Thoughts on the Benoni Defense?

The benoni is known to be a bad opening... 

Benoni provides great opportunities to fight for a win for Black. Is a very combative opening, that´s why we choose it. 

I'd rather play a bad opening than play a drawish opening.

Ideally I would think that you play it via nimzo indian move order and only play it if white plays 3.Nf3 or 3.g3. This means that black avoids the dangerous taimanov attack. 

Heh, I'm a 3.g3 player in the benoni. White has many ways to put the positional pressure on black. But since I don't really know the theory in 3min games I more often than not get walloped.

That´s the spirit. 

Usually, I play the Slav.  But I lost count of how many times some opponents tried the Slav Exchange aiming for symmetry and a draw. 

Although you'd probably love to play against my line in the exchange slav... Black equalizes fairly straightforward. Just play e5. On the other hand, playing the exchange variation of almost everything means I can say something like, "Ten years of playing the exchange slav and exchange QGD has prepared me for this moment, want to exchange vows?"

I would probably pick Marin's databases on Modern Chess, although Petrov's book on Quality Chess and Doknjas on Everyman are also good.
The lines suggested are fine, although you might add a "slightly suspect line" to play against the "Modern Classic" variation with h3 and Bd3: The best move for Black 9...b5 is not really suitable to play for a win against anybody.

If you must play the benoni, chessable always has high-quality content on openings. https://www.chessable.com/the-wild-wild-benoni/course/20736/

Sigh. One way to ensure you will NEVER improve at chess is to obsess over computer evaluations of openings. Especially when such openings have been played at the top level for many decades. To say that the Benoni is only suitable for 1200s and below is incredibly ignorant

I thought people who were saying "you can't rely on computer for everything" were just being delusional but no 😔 

like... shudders... the Queen's Gambit Declined. 

Aeugh.

Yeah @ChesswithNickolay is right

This is true. The benoni shouldn't work that well at the 2900+ level.

Still, I do not know why you are bothered about this.

idk im bad at chess

سلام دوست گرامی 

من معتقدم که چون شطرنج یک رفتار تجربی است. برای رسیدن به بالاترین بازدهی مفید می باید مباحث را با نمونه های تجربی همراه نمود .

مثال وