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Welcome back to chessopenings.com. Today's video is all about the Benoni
Defense, which is an aggressive counter-response to the queen's pawn
opening. It begins with the moves, d4, knight of 6, c4, and c5. Black's
idea in the Benoni is to lure the White pawns forward in order to set up
counter-play against the center and the weakened dark squares. Let's take a
look.
With the opening set up of d4, knight of 6 and c4, White has followed one
of the major principles of the opening, which is to occupy the center with
pawns. This guarantees that he'll have a somewhat easier time finding
strong squares for his pieces. In theory, White would like to get all of
his pieces out to comfortable locations and then gradually he wants to
prepare the long-term advance of his central pawns. In the Benoni, Black's
countermeasure, pawn to c5, is designed to disrupt this picture-perfect
scenario for White by forcing White to somehow change the situation in the
center.
The first point about this position is that Black is threatening to trade a
flank pawn for a center pawn, and it's not really in White's interest to do
this. For example, he doesn't really want to capture on c5. If he were to
capture on c5, it is true that Black could recapture the pawn, say with
queen to a5 check, but this would leave the queen vulnerable later in the
game. Instead, what Black would do is simply play e6, and it turns out that
in this position there's no good way for White to hold on to the C pawn. If
he plays bishop to e3, he'll quickly run into the move, Knight a6, and
there's no great ways to continue protecting the pawn. And if he were to
try the move, b4, he would run into the move, a5, when again, he'll find it
impossible to hold onto the pawn structure for very long. Of course, a3
would be the natural move here, but the pawn would be pinned after A takes
b4. So it turns out that there's no great way for White to hold onto this
pawn, and this is why he should not take it. He would probably have to
develop, say, knight of 3, but after bishop takes c5 this is a very
comfortable situation for Black since he has two pawns to one in the
center, and this means at some point he will gain a space advantage with
the move, pawn to d5, and he'll find comfortable locations for all of his
pieces.
Backing up to this position after c5, a similar issue would arrive after a
move like, say, knight of 3. Since after pawn takes pawn on d4 and knight
takes pawn, it's true that this is a much better version since White has
gained an active placement for his knight, and Black's development hasn't
proceeded nearly as easily. But even so, in this position Black has
excellent long-term counter chances due to the fact that he possesses this
two versus one central pawn majority. So what turns out is the optimal move
in this position is to advance the pawn to d5. And this is actually a
pleasing situation for White, because he builds upon his space advantage
and cramps Black's position nicely. If White could eventually bring his E
pawn out to support this pawn and then eventually bring it out to e5 - this
is a very important point. If he could bring this pawn up and allow it to
march abreast with the D pawn, this position would leave Black off in an
extremely bad way. This struggle for control over the e5 square which tends
to be a huge part of the early opening and middle game struggle in the
Benoni opening.
White's strategic plan in this position is fairly clear. However, we have
yet to talk about what are Black's main ideas in this main position. Since
he has fixed the White pawns into a pawn chain here, Black's idea is to try
to rapidly break down this pawn center through pawn breaks. One way to go
about this, the most aggressive way, in fact, would be the immediate b5,
and this leads to a well-known Benko Gambit. In this opening, Black is
willing to sacrifice a pawn in order to generate long-term pressure both on
the queen's side and against the center by breaking down this pawn chain.
But we're not going to look at that today, since the more Benoni-ish
handling of this position is to play e6 first. In fact, the move b5 will
still end up being very strategically important later in the game. But
first, White plays e6. And the idea is that after the normal move, knight
e3, pawn takes pawn, and now Black plays d6 preventing White from achieving
d5 to d6 himself. A very interesting, strategic position arises, which is
very imbalanced.
White still has a big space advantage, but Black has opened the E file in
this position. He has also created conditions for an expansion on the queen
side with moves, like a6, and once again, this move, pawn to b5. Another
key factor here is that Black is going to swiftly fianchetto his bishop to
the opening diagonal. He's going to play at some point here g6 and bishop
g7 on this open diagonal. Notice that he's cleverly already cleverly set it
up, that White has put his pawns on light squares. Part of the point of
playing c5, so this diagonal is open, and this is going to be very annoying
for White a little bit later in the position. On the other hand though, we
shouldn't forget that it is White's move in this position, White still has
a big space advantage, and his major goal of achieving e2 to e4 and then to
e5 is still a very strong plan in this position. White generally continues
to e4, but he can also play knight of 3 instead. Black continues his
development with the move, pawn to g6, and at this moment there are quite a
few different setups that White can try, but for today I just want to talk
about White's most aggressive option here, and that is, the popular move of
pawn to f4.
With f2 to f4, White is saving up for his big dream of playing e4 to e5. In
an ideal world, he'd do this with as much preparation as possible. He'd
like to bring out the knight to f3, find somewhere to stick this bishop on
f1, castle king side and then push for this breakthrough, e4 to e5. This
would probably spell the end of Black's position if it this all panned out
nicely for White. However, in chess there are always typical drawbacks to
moving the pawns too early in the game. Here, we see two big drawbacks.
