ps: an dif you are interested on this line, see a recent game from the Bundesliga championhio where Karsten Mueller was playing White (www.chessgames.com)

I am answering without having the book near me but I will check it later on.
I dont recalls eeing anything about the move order you mentioned before. As you can see in another thread, I am not too fond of this book. However,
since i have seen here a good comment on the ook by someone I respect a lot, you might consider that I might be suffering of an attack of "shortsightness" and not being able to see through the book.

About f5, I recall he mentioning the more normal h6 instead. I will get back to you later on.

Ametanoitos wrote on 12/29/09 at 09:05:12:


Well, the latest book by Bogdanov covers the game Caruana-Adgenstein

One of the reasons I left the Pirc for the Alekhine is just that white has less influence on how the game will be like.
In the Pirc, white can really go for the type of position he likes to play: positionnal, aggressive, wild, going for a forced draw in a few moves or even going into a closed sicilian. Black must be able to adapt himself to all these setups.
In the Alekhine, white has of course a wide range of choice but in each of them Blacks keeps some vicious possibilities and the idea's in each variation are quite close to each other.

As Gurevich once stated when analysing a game (I think he played a Pirc with black): "And now I have complications". I think the Alekhine is all about this. Black gets a complicated position in which he feels a little bit more at home than white and hopes this will help him win the game.

As a player now rated 1396, I have played the Alekhine as my main weapon against 1.e4, and it have built up a slight plus score as Black with 1...Nf6.

2.Nc3 is very common at the club level, and I agree with both Davies' and Cox's books who recommend transposing to the Vienna with 2...e5. In fact, four out of six of my opponents have then continued with 3.Nf3 Nc6 4.Bc4?! Nxe4, which is an indication that many White players at this level have no clue as to what they should be doing.

The troublesome lines such as the Voronezh (1.e4 Nf6 2.e5 Nd5 3.c4 Nb6 4.d4 d6 5.exd6 cxd6 6.Nc3 g6 7.Be3 Bg7 8.Rc1 0-0 9.b3) pop up relatively rarely in my experience, but it becomes more and more common as the players get stronger. However, even if White does play one of the critical lines, games are rarely decided in the opening, so in most games there should be plenty of oppurtunity to make a tough fight out of it, even if White emerges with a +0.5 advantage. (In the one and only game where I have faced the Voronezh, White eventually emerged with a +6.0 advantage, but I still won it...)

The main trouble with the Alekhine is that White gets most of the choices in dictating the character of the game. If White wants to play something sharp and scary like the Four Pawns, something more restrained like the Exchange Variation, or put a bind on the Black position with the Chase Variation, Black can hardly avoid it.

I played ...exd6, as it seemed to suit me better for a reason I can't recall.  Probably ...cxd6 would have made my experience more exciting!

I forgot to mention that at this level, Cox's Starting Out book is excellent and I didn't feel a need to supplement it with anything.

I played the Alekhine a fair bit at around that level.  75% of my opponents played the exchange variation (1 e4 Nf6 2 e5 Nd5 3 c4 Nb6 4 d4 d6 5 exd6).  I didn't find it that exciting and ended up moving on, but my results were decent enough.