Gambit Lines win in Milner-Barry Gambit, Benko Gambit next in Rematch

Gambit Lines is playing a new TVC in the Benko Gambit against one of the toughest groups in chess.com, the Vote Chess Assassins. The group is administered by  Alan_Tudor , also known as the King of Vote Chess and KiNg_ChApO, also known as the sweet KC as Super-As, supported by their Admin(s): MikeDoyle , thegab03 , jbell3, darkharvest, and CaptainJimTKirk . Their top rated players include FIDE Master players such as   VPA  (2478), arpadkoblos (2460), and rabeaq (2398). Follow the link and please join us.

The game is dubbed Rematch after the Gambit Lines defeated the Assassins in a thematic game in  French Defense: Advance Variation, Milner-Barry Gambit, losing in only 16 moves, excluding the thematic opening moves. The game is shown below. The music video is for my teammates for their moves that were like dynamites. Here is AC/DC in TNT.

Andrew Martin wrote in the ABC of the Benko Gambit the following:

“If you just heard about the Benko Gambit it must sound like a dream opening – you give one pawn, and for that miserable pawn, you get (1) everlasting initiative on the Queenside, (2) a healthy pawn formation and (3) a safe king, and all that when playing Black! As a matter of fact, it is a rather great gambit, and for this reason it has been played by some of chess greatest including Benko, Bronstein, Topalov, Adams, and even Kasparov tried it, when he was desperate for a win in Black. The power of the Benko Gambit is even stronger at the amateur level, because Black has a position where natural moves on both sides work better for him, and he has a clear strategic plan that works fine even if the queens are swiped off the board before he manages to capture back his sacrificed pawn."

The original name of the opening was the Volga Gambit, named after the Volga River because of an article about 3...b5!? by B. Argunow written in Kuibyshev (Samara since 1991), Russia, that was published in the second issue of 1946 of the magazine Schachmaty in USSR. The term is still widely used in Russian literature.

 Beginning in the late 1960s, this opening idea was also promoted by Pal Benko, a Hungarian-American Grandmaster, who provided many new suggestions and published his book The Benko Gambit in 1974. The name Benko Gambit stuck and is particularly used in English-speaking countries.

The main line continues with the moves 4. cxb5 a6 5. bxa6 Bxa6 followed by Black fianchettoing the f8-bishop.  Black's compensation for the pawn takes several forms. Firstly, White must solve the problem of developing the f1-bishop.  After 6. Nc3 d6, if White plays 7.e4, then Black will play 7...Bxf1, and after recapturing with the king, White will have to spend time castling artificially with g3 and Kg2, as in the line 7....Bxf1 8.Kxf1 g6 9.g3 Bg7 10.Kg2. If White avoids this by fianchettoing the bishop, it will be in a rather passive position, being blocked by White's own pawn on d5.

Apart from this, Black also obtains fast development and good control of the a1–h8 diagonal and can exert pressure down the half-open a- and b-files. These are benefits which can last well into the endgame and so, unusually for a gambit, Black does not generally mind if queens are exchanged; indeed, such an exchange can often usefully remove the sting from a kingside attack by White.

Although the main line of the Benko is considered acceptable for White, there are various alternatives which avoid some of the problems entailed in the main line. The simplest is to just decline the gambit with 4.Nf3 or 4.a4. Another idea, which is popular at the grandmaster level as of 2004, is to accept the pawn but then immediately give it back with 4.cxb5 a6 5.b6. Another popular alternative is 5.e3.