The paradox idea in the Benko gambit.
In life of the chess GM there are not many moments, when he finds something extraordinary. I had a few such godsends, and this post is about one of them.
In 2012 I wrote the book dedicated to the opening repertoire for Black based on the Benko gambit (Attack with Black). At the same period Black started to experience serious troubles in the following line:
The last move begins the play for b5-square, which is a key in the Benko accepted variations. Having long nights analysing this position, I got frustrated with Black's position. But one evening I found the surprising idea, that turned over things for me. I asked myself, where Black can play differently and found that moment:
7...Qa5 is a move which happened just two times at that time (in 1996 and 1998). In all other games Black automatically takes on f1. What Black wants with this paradox move? Beside attack on e4 he aims even faster fight for b5-square and leaves the knight on b8 for a6-c7 maneuver, that also targets the same idea of b5-battle.
Analysis of this idea confirmed that it is absolutely playable and playing online blitz games with many GM's I lost no games after 7...Qa5! Why do I share with you all this? I do want to see this move being played in the serious games, but I'm inactive for about 5-6 years and do not plan to participate in any tournaments in near future. So, I do hope that e-kindle version of Attack with Black (which already includes this novelty analysis) will inspire you to try this move.
Recently my publisher sent me the information about sales of Attack with Black. Despite quite good results of sales, there are only two games with 7...Qa5 in my database (Koch, T, 2437-Oswald,D, 2073, ECC open, 2013, White won, though there were no real problems for Black; and Parligras,M, 2565-Vasiesiu,D,2410, ch-ROU, 2014, draw with good winning chances for Black during the game). I am not sure if both of players have found 7...Qa5 in my book, though I do hope so! But I want to see more testing of the idea!
