by Valentin Bogdanov, 127pp. (Gambit 2009)

Read an excerpt here

The Alekhine is arguably the most forcing and aggressive reply to 1 e4. Black immediately forces the pace and drags the game onto his own favoured territory. This strategy is not without risk, but those who specialize in the Alekhine find that the opening has a real practical sting and quick-strike potential.

This book describes the main positional and tactical themes unique to the Alekhine, and the principal directions of play in modern practice. The coverage is even-handed, and there are abundant ideas presented to both sides, including ways for White to seek to consolidate his space advantage, or else to try to blast Black off the board.

The author, Valentin Bogdanov, has a wealth of experience with the Alekhine, having played it over the course of more than three decades. Moreover, he was active in Odessa chess at the time when the Alekhine was extensively developed by a group of players including GM Semion Palatnik and three-time US Champion Lev Alburt. Thus he provides us not only with the benefit of his own accumulated wisdom, but also with insights gleaned from work with some of the greatest Alekhine devotees of all time.

International Master Valentin Bogdanov has over thirty years' experience as a chess trainer, and is from Ukraine. His pupils include Moskalenko, Savchenko and Drozdovsky, and he has acted as a second for the well-known grandmaster and theoretician Viacheslav Eingorn since the late 1970s. This is his third book for Gambit.

"The author ... has played the Alekhine for more than three decades, so he is well placed to write about the opening. Knowing this, one might expect him to write a repertoire book from Black's perspective, but in reality he has taken a more even-handed approach with no apparent bias to either side. The book consists of seven chapters, and the material is presented via twenty six illustrative games, mostly taken from modern praxis. Obviously the coverage cannot be comprehensive in such a small number of games, and the basic aim is to present the main positional and tactical themes which are unique to the Alekhine. I suspect that the book will appeal to the already converted, but whether or not it will add to the number of devotees remains to be seen." - Alan Sutton, En Passant

"Valentin Bogdanov covers nearly every possible line of the Alekhine,as for example ones you only see in Gambit magazine as 1.e4 Nf6 2.e5 Nd5 3.d4 d6 4.Nf3 Nc6, where he writes: '4….Nc6 is considered a risky approach, but it leads to tense, concrete play that appeals to quite a number of Alekhine players. The fact that it has been played quite a lot in high-level correspondence games over many years shows that it needs to be taken seriously.' Conclusion: A very instructive read on the Alekhine!" - John Elburg, chessbooks.nl

"...at the 62nd Russian championship in Moscow, Alexander Grischuk scored a wonderful victory with the exchange sacrifice in the Alekhine defense. The popularity of the opening was on the rise recently, and several top players adopted it with black. Moreover, new trends are being discussed by Ukraine's International Master Valentin Bogdanov in his book Play the Alekhine, recently published by Gambit Publications. Grischuk's opponent, Alexander Riazantsev, must have been surprised by the force of the exchange sacrifice and was slowly suffocated." - GM Lubomir Kavalek, Washington Post