Alekhine's Defense

G'Day,

My name is Martin and I am a new member from Melbourne, Australia.

I loved chess as a young boy but drifted away from it over the years and now in my early 50's I've returned to this wonderful game.

I've been enjoying this excellent site and thought it was about time I tried to make a contribution by sharing a recent experience and game.

I was playing chess on my IPad on the train the other day and the guy sitting next to me told me that he loved chess and suggested we swap mobile numbers so we could play a game by text.

I played the White pieces and opened with e4. My opponent played Alekhine's defense.

I am not particularly familiar with Alekhine's defense but since I was a big fan of Bobby Fischer as I young lad I remembered that he played it a couple of times against Spassky in the 1972 World Championship match with good results. Basically my strategy was to occupy the center, push his Knight around the board and be careful not to overextend.

The game progressed as follows:

I find Alekhine's defense to be very interesting as some of the standard opening "cornerstones" seem to almost be disregarded. I felt very uncomfortable making 5 pawn moves in my first 6 moves but that uneasy feeling was offset somewhat by Black moving his Knight 4 times in his first 6 moves.

This game is not particularly instructive but I guess the one thing it does show is that if you play Alekhine's Defense as black you need to be most accurate with your play.

I did find it quite unusual that White mated Black in 17 moves without moving his Queen or either Rook even once.

Yeah black played 3 mistakes in a row here, or even more, I am fascinated by the alekhine but a bit afraid to lose 10-12 games learning it, best on move 3 was d6, and then after c4 the knight belongs on d7, instead of moving it to the rim and then not developing any pieces

The alekhine is an opening based on hypermodern ideas -- rapid development, allowing your opponent a quick pawn center, where black, after having enticed white to over extend his pawns, will attack the center from afar. It's an interesting opening and I like playing it as black. There are some things to look out for, notably the e-pawn, because if you capture and it get's too close to f7, you're in trouble.

Black's play was a textbook example on how NOT to play the Alekhine- and on top of that, he allowed a classic sacrifice which just screamed to be played.

I admit that I would also feel uneasy after 6.a3: "WTF, I have made five pawn moves and I'm completely winning- what's going wrong here?"