Has the Alekhine Defense been refuted?

In Alekhine Alert, Timothy Taylor states that after 1. e4 Nf6 2. Nc3, Black should face facts and play 3... e5. 

He writes that "after 2. Nc3 the opening is not an Alekhine. Stubbornly trying to make it so by playing 2... d5 leads to something like an Alekhine (yes, your knight gets kicked), but not a good Alekhine or a traditional Alekhine."

He claims that after Black plays d5, "no solution [...] has been found to date" to 3. e5 because after 3... Nfd7 follows the pawn sacrifice 4. e6 and after 3... Ne4 White should play 4. Nce2 "when Black's advanced knight has no secure way home and invites tempo-gaining attacks."

I'm certainly going to play 2. Nc3 as White whenever I face the Alekhine from now on, but it's the Black side that concerns me.

When I play the Alekhine here on chess.com, 2. Nc3 is the second most popular move I face, accounting for about a third of all games. I get away with it because White often opts for the Sandinavian Exchange variation, but I'm very worried, especially for my OTB play. If my opponents find out about Taylor's idea, I'm faced with some very uncomfortable choices.

Being the pessimist that I am, I now think that sooner or later, I'll have to give up the Alekhine altogether. Or am I wrong? Does Taylor exaggerate and is there a playable alternative after 2. Nc3?

Black also has 3..d4 and 3..Ne4.

And 3..Nfd7 still works as 4.e6?! is known not to be good for White (see Kobas-Shabalov, Philadelphia 1996) despite that it in one of my books gets an !!

Chess is a complicated game :-)

I don't have the book but from what I saw, 2 Nc3 is not a refutation. It is just a decision to allow black an equal game with 2..e5.

I should make something clear:

An opening is refuted if a player playing the opening always comes out worse even with best play. This is not what I mean exactly, in this case.

What Taylor claims is that after 2. Nc3

1. White is better after 2...d5
2. 2... e5 equalises, but then the opening is no longer an Alekhine.

So if he is correct, there is no reason ever to play the Alekhine Defense anymore. It also means that White can skip studying Alekhine theory and just play 2. Nc3.

I'm not sure what the proper word is here. If "refuted" is not correct, maybe "obsolete".

And again, maybe Taylor is wrong.

According to the Engine and previous games black is more than fine, in fact he has a great position. Why do you think this is a refutation? It's far from it, in fact... it looks like black has equalised and white doesn't really have anything for pushing his pawn.


It either transposes into the french with d4 or if e6, black just has a fine position. Only at first glance perhaps optically does it look odd but there's no problems with development or space really.

I have that book! All I did was learn the Vienna and four knights.

However, black can easily equalize. After black plays d5 and white plays e5,  black has ...d4!? And after exf6 dxc3 fxg7 cxd2+ Bxd2 Bxg7 Qf3, black CAN get materialistic with ...Bxg2, Rd1, and ...Qd4! Which I saw could be played (as white unfortunately) in a correspondence game on lichess.

Why do you play Nfd7 or Ne5?

This is completely fine.

Go a bit further after Qf3, but yes, black is fine.

In theory, at least 

I used to play

Actually an interesting thing about the d5 Alekhine is that in his book “Attack with mikhail tal”, tal annotates ...d5 (or Nfd7, I forget) with a question mark, saying it wasn’t the best way to meet whites opening.

Scandinavian is closer to get refuted.

Two things:

1) The Alekhine is clearly weaker than the "Big 4", namely 1...c5, 1...c6, 1...e5, and 1...e6.

2) It is called transposing to another opening.  1.e4 Nf6 2.Nc3 e5 has simply transposed to a Vienna.  Just because a transposition exists does not make the opening as a whole pointless.

Here are other examples:

Scandinavian Defense - 1.e4 d5 2.exd5 Nf6 3.d4! c6 4.c4! cxd5 5.Nc3 is now a Panov-Botvinnik Attack in the Caro-Kann.  Now 5...e6 6.Nf3 Bb4 leads to a direct position to various 4.e3 lines of the Nimzo-Indian Defense, despite starting off as a Scandinavian!

Bird's Opening, the lines with g3 often transpose to a Closed Sicilian.

The Sicilian can transpose to the French!  1.e4 c5 2.c3 e6 3.d4 d5 4.e5 is an Advance French!

The reason to quit the Alekhine is that it is weak due to 2.e5!, not because 2.Nc3?! Is best met by a transposition to the Vienna via 2...e5!  All that does is change the name of the opening.

I play the French not because it is called the French.  White can transpose to a King's Indian Attack (A08) and dodge the French (C00-C19).  I could care less.  You can call 1...e6 the throw-up Defense and I would play it!  Who cares about changes in names?

I know what transposing is. And in a way you're right. This thread is not going to send shockwaves through the entire chess community: everyone is not now going to play 2. Nc3. There will be more than enough opportunities for me to play classical Alekhine lines. 

(And by the way: I do not agree with you that the Alekhine "is weak due to 2.e5!")

But the thing is: I don't want to transpose into the Vienna. My dislike for the symmetrical lines that typically result from 1. e4 e5 is the whole point I took up the Alekhine in the first place. But it's either that, or play lines that Taylor says are not so good for Black.

Maybe, however, the 4... d4 lines that two posters have suggested are a way out.

Meanwhile I remain of the opinion that 2. Nc3 is the best way to counter the Alekhine. It requires zero study for White. The whole point (well, almost the whole point) of the Alekhine is to lure White into positions they don't know as well as Black. With 2. Nc3, White is basically saying: nah, I'm not having that.

I know - chess.com users say the darndest things.

(you know like how they say "kids say the dardnest things" when referring to the crazy sorts of things 3-6 year olds come up with).  

White plays 2. Nc3 , when he's scared sh.itless of the mainline Alekhine and is conceding the huge theoretical advantage for something much less like a Vienna (which is not in great theoretical standing and rare indeed among gms of today). 

as someone who plays 2.Nc3 whenever faced with an Alekhine, and a mainstream Alekhine player myself (1.2 - 1.3k games by now), I have to say, I just don't like the mainline for white, as in my eyes it's quite boring, and I believe black's chances in the four pawns attack is quite good. So, I stick with what I know. I assume alekhine players want to lure 1.e4 players onto their own battlegrounds, so I'll just pull a reverse on them. Not great objective chess, but it works.

I like what Bobby Fischer did:

yeah I hate playing against the Alekhine as well - it demands large amounts of theory and any mistake and your opponent will likely destroy your whole setup, it also commits your pawn structure really early as far as I know (especially the main line). I usually just play e5 and just safe moves after that which probably just concede the advantage. I would play the Vienna if I knew it well enough. The Alekhine should be outlawed, the most annoying opening ever. 

I used to hate playing against the Alekhine Defence, back when I played the 4 pawns attack. But ever since I accepted that it's okay to just take a smaller piece of the centre, I've found it a lot more manageable.

This is tough to play as white though: