chessbase-shop.com/en/products/kritz60_min_berlin_wall

Mind you that here Kritz, definitely a Berlin expert, advocates the SIMPLEST and most solid variation of the Berlin wall, and his analysis is not hi-level (a correct decision). If you are more ambitious, you can get the Berlin book by John Cox, or the fairly new one by Igor Lysyj.

The other Kritz DVD is just for the two knights, both colors involved, not a full repertoire- apologies. You can use Lysyj's companion volume on the Chess Stars publisher (issued just a couple of months ago). Or the excellent book by Marin on Quality Chess, which is already some 6 years old, and a classic.

True. But on the other hand the Modern is an extremely demanding opening, because the "best lines" can lead to a wide variety of pawn patterns. Handling all of them properly is definitely not an easy task at all- believe me.

Just fo the record, the Marin book doesn't advocate the two knights.  It gives the Bc5 lines against the Italian.  I'm sure pfren knew this, but I don't think that was clear up above.

Emms has a repertoire book on beating the open games that features the two knights if you wanna go that way.  But Marin's book is better, fo sure.

I've had a few wins with the Brooklyn Defense, a modified Alekhine that retreats the knight to g8 after 2. e5. Works nicely as a surprise, because few have ever seen it before. The basic idea is that the black knight has better options from g8 than b3, and the extra tempo White gains from c4 in the usual Alekhine's is avoided.

An idea from Wikipedia is the Planinc Variation to Alekhine's. I've tried it a couple times but find it far too risky. White has to ponder his sixth move carefully but if he spends enough time he can pull through.

Overall, yes Alekhine's is difficult when playing against an experienced opponent. I think the main use for the opening would be in speed chess. White's pawn structure can hold and become like a python squeezing all the life out of Black.

I have watched many games with the Modern Defense and it seldom goes well for Black.

A whole bunch of nothing, I bet.

It was a good few years ago but I think I vaguely remember IM Cox writing on the chesspub forum about his 4PA troubles. Don't quote me on this but as I recall he used to play the trappy dxe-c5 line (game 33 in the book) but ran into some trouble against some early Bg5 line, and since he had to play 1.e4 e5 anyway to get experience for his berlin book he ended up dropping the alekhine defence.

I'm not aware of big problems coming up for black in the mainline of the 4PA.

About Alekhine defence, u can study Taylor's "Alekhine Alert!", which gives an excellent repertoire on 1.e4 Nf6.

On 4 pawns attack, he recommends g6 idea which seems quite fine and fun to play.