Alekhine's Defence - History

History

The opening is named after Alexander Alekhine, who introduced it in the 1921 Budapest tournament in games against Endre Steiner and Fritz Sämisch. Four years later, the editors of the Fourth Edition of Modern Chess Openings (MCO-4) wrote, "Nothing is more indicative of the iconoclastic conceptions of the 'hypermodern school' than the bizarre defence introduced by Alekhine ... . Although opposing to all tenets of the classical school, Black allows his King's Knight to be driven about the board in the early stages of the game, in the expectation of provoking a weakness in White's centre pawns."

In addition to Alekhine, another early exponent of the defence was Ernst Grünfeld.

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