D4 c5: The Old Benoni Defence

Hello. The old Benoni was an opening I learnt a while back and I would compare it most to the queen’s gambit, but for black. If they take you play e6 (it starts with d4 c5) and if they try to defend you can win the pawn no matter what, if you learn the theory, and hopefully you will end up with a better position, so that’s why, like the queens gambit, it isn’t a “proper gambit”. I made this forum for people to share opinions, theory, debate, variants, and games. Hope you find the opening interesting and I can comment some of theory down below!

Just because it’s not as common as other d4 responses doesn’t mean it’s not good, there best move is to just develop there peices letting the pawn get captured by your bishop after e6! And if it does D4 C5 Dxc5 e6 and then white defends with something like b4, Black actually has a better position with equal material again. This often leads to having two centre pawns while white has one, and a developed bishop with an outpost, depending on the variation. I would say this is a strong tool you can use from low elo to higher, and has given me a 52% win chance with it where my average is normally about 47% with draws, and I am currently playing in the 1400-ish range. And also, if you don’t want to learn all of this theory, Qa5+ does technically win back the pawn with a fork immediately, but the position isn’t as good as the e6 theory with tons of traps as well.

Like most good openings, the Old Benoni Defence comes with traps. Here are some: (These follow up D4 C5 Dxc5 e6)

-B4 A5 C3 AxB4 Qf3 Your opponent must sacrifice their queenside bishop or knight or their rook will get taken

-B4 A5 A3 (You now get an extra pawn and they can’t take back or they will lose their rook, it’s happened more times then you might think, and they still have their weak pawn on c5 you can win)

There are more to explore as well these are just some examples of common ones

Here are some easier to read diagrams

And you may be wondering: but fraserhm! What if they defend with Qd4 or Be3??? If you go onto analysis you can see that black is winning by a little, where as analysis usually gives the advantage slightly to white in the opening, but here is how to counter these two moves.

If they chose to move their queen to c4 after you bring your knight you can just give a check with your queen on a5 and win the pawn, or as the computer wants you to do, play b6 which involves some theory that I won’t explain yet. What do you guys think so far? Would you play this?

I play it sometimes, its not bad

The main line at higher levels, especially 2000+ is d4 c5 d5, with white pushing into blacks defence, but I honestly quite like this position, it is very solid and predictable how white will play, and most of the positions will end up something like this

The start of this development often looks like this; D4 C5 D5 E6 C4 NF6 NC3, and from here you want to push your g pawn up and put the bishop there, so the same for the other, play d6 and e5, castle in order depending on what your opening plays, followed by bringing out your b knight after you did all that.

There are only 3 real Benoni’s that are worth remembering:

1) the old Benoni
2) the modern Benoni
3) the Czech Benoni.

In all 3 of these the odd one is the Czech Benoni. The Czech Benoni plays a closed position. Where as the other 2 play for more piece activity. The modern Benoni fianchettos the dark square bishop. Sometimes playing for f5. The modern Benoni doesn’t fianchetto the dark square bishop. At times it transposes to the benko gambit. The Benoni is not for beginners. If you play this defense you have to understand two things. The first is that piece activity is everything. It’s quite common to trade your rook for your opponents bishop if it means you cut their activity. The second is trading pieces becomes important. The more aggressively you trade your opponents active pieces the easier it will be for the Benoni player to win the game.

Thanks! Which one is the Czech again?

You play e4 like a d4 player😭

The game itself was terrible, I just woke up a bit ago

I used to be a modern benoni player, but I did not play the old benoni move order. The main reason why comes down to avoiding the most critical lines and attempts by white.

Firstly, the c pawn hasn't been dedicated anywhere yet. White still has the option to play a quick Nc3 before playing c4, which is in general a more critical attempt usually against the benoni. This is one reason to delay c5 by starting with Nf6 and waiting for d4 c4 first. If d4 Nf3, c5 is a better version as you can get a very fast b5 getting the pseudo benko.

Also, the f pawn hasn't been decided yet, allowing what is the closest thing to the refutation of the modern benoni, the Taimanov attack. White is too quick to get their attack off and basically steamrolls black off the board. f4 followed by an incredibly well time check leads to black having no space and too many pieces.

To avoid the Taimanov, I played the benoni in the nimzo move order. I wait until Nf3 is included, so there are no f4 shenanigans. I also like to play in kings Indian style against most non queens gambit sidelines, so I normally start with g6 and go c5 and e6 later.

Forgot to mention that instead of playing c4 another plan is playing nf3 nd2 nc4 with a great position

I have a transcription of a game using this opening in an old Chess magazine. Worth trying out.

If they just defend I often build something like this