The modernized Alekhine defense

When Thinkers Publishing suggested I could try to produce a book on the Alekhine Defense, since for some reason I seem to have the reputation of using maverick openings, this idea looked reasonable. In that Covid period I had nothing better to do after all! After a few months I however realized that Thinkers Publishing had passed me a hot potato (many thanks!), i.e. the arduous task of checking the serious recent works of Kornev and Negi, plus the mammoth book of Chetverik and Kalinichenko, not to mention some ‘already ancient’ suggestions from John Shaw dated 2016!

You will therefore find some references to those inspiring sources throughout this book (Chetverik & Kalinichenko being abbreviated to C&K).

I wasn’t sure at first whether I wanted to talk about ‘all existing’ lines of this intriguing opening, and discovered in the process there were quite a few, or whether I would sort them out to offer a Black repertoire. I finally decided on the first approach, to give you, dear reader, a broader choice. Among all the lines included in that book, the Four Pawns Attack Classical, covered in the Bonus Lines chapter, is probably the only one where a Black player would need more knowledge in order to be ‘safe’ from a theoretical standpoint.