Sodium Attack
White's knight heads for the corner on move one. It's a joke by the laws of development and named after one by the laws of chemistry.
1.Na3 is called the Sodium Attack because the move as written (Na3) is the chemical symbol for sodium plus a square. Honestly, the name is the best-developed thing about it. The knight goes to the rim, where knights control the fewest squares. It blocks nothing, threatens nothing, and prepares very little. It's also catalogued as the Durkin Opening. The chemistry joke is the name that stuck.
The move isn't a blunder. It's a shrug. The knight does eye c4, a perfectly decent square. From c4 it presses on e5 and b6. So White's least-bad plan is Nc4 followed by ordinary central play. What 1.Na3 actually buys is what every offbeat first move buys: an opponent who is out of book on move one and might start overthinking.
If you face it, the recipe is boring and it works: take the center. Both big central pawn moves are good. Developing is good. There is no trick to fall into. The burden of proof sits entirely with White. At some point that a3 knight has to spend another move becoming a real piece.
White's honest plan is to admit the knight went the wrong way, politely. Reroute it to c4, where it does real work against e5 and b6. Then build a normal center behind it or fianchetto on the kingside. Some Sodium players treat the move as pure psychology, steering for offbeat middlegames where familiarity matters more than the lost half-tempo. Either way White is playing catch-up on development.
Black should treat 1.Na3 as an invitation to play the opening White declined. Occupy the center with ...e5 or ...d5, develop toward the middle, and castle. There's no refutation to memorize because there's nothing to refute. The winning plan is simply to be better developed by move ten. The only real mistake is trying too hard to punish it and lashing out before your pieces are ready.
At club level (1600-2000 on Lichess), the Sodium Attack shows up in about 140,000 games. Against the more than 2.3 billion database games from the starting position, this is a rounding error. Black's most common answers are the natural ones: 1...e5 (37.6% of games) and 1...d5 (21.8%), yet against both White scores 52%. In fact no common reply drops White below 52% here. This is a fact about surprise value, not about the knight. Club players meet a first move they've never seen and beat themselves. Grab the center, develop normally, and be the exception the database is waiting for.
- Family
- Sodium Attack
- Category
- Flank
- First move
- Other
- ECO
- A00
- Line
- 1. Na3