BtM 30A: Benko Benko Benko
June 1989, Position C
White to play
Grivas - Vogt, Thessaloniki Olympiad 1988
Contributions to the comments box are welcome. I’ll reply with what the Masters have to say about their choice to anybody who suggests a move.
Scroll down to see some commentary from me and the Masters’ feedback.
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What’s the right amount of opening study? In absolute terms? as a proportion of your total chess effort? How much time should be devoted to the start of a game?
I suspect for a lot of folks it means memorising chains of theory. Which is fine as far as that goes. It's just that it doesn’t go very far.
Today’s BtM is an opening position. Unlike BtM 29 it doesn’t register as known in HIARCS' online opening book. It's a middlegame position, that's true too. It’s still an opening position, nonetheless.
LAMFORD: "A wide choice of plans in this typical Benko Gambit …."
This is the point. This precise configuration of pieces may or may not have been seen before, but the broad structure is very Benko-ish. Moreover,
DAVIES: "This looks like a Benko gone wrong."
I played the Benko a few times in my student days. I was ready to play against it for a lot longer.
Primarily from reading Bellin and Ponzetto - a book that takes a very different approach to most - I had a little understanding of the structure. One of the things I recall was that if White can block the b-file - typically by a4 and Nb5 - Black can end up in a pickle. Something else I remember: an exchange queens, which is something that White would usually aim for when a pawn up, frequently helps Black.
Not that I’m against learning theoretical lines per se, but if that’s all I’d done I might not have known either of those things. Even less likely would I have remembered.
The fact that I did know them helped me find 1 Bh6. Not the best move in the position perhaps, but, as far as Beat the Masters goes at least, an improvement on what Grivas played in the game.
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POINTS
10: Qe2
9: f4
8: Bh6
6: h4, Rfa1
3: Ne2, Nd1
MASTERS
Qe2: Suba, Davies, K. Arkell
f4: Adams, P. Littlewood, J. Littlewood
Bh6: Plaskett, Lane
h4: Pein
Rfa1: Levitt
Nd1: Kosten
SOURCE
Grivas - Vogt, Theassaloniki Olympiad 21 Nd1
Funnily enough I've never seen Benko's book despite having been a Benko player in my teens and again in my mid-twenties. I did have the RHM Sicilian Najdorf volume, one of the very rare books I've owned as an adult but no longer have, because eventually it just disintegrated beyond repair.
ReplyDeleteEventually I was convinced that (a) it was not entirely sound (b) there was no suitable partner opening if White just played 2 Nf3. I suspect (b) was the more powerful argument since to this day, as a White player, I prefer to avoid the Benko and similar off-beat surprises by playing 2 Nf3 myself.
It's a bluff though if you're prepared to play 2..g6 3 c4 c5, since then I play 4 d5 and away we go with 4...b5. I then go into the lines you normally enter with 5 b6, though as I recall in the main line with g3 White has a later, specifically-timed Rb1 which is supposed to have permanently crippled the Benko, but which to me looks like the sort of game I've been losing for forty years where you look up a line, find a refutation and then when you play that refutation, Black stil lturns out to have all the play anyway. I've lost (or come close to losing) with several Chigorin refutations that way, and recall losing like that in a first-place decider in the junior section of the Hitchin Open in the late Seventies. That was the Albin Counter Gambit, and I still don't much like playing against that either.
Hi Justin. 2 Nf3 was exactly why I ditched the Benko - after winning both my two games with it.
DeleteWhat's that line that goes something like 1 d4 Nf6, 2 Nf3 e6, 3 c4 c5, 4 d5 b5
I think Jack Rudd - occasionally of this parish - used to play it. Maybe still does.
Looks a bit ropey, mind.
Blumenfeld>
DeleteOh and Amazon seem to have the Batsford hardback edition of Benko's for just over a tenner second hand. Seems like a reasonable deal.
ReplyDeleteMy thoughts in the main post.
ReplyDeleteYes, good pointers about White wants to block the b-file, whilst exchanges often tend to help Black. As you say, the latter goes against the principle of not exchanging when a pawn down, but I think it also goes with the principle of exchanging when you're cramped. So, a classic case of judging which principle to apply! I also find my biggest problem with the Benko is what to do if White avoids it.
Justin, I wonder if the problem with your refutations was that you still had the type of position your opponent was familiar with and you weren't (even if you have a good version of it)?
Having been shown it, I like Qe2, as it holds up Nc7 (because Bxe7 works).
Justin, I wonder if the problem with your refutations was that you still had the type of position your opponent was familiar with and you weren't
DeleteMaybe, but I think it was more that they retained the initiative, even if it should theoretically have petered out.
I was just thinking that the solution to my 2 Nf3 problem was probably the King's Indian, without any of the nasty Sämisch or Averbakh or Four Pawns lines. Amazing it's taken me thirty years to think of that.
Mind you, I think I'd have found myself struggling with the Benko sooner or later anyway: in school games I used to have immense problems when a regular opponent played 4 a4 (this is really badly handled in Levy's book, on which I was relying) and then in my twenties I used to lose game after game at my club to later-grandmaster Jesse Kraai's 5 e3.
Did you ever consider the Modern Benoni? Benko-ish, but a little different.
Delete