5.e5! and the Paradox of an Opening Labelled Easy to Learn

On move five, White pushes a pawn to e5 and narrows every Black option down to three doors. The game between Arjun Erigaisi and Laohawirapap — selected as instalment number 740 of the “Game of the Week” series, part of the “60 Minutes” column — needed no new move. It needed an old move played at the right time: 5.e5!.

I reconstructed this game over two evenings on a real board, with the engine switched off. After move five, Black has exactly three reasonable directions: 5...d5, 5...Ng4 and 5...Ne4. Every other direction leads to an objectively worse position. An opening that narrows the opponent's choices to three doors is not an opening to memorise. It is an opening designed to attack the memory of the person sitting across from you.

Two entrances, one position

The original sequence starts from the Italian Game: 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4. The turning point is 4.d4 exd4. Instead of recapturing with 5.Nxd4, White pushes 5.e5!. The same position is reachable from the Scotch — 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.d4 exd4 4.Bc4 Nf6 5.e5 — meaning two different routes arrive at one position.

For club players, that is a real advantage: one line, two opening systems. You do not need to remember two sets of variations for two different entries. You remember one set, and let the opponent choose the door.

More notable still: the line is not new. Evgeny Sveshnikov — the name behind the defence that bears his name — used it regularly, and according to the original article, other grandmasters also achieved good results with it. This is where I stop. The phrase “good results” appears without a single table behind it: no game count, no win rate, no average centipawn loss, no engine match rate. In my profession, a claim without a denominator is a claim that does not yet exist.

Three doors, three kinds of pressure

The 5...d5 direction is a counterstrike into the centre. Black does not withdraw the f6-knight out of range; Black hits back at White's pawn structure and forces White to decide immediately: take the knight, or keep the structure. The difficulty is not on move six. The difficulty is that White must calculate three moves further while the clock keeps running.

The 5...Ng4 direction takes the knight to a square that both attacks and creates its own weaknesses. The entire value of this direction lies in recurring tactical motifs: White usually gets a healthier central pawn structure, trading it for a few empty squares around the king. This is the kind of position club players win by understanding, and lose by memorising.

The 5...Ne4 direction is the most active reply, and also the most punishable if Black remembers the first move but not the third. A knight jumping into the centre while the back rank is undeveloped is a conditional gamble.

Three directions, three kinds of pressure. The common thread is clear: in all three directions, Black must play more accurately than White merely to hope for equality. I state it plainly: that is a reasoned assessment, not one proven by data. The original article reaches a similar conclusion — Black struggles to equalise, and the problems are hard to solve over the board.

Data never lies, but it likes to test our patience. In this game, data is not testing our patience. Data is absent.

The trap of easiness

The original article calls 5.e5! the ideal line for club players, relatively easy to learn, and full of traps. Those three adjectives, placed side by side, do not support each other. They contradict each other.

A line that is “easy to learn” and yet “full of traps” — to me — means a line where the learner easily recalls the first move, but does not understand why that first move works. That is ideal ground for a familiar paradox: the memoriser is punished by the very thing he memorised. Based on my experience following games at open tournaments and club analysis sessions, I have seen far too many games fall into exactly that trap.

As for “grandmasters achieved good results” — correlation misread as causation. Grandmasters get good results with every line they put in their preparation, largely because they are grandmasters. Their results are not evidence of the objective value of 5.e5!. To know how strong this line really is, you need exactly three things: engine evaluation across all three directions, a sufficiently large game database, and the move-match rate of the players who won. The original article has none of the three.

I bet on numbers before the rest of the world learns to read them. But I do not bet on a number that does not exist.

As I once wrote about the 2026 World Cup: that tournament did not change the rules of the game, it only showed us a pattern that already existed. A single event does not create a trend. A single game, even less so.

Signals for the next cycle

I am tracking three things over the coming six months. One, whether 5.e5! appears repeatedly in 2700+ games — that is the condition for turning a training line into a mainstream one. Two, where the engine places 5...d5 — if Black reaches clear equality, the original article's conclusion goes stale. Three, how often the line appears in club events, where local game databases and coaching material reflect reality more honestly than any promotional claim. Suitable tracking sources: TWIC, ChessBase and 2700chess.

To club players I say this directly: learn 5.e5!. It is a real weapon, and it saves preparation time. But learn it as a pressure tool, not as a solution. Inside an empty stadium, data is the only spectator left — and in this game, the stands are empty.