Let’s hope to see this in action during candidates matches.
Is Alekhine Defense playable at high level?
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As someone who has played the Alekhine on and off for years (at my mediocre 1950 FIDE level) I do not think that the rarity of the Alekhine is entirely due to its objective strenght. I think it is objectively about as good as the scandinavian, which seen a lot more play.
I think the real problem is the fact that the Alekhine allows white a lot of choice regarding what sort of game it's going to be. The modern mainlines after Nf3 where black plays an early dxe5 for example are very solid and very scandinavian like, and the exchange variation with exd6 can also be weirdly similar to a petroff defence. But white could instead decide to go for it with a 4 pawn attack and suddenly you are in a really sharp and theoretical line with a lot of concrete calculation involved.
If you are a black player and you quite fancy the first 2 lines i mentioned, you are probably going to hate those other sharper 4PA lines and start to wonder whether you should just play the scandinavian instead. And if you are fascinated by those sharper lines and have the time ot study the relevant theory, you could get that sort of position on the board more reliably by playing some mainline sicilian.
(in fairness there are also some sharper tries for black in the mainline, and those totally work at club level, but the question is about high level play and as far as I know both the Alburt variation with g6 and the older Bg4 lines have been in some theoretical trouble for many years, leaving black only with the solid but rather dry dxe5 lines)
Interesting debate. I commented to my dad recently that having followed top-level classical chess fairly closely for the past 18 months I'd not seen a single Alekhine's defence, whereas when he was younger it appeared as a serious opening fairly regularly, even if mostly as an occasional weapon. Anyone have examples of it in Super GM classical games in competitive tournaments over the past 15 years or so?
Good question. I went into openings explorer and played my way down a main line for a bit, then clicked the view all games from this position tab. There are some GM's that play it but it seems they were typically using it when player lower rated players.