Options after 1. e4 nf6 2. nc3?

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Avatar of DasBurner

I've just bought Timothy Taylor's book Alekhine Alert per recommendation and have been enjoying it so far. I've found myself relatively comfortable with almost every variation of the Alekhine proper with 2. e5 (besides the Exchange variation for some reason?) even after only playing a few blitz games to train it. The only thing I don't really like about the Alekhine is when white plays 2. nc3. I don't like symmetrical positions, which is why I scrapped playing e4 e5 and d4 d5 a long time ago. But whenever white plays 2. nc3, I find myself forced into playing a rather symmetrical e4 e5 position like the Vienna or the Four Knight's game, and while I'm not horrible in those positions, I would still rather transpose into something different (The only e4 e5 position where I sort of enjoyed the positions I was getting was the Philidor, where I almost always played c6 b5 a5 and went for a big pawn storm on the queenside) & I believe Timothy Taylor's book advocates for a transposition into the Four Knight's game, which I would like to deviate from.

These are the options I know are available for Black:

Avatar of Jordan2177

you could play e6 and play pirc defense u could also play e5 which is recommended by people and computers or u could play nc6 those are my recomedations and before u play them study the lines and theory of it so u know.

Avatar of myusername456456

you'll need to deal with playing in symmetrical positions in some point of your chess career, so this is a good time to do so

Avatar of mrfreezyiceboy
PuffyFoot wrote:

you'll need to deal with playing in symmetrical positions in some point of your chess career, so this is a good time to do so

/\

Avatar of pfren

Disregard Taylor's scepticism, 2...d5 is entirely safe.

Avatar of EBowie

I agree with d5.  You'll see many push e5 to harass your knight.  Do the same, push d4, harassing his knight on c3 and so forth...

Avatar of DasBurner
pfren wrote:

Disregard Taylor's scepticism, 2...d5 is entirely safe.

I don't think Taylor mentions d5 (Although I haven't gotten to that chapter yet), that was just my skepticism. I'm horrible with the regular Scandinavian on both sides

Avatar of EBowie

Regular Scandinavian and the Scandinavian variation of Alekhine's play very differently

Avatar of tlay80
EBowie wrote:

Regular Scandinavian and the Scandinavian variation of Alekhine's play very differently

Right. I don't know the lines well, but my my impression is that d5 is the principled move here and much better for Black than the regular Scandinavian.  It's certainly the most common (played 3/4 of the time at the top levels), and it gives Black a plus score. (You should use that link I gave, rather than the chess.com opening explorer, which gives the misleading impression that e5 is the heavy favorite.  This is because opening explorer shows you positions reached, rather than moves actually played from within a given position.  So it's including thousands of games that reached the 1. e5 Nf5 2. Nc3 e5 position from a regular Vienna move order.)

Avatar of pfren
DaBabysBurner έγραψε:
pfren wrote:

Disregard Taylor's scepticism, 2...d5 is entirely safe.

I don't think Taylor mentions d5 (Although I haven't gotten to that chapter yet), that was just my skepticism. I'm horrible with the regular Scandinavian on both sides

 

He does, and says white is better (which is quite wrong). He even offers a bad analysis of a Hector game.

Avatar of Squashblossoms

Brother I thought you were dead all this talk about suicide every other post  here now you're back with a new Avatar holy smokes are you playing any games on here yet you know after my post I'm going to check your archive

Avatar of Squashblossoms

Good God pants you played some games hats off

Avatar of Squashblossoms

e4 Nf6 Nc3 g5 white sans guts

Avatar of DasBurner
Youfoundit wrote:

Brother I thought you were dead all this talk about suicide every other post  here now you're back with a new Avatar holy smokes are you playing any games on here yet you know after my post I'm going to check your archive

what?

Avatar of DasBurner
pfren wrote:
DaBabysBurner έγραψε:
pfren wrote:

Disregard Taylor's scepticism, 2...d5 is entirely safe.

I don't think Taylor mentions d5 (Although I haven't gotten to that chapter yet), that was just my skepticism. I'm horrible with the regular Scandinavian on both sides

 

He does, and says white is better (which is quite wrong). He even offers a bad analysis of a Hector game.

ah ok my bad

Avatar of Squashblossoms

I'm talking to pants don't you know how a thread works baby you talk to the previous post

Avatar of DasBurner
Youfoundit wrote:

I'm talking to pants don't you know how a thread works baby you talk to the previous post

you didn't quote anybody so I assumed you were referring to the OP...

Avatar of llama47

I had a friend I'd play blitz OTB against. He always played 1...Nf6.

One day I got tired of regular Alekhine positions and played 2.Nc3 and he played 2...d5. After trying that a while I didn't like those positions as white (I went back to playing regular Alekhine)

So yeah, 2...d5 is good IMO.