The Strange Comforts of Superstition in Chess: The Story of the 5.e5 Move

In a chess club in Nha Trang, I sat watching a man past sixty place his white pieces on the board with a ritual nobody had taught him. He touched his index finger to the e2 pawn three times, drew a long breath, and only then pushed his first move. He told me it was an "old habit," a way of asking the board's permission before entering battle. Ten minutes later, when the game had passed the fifth move, he pushed his pawn to e5 - a move he could not fully explain choosing, only that it had "a fate" with him across hundreds of club games. That was the moment I realised: the chessboard, reputed to be the home of pure reason, is one of the most superstitious stages in all of sport.

The story of the 5.e5 move in the Italian Game is a textbook case of this phenomenon. In elite chess, where computers have reshaped all opening theory, people speak of "main lines" verified by engines to the last percentage point. But at club level, a different class of player seeks something else: moves the engine may rate as slightly inaccurate, yet which force opponents to face concrete problems right on the board, with no time to consult a database.

The move 5.e5 arises from the Scotch Gambit complex, with the sequence 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.d4 exd4 4.Bc4, after which White pushes the pawn to e5. It is a move carrying the romantic spirit of the previous century, when people played by intuition and courage rather than by evaluation bars. White temporarily sacrifices a pawn on d4 to seize space and attack, forcing Black to solve a concrete problem immediately. One distinction matters: 5.e5 is not a new move. It belongs to the tradition of the Russian chess school, where players trust the power of initiative over absolute accuracy. The ECO code of this complex sits in the C44 to C55 range, yet the "Modern variation" label the original article uses does not follow standard classification.

In Vietnam, the chess movement thrives in provincial clubs, where amateurs come for weekend tournaments. They have no private coaches, no up-to-date databases, and often learn openings from instructional articles or from friends. It is precisely in this environment that moves like 5.e5 find fertile ground.

Across forty-nine years observing Vietnamese chess, from player to commentator, I have witnessed more than a few occasions where such moves decided the fate of an entire club tournament. Players choose them not because they are strongest, but because they offer a sense of safety - the psychological "lucky charm" no evaluation bar can measure. In the age of the thirty-second video, I spent three months listening to a man talk about a game from 2026, only to understand why he still keeps an opening move he himself cannot explain.

What stands out is that the central claim of the move's advocates - that Black struggles to equalise in a straightforward way - is a claim about practical play, not about objective evaluation. This is where many opening articles go wrong. A move can be uncomfortable for the opponent while still not being objectively better. The "sharpness" of 5.e5 comes from attacking the f6 knight while White has temporarily lost the d4 pawn, forcing Black to solve a concrete problem at once - and it is precisely that urgency that makes an unprepared opponent feel uneasy.

Black's three main replies each have their own character. 5...d5 is the most direct counterstrike in the centre. 5...Ng4 brings the knight to attack the sensitive f2 pawn. 5...Ne4 is the boldest, placing the knight in the centre knowing it will be chased. All three demand that Black remember precisely, and any hesitation can be punished.

Throughout my career I have followed many games where this move appeared, and what I found is this: its value is inversely proportional to the opponent's level. Against a club player, it can be a ruthless weapon. Against a well-prepared player, one need only choose a different move order - such as 3...Nf6 or 4...Bc5 - to avoid the whole structure. In other words, this is a move that can be "declined," and its surprise value collapses against an opponent who has done the research.

Yevgeny Sveshnikov, the Russian grandmaster famed for using this move frequently with good results, is the only figure cited as a witness. But remember that Sveshnikov died in 2026, and his record belongs to history, not the present. Invoking his name is argumentative rather than quantitative evidence. There is no engine evaluation, no win-draw-loss rate, no specific game count offered. A move is never old, it merely waits for someone who knows how to listen - but the listener must also know the telling may lack the necessary numbers.

Here emerges the paradox I consider the heart of the story. Moves like 5.e5 survive not because they are good, but because they strike at the weakness of human memory. In an era when every player can carry a vast database in a pocket, the true weapon is no longer the strongest move, but the move the opponent has not prepared for. This is a psychological battle more than a theoretical one.

But faith in such moves has a dark side. A "trap-heavy" move backfires if the player himself does not know the refutation. In many games I have commentated, I saw players place their trust in a line they only half-remembered, then get punished by their own lack of preparation. Opening-recommendation articles tend to hide this dark side - they present the traps but rarely mention that they can also work against the user.

There is one detail of chess psychology I want to stress: faith in "fated" moves is not merely intellectual laziness. It reflects a deeper need - the need for control in a game where countless variables lie beyond reach. When one cannot calculate every branch, one reaches for something graspable: a familiar sequence, a sense of belonging, a small ritual before each game. Every chessboard I have crossed has a secret door, and the entrance is always a person.

At sixty-five, after nearly half a century bound to the board and the track, I realise the stadium and the chessboard share something deeply human. A 400m runner may have his own "lucky" shoes, and so may a chess player. Sport is never a pure equation; it is always an encounter between numbers and belief, between reason and the inexplicable.

The question I want to leave behind is not whether 5.e5 is the right move. The question is: if a less accurate move helps you play better, then which move is truly "right"? Perhaps, in chess as in life, comfort lies not in being right or wrong, but in whether we dare to step forward after our move.