First of all, White has played so many pawn moves that he's falling behind
in development, which is a factor Black can make use of. A second point is
that we temporarily weakened the E pawn; it can no longer be supported with
the move, f2 to f3, since we've launched the pawn all the way to f4. This
weakness also requires some observation by White. It is these factors that
Black is hoping to make use of during the struggle which is ahead.
So, what should Black do here? In this position, believe it or not, Black
should simply continue his development with the move, bishop to g7. This
brings us to a very interesting moment in the position. White has two very
obvious-looking moves here. He's got the thrust e4 to e5, and he's also got
the very principled move of knight to f3. Both of these moves look
outstanding for White. In fact, none of these moves offer White any real
superiority whatsoever. It's against these very natural moves that you can
get a sense of just how much venom and potential the Black pieces contain
in the modern Benoni. Right away, we've got to be asking ourselves, "Can't
White just force a big advantage with this move, e4 to e5?" But as we will
see in just a second, in fact, Black just retreats knight F to d7. This
poses a problem for White, as he doesn't have enough development to support
the advance of these pawns. e5 is now under attack three times-- by a pawn,
by a bishop, by a knight. With this move, knight to d7, of course, Black
added two attackers at once because he unveiled an attack with the bishop
in this position. White only has one defender, so he actually cannot defend
the pawn if he plays knight f3. For example, the pawn will just be lost.
Really, the only move to avoid losing a pawn here is to capture on d6, but
in fact, this pawn will quickly become recovered by Black. For example, he
often simply castles king side, knight f3, knight f6, and he'll be
recovering this pawn, but White's king is just exposed in this position and
losing much of his space advantage in this position, since the E pawn,
which was looking so promising on its way up to e5 with clear support, is
now just going to be exchanged. White has nothing to look forward to in
this position.
The really shocking thing in this position is that the very natural move
knight f3 also does not promise White very much in this position. In fact,
Black once again continues his policy of chess developing. He simply
castles king side. It turns out that, once again, this move, e5, is a
premature move for White. It turns out that Black plays D takes e5, F takes
e5, and the now the simple move, knight g4. Once again, the pawns in the
center are already under attack, Black has mobilized most of his pieces,
and White's king is in the center. This position turns out to be no good
for White. This sets White a problem. If he can't play e4 to e5 just yet,
then how does he go about defending the e4 pawn which is about to come
under attack by rook e8? In fact, theory shows that in this position
Black's counterattack is happening so quickly that White often needs to
sacrifice a pawn in order to keep the position in balance and keep the
position edgy. Black has excellent chances of equality in this position. I
think it's this kind of position which should really strike some fear into
the heart of light players, since it shows just how much potential is
contained in the Benoni opening.
So, does it turn out that Black just has an excellent position in the
Benoni after this move, f4? Certainly, what we've shown so far is that
White has to be very careful, he is falling behind in development and needs
very careful about how he approaches this position, but it does turn out
that there's one last move here, and it's this move which gives White
excellent chances of keeping the initiative. That move is bishop to b5
check. It turns out that this disruptive little check offers White just
enough to keep this position looking very strong for him. The idea is to
lure a piece to d7 and only after that does White continue with the central
breakthrough idea of e4 to e5. The theory in games in this position is all
highly interesting, but without getting too bogged down in the details, I
wanted to show a couple of natural moves here.
After bishop to e7, White gets exactly what he wants. He finally has an
opportunity to play e4 to e5 under the right conditions. This is because
the knight no longer can retreat to this square, harassing the e5 pawn, nor
can it come out to g4 because the bishop is now pinned. So if the knight
came to g4, we would simply capture it and we'd be up a piece in this
position. It's because of this fact that suddenly e5 becomes possible, and
there are some very interesting lines in here which are worth taking a look
at. The more natural-looking move is probably knight to d7, but once again
e4 to e5. And once again, this knight is lacking the squares where it could
put pressure on e5. If it comes to g4, it's once again just hanging and the
d7 square is unavailable. Again, this trick has succeeded. It turns out
that instead Black's best move in this position is the counter-intuitive
move, knight F to d7. If Black doesn't know this move, he'll actually find
himself in a lot of trouble. In this position what Black would like to do
as quickly as possible is harass this bishop with a6 and then use the extra
time to play b5, probably b4, to undermine this e4 pawn.
So White throws in another very tricky move here, he plays a4, an excellent
move. This ensures that if Black does play a6, as he usually doesn't in
this position, once we retreat this bishop Black isn't ready to continue
his expansion with b5 because we have set up a pawn on a4. So instead in
this position, Black normally keeps his options open by simply castling
king side. But now, after knight f3, an interesting position is reached
which does appear to favor White. In this position, White is still highly
interested in developing an attack either with e4 to e5 or in many games
you actually see a king side pawn storm which begins with the moves, f4 to
f5. In this position, it's quite tricky for Black to develop his counter-
play on the queen side. But both sides have quite good chances in this
position if they're willing to do a little bit of homework.
That's it for today. We've gone move-by-move and clarified some of the
important ideas which characterize the modern Benoni. We've looked at how
Black plans to situate his pieces and what he's basing his counter-play on.
At the same time, we've looked through a few variations and begun to
understand what White's key ideas are and how he plays to hassle Black and
threaten him in the modern Benoni. Thanks for watching, and we'll see you
again.