Secret Sidelines in 1. e4 - How to surprise the Alekhine defense

So recently I annoyingly lost against the alekhine defense multiple times in a row, and came to the conclusion that my standard run of the mill four pawn attack won't do anymore. Unless of course I sat down and actually learned the plans, patterns and ideas and gained a rich understanding of this particular opening. How boring! Who has time for that! What I truly needed was a sacrificial and secret, yet simple and sound sideline!

After some time spent in the opening Explorer with stockfish running, I actually came up with a pretty cool line that goes like this:

This line technically still takes place in the realm of the four pawn attack, but luckily all the moves by black leading up to 6...Nc6 are by far the most common ones, so you'd get this pretty often (roughly 42% of Alekhine games I estimated).

At first 7. c5 may look counterintuitive - we allow Black's knight access to d5, basically rendering that usually thematic pawn break impossible for the near future. And in fact, the position appears to lack dynamic potential, which is probably why this has only been played twice in master games - despite the engine Eval of 0.4 bearing no huge difference to the vastly more popular Be3 at 0.7

So what's the point of this line? The point is that we surprise them with a secret weapon that is so rare (<1% !) that they'll never be prepared and so good we keep most of our initial opening advantage against the alekhine. And on top of that, or maybe most importantly, we get fun attacking positions with many ways to go wrong for black!

7...Nd5 is of course the topical move which we will spend most time looking at.

7...Qxd4 is an interesting alternative, but we don't need more than a single line to guarantee a comfortable advantage in the endgame.

Nd5

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8. Bc4 is our move of choice here, and there a three principal responses to it.

8...Bf5

is clearly the most active try, avoiding a french 🥖 bishop that would arise after e6. It can, however become a target along the open f-file, and therefore our response will be 9. Ne2!. Not only is Nf4 paired with g4 in the air, our rook on f1 has free vision and will apply constant pressure and may even sacrifice itself on f5 if the opportunity should come.

The next couple of moves are somewhat automatic... 9... e6 10. 0-0 Be7. We countinue with 11. Nbc3 here which sets up the first trap - the e6 pawn is overloaded defending both d5 and f5. And already a quarter of 2000+ players on lichess fall for it and castle! (Blitz or slower btw)
It is actually surprisingly difficult to play accurately as black in this position, since anything except Nxc3 will give us a clear upper hand.

The only correct move is to take on c3 and castle after we take back with our pawn. But our position will simply come to life with all the next moves we make, and chances to build up an attack are high. One sample line that occurs against the most common defense might go like this:

8.. e6

is no doubt the most solid way to meet our sideline, but it comes at the cost of a passive baguette-bishop on c8. This time 9. Nf3 makes the most sense because Ng5 will be the path forward. 9... Be7 10. 0-0 0-0 are once again automatic, but after the typical 11. Nc3 black needs to play b6 to fight back - if they make the mistake to play Nxc3 like they should in the Bf5 line, black is already lost!

This is precisely what makes this opening so dangerous: Black is occupied with chipping away at our c5 pawn, while we have free reign on the kindside that has no defenders.

That is why 11... b6 is necessary right away. We can take the time to play Ne4 and centralize the Knight, and if they play bxc5 the attack can start.

Nfg5!

This is of course a tactical variation and very aggressive and fun. If your oponent finds moves like h6 and f5 he can certainly defend, but of course chances are good he would make a mistake. So I would most likely play this myself, although there also is 13. dxc5 which is more safe and positional, if you're into that.

9... Be6

Is really just a sideline, but it sets up some Ne3 tricks we should know how to respond to.
Its really simple though, we play 9. Nf3 and let them waste time with their shenanigans. After 9... Ne3 10. Bxe3 Bxc4 we just go 11. Qc2 gaining a tempo and forcing 11...Bd5.

Then we castle, they probably play e6 and we can already start the assault with Ng5 since their idle bishop on d5 is too caught up admiring his own beauty to help in the defense of the king at all.

Qxd4

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Endgame Lovers will like this Line! but normal humans can also have a bit of fun.

After a forced line we get the classic situation where one side is up the exchange, but their knight is stuck in the corner. And luckily for us, black can't get it out without sacrificing an exchange back, where the ending/middlegame is clearly better for us, in part due to the bishop pair

Outro

Thanks for reading this blog I hope you got something out of it. As always, lemme know any feedback you've got or any other cool lines in the comments!
I tried to cut some unnecessary lines to avoid confusion this time so now its only the basics, but maybe it wasn't thourough enough?

P.S. Nimzo Indian Gambits pt. II coming soon!

Have a good day!