Thanks for your reply

I was mostly referring to situations where there are several human atractive moves with completely different engine evaluations. It is easy for a human to not choose the best line.

Also, in several books and chess courses etc, this line is given until move 16 with a statement like "White is winning
and you only need to explore this and that and play chess
to win"

But many times you lose because of what i described before.

First of all, my apologies for creating a new thread although I remeber that similar lines

have been discussed in the past. But was unable to find the right thread.


There isn't been a post for several months on the Alekhine, perhaps because it is in a dark shade, mainly due to the 4PA.

Even then, I think the mainline with 9...Be7 is holding, please take a look the correspondence data bases.


I am getting back to the old line with 9...Qd7 where we have written so many posts in the past.

From an engine point of view, I would say that 9...Qd7 does not equalize. However, one gets many positions that are a kind of a minefield, tricky to handle for humans, even if the engine shows a clear advantage for one side.

We know that engine analysis tends to overlook the second, or third-best moves. These moves can actually be really important, especially when the second-best isn’t nearly as good, or when there are several human-looking options. Some of those still hold up well, others totally change the position, but they often don’t get much attention.
Take the recent game between Hercegovac (2242) and Chyzy (2345) in 2025 as an example. 
It follows the line 10.Be2 0-0-0 11.0-0 f6, which is known as an old and bad move, then 12.d5 Nxe5 13.Nxe5 fxe5 14.a4 Kb8 (maybe a5 wouldn’t be worse) 15.a5 Nc8 16.Qb3, giving White a big advantage (this is folklore).
The game is as follows:

1. e4 Nf6 2. e5 Nd5 3. d4 d6 4. c4 Nb6 5. f4 dxe5 6. fxe5 Nc6 7. Be3 Bf5 8. Nc3 e6 9. Nf3 Qd7 10. Be2 O-O-O 11. O-O f6 12. d5 Nxe5 13. Nxe5 fxe5 14. a4 Kb8 15. a5 Nc8 16. Qb3 Be7 17. c5 exd5 18. Rxf5 d4 19. c6 Qxc6 20. Bf3 Qa6 21. Bf2 dxc3 22. Rxe5 cxb2 23. Rb1 Rd2 24. Be3 Bf6 25. Rb5 c6 26. Bxd2 cxb5 27. Bf4+ Ka8 28. Qf7 Ne7 29. Rxb2 Bxb2 30. Qxe7 Bd4+ 31. Kh1 b4 32. h4 b3 33. Qb4 b2 34. Kh2 Rc8 35. Be4 Bc3 36. Qb3 Bxa5 37. Qxb2 Bc7 38. Bxc7 Rxc7 39. Qe5 Qc4 40. g3 Qc5 41. Qe8+ Rc8 42. Qf7 Qc7 43. Qd5 h6 44. Kh3 Rd8 45. Qb3 a6 0-1

It is a nice game to watch (I saw, it by chance, on holidays, in playchess.com) full of twists. And even nicer to watch without an engine.
But also watching with an engine illustrates what I said above. In fact, being aware of the evaluation of this old line I rewatched it again with an engine.
My point is that White's 19th is what the engines call a “blunder,” dropping the evaluation from about +2.0 to 0.0. Then a few moves after that, on move 24 White makes another blunder, dropping the evaluation even further to -2.0.

To me, these so-called “blunders”, especially the first one, might look like big mistakes to engines or strong players, but from a human perspective, they don’t seem like obvious errors.

The players do not seem to be very well-known (but many strong players start out that way). 
The Black player has alreday played a similar position (this time in a blitz game) and also 9...Qd7
in other games.
Still, these days, I’d guess any 2300 ELO player (which is the case) is pretty familiar with engine evaluations. 
So it makes me wonder why Black has chosen this line .
Was Black aware of the "old" theory? Was Black aware of the engine evaluation?
Why did he chose it? Was  it because he is aware about the “minefield” that these positions can be?