Yeah, Fischer played it in a world championship match, so it's not a terrible opening. I'm sure lots of GMs these days use it now and then as a surprise... but for it to be your main weapon... probably your opponents are players 2000 and under.
Is the Czech Benoni good/sound?
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Ghost_Horse0 wrote:
Yeah, Fischer played it in a world championship match, so it's not a terrible opening. I'm sure lots of GMs these days use it now and then as a surprise... but for it to be your main weapon... probably your opponents are players 2000 and under.
In The last Candidates, Caruana played the Benoni vs Aronian, and Grischuk vs Caruana, I guess Aronian and Caruana are above 2000
Mar 28, 2019
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#24
I said it's not bad as a surprise, but as a main weapon you'd have to regularly play weak players.
Nothing you said counters that.
Mar 28, 2019
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#25
congrandolor wrote:
In The last Candidates, Caruana played the Benoni vs Aronian
Caruana played a QGD against Aronian.
congrandolor wrote:
In The last Candidates Grischuk [played a benoni against] Caruana
Grischuk played a king's indian defense.
congrandolor wrote:
In The last Candidates no one played a benoni
This is accurate.
Mar 28, 2019
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#26
do people not read? CZECH benoni. not "benoni systems" in general. czech benoni is its own animal
Mar 28, 2019
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#27
darkunorthodox88 wrote:
do people not read? CZECH benoni. not "benoni systems" in general. czech benoni is its own animal
Yeah, I guess I shouldn't extend my eval of the czech to the whole benoni family... even though I tend to look down on the benoni in general.
Mar 28, 2019
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#28
1e41-0 wrote:
Glaucon333 wrote:
Yes, you're probably right, it probably just sucks. I'll play something else.
One can hardly say that an opening "sucks" if it has been used successfully by the likes of Petrosian, Larsen, Stein, Hort, Nisepeanu, etc...computer evaluations are not to be trusted in the first 4-5 moves of any opening, since both sides still have an incredible number of options and plans that the computer simply doesn't have the depth to see.
Yes, black stands a bit worse because he is cramped, but if you play through the main lines of the opening, you will often see the evaluation fall to about 0.5 by move 15 or so. I highly recommend Palliser's book "How to Play Against 1 d4", which offers decent coverage of this underrated opening. The one thing I will object to is the lack of coverage of systems with g6-Bg7, which I feel deserve more merit than they are given.
Lastly, here is one game by Larsen for inspiration:
How to play a benoni:
1) Get an objectively inferior position out of the opening
2) Sacrifice material in the hopes tactics will eventually work out for you
3) Get no tactics and have a doubly miserable position
4) Opponent blunders and you get a lucky win
And that's how to benoni.
Mar 28, 2019
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#29
But ok, the Larsen game is nice... Larsen was a genius, I'll never play a game like that.
1e41-0 wrote:
Glaucon333 wrote:
Yes, you're probably right, it probably just sucks. I'll play something else.
One can hardly say that an opening "sucks" if it has been used successfully by the likes of Petrosian, Larsen, Stein, Hort, Nisepeanu, etc...computer evaluations are not to be trusted in the first 4-5 moves of any opening, since both sides still have an incredible number of options and plans that the computer simply doesn't have the depth to see.
Yes, black stands a bit worse because he is cramped, but if you play through the main lines of the opening, you will often see the evaluation fall to about 0.5 by move 15 or so. I highly recommend Palliser's book "How to Play Against 1 d4", which offers decent coverage of this underrated opening. The one thing I will object to is the lack of coverage of systems with g6-Bg7, which I feel deserve more merit than they are given.
Lastly, here is one game by Larsen for inspiration:
Computer evaluations are trustable for computers. Those evaluations may not directly imply statistics to human cos human blunder left and right , the results often goes upside down.
Please check the statistics of Benoni in TCEC, black player lose like horribly. My estimate is that at least 70% win score from white ( excluding draw games).
What does that means? Although people played Benoni ,King Gambit etc in old days, these opening are unlikely to be seen in games where people play with highly precise opening repertoire such as in top 100 GM level or ICCF chess.
Mar 28, 2019
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#31
I was just reacting to posts without thinking how the topic started. Obviously they're very different types of positions.
1e41-0 wrote:
drmrboss wrote:
1e41-0 wrote:
Glaucon333 wrote:
Yes, you're probably right, it probably just sucks. I'll play something else.
One can hardly say that an opening "sucks" if it has been used successfully by the likes of Petrosian, Larsen, Stein, Hort, Nisepeanu, etc...computer evaluations are not to be trusted in the first 4-5 moves of any opening, since both sides still have an incredible number of options and plans that the computer simply doesn't have the depth to see.
Yes, black stands a bit worse because he is cramped, but if you play through the main lines of the opening, you will often see the evaluation fall to about 0.5 by move 15 or so. I highly recommend Palliser's book "How to Play Against 1 d4", which offers decent coverage of this underrated opening. The one thing I will object to is the lack of coverage of systems with g6-Bg7, which I feel deserve more merit than they are given.
Lastly, here is one game by Larsen for inspiration:
Computer evaluations are trustable for computers. Those evaluations may not directly imply statistics to human cos human blunder left and right , the results always go upside down.
Please check the statistics of Benoni in TCEC, black player lose like horribly. My estimate is that at least 70% win score from white ( excluding draw games).
What does that means? Although people played Benoni ,King Gambit etc in old days, these opening are very unlikely to be seen in top 100 GM level.
Why don't you tell that to Nisipeanu, a 2680 French GM who has made the Czech Benoni one of his weapons of choice for years?
Is he top 100 GM?
If I remember right I thought Palliser didn't cover g6-Bg7 lines because it transposes to a line of the King's Indian. (Although Larsen seems to be saying it's not like a King's Indian and the Palliser is supposed to be a repertoire book and has things like the Closed Benoni in it so he could have if he'd wanted to.) But yeah, it's what I said earlier about the Alpha Zero stuff. Of course Black can play like that, it's just people usually consider the Czech Benoni to be the lines with Be7; maybe they put that line in a different book.
Mar 29, 2019
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#35
RooksAreCannons wrote:
Just go for 2.f5 as black and easy win
1. d4 Nf6
2. c4 f5!!!
Of course! Why has this never occurred to me?
Mar 29, 2019
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#36
1e41-0 wrote:
Why don't you tell that to Nisipeanu, a 2680 French GM who has made the Czech Benoni one of his weapons of choice for years?
"For years" is a little fishy. I'm sure he was under 2600 "for years."
What's his main weapon after crossing 2600?
Mar 29, 2019
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#37
1e41-0 wrote:
Why don't you tell that to Nisipeanu, a 2680 French GM who has made the Czech Benoni one of his weapons of choice for years?
One of his weapons of choice for years?
In the chessgames.com database the only year (singular, year) he played a benoni more than twice was 2005.
Out of 499 games with black he played some form of benoni 19 times. A little under 4%.
Thank you, 1e4-10. I will look at that game.
Ghost_Horse0 wrote:
1e41-0 wrote:
Why don't you tell that to Nisipeanu, a 2680 French GM who has made the Czech Benoni one of his weapons of choice for years?
"For years" is a little fishy. I'm sure he was under 2600 "for years."
What's his main weapon after crossing 2600?
"Irrelevant."
Lol okay I was definitely off, my bad. Maybe "sometimes" would've been a better word to use. But my point was that they did use it (sometimes...Not fairly regularly
) and did pull off wins with it, Tal especially. I'm not a huge Benoni fan, I prefer the Gruenfeld but it makes sense that Tal would play the Benoni as it would fit his playing style. Fischer and Kasparov probably used it to throw off their opponents then, but it worked.