Brian Kelly (chess player)

Transcription

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.