Alekhine Defense

Introduced by Alexander Alekhine in 1921. Black provokes White’s pawns forward with 1...Nf6, planning to attack the overextended centre later.

It is reached after 2 moves: 1. e4 Nf6.

White is to move and has 30 legal moves. Over the next four moves — two for each side — the game can branch into 474,457 different games. Those games reach 164,983 different positions: most positions can be reached in more than one way, 2.9 on average.

The Lichess opening list names 55 further lines after this position, such as Normal Variation (2. e5 Nd5) and Scandinavian Variation (2. Nc3 d5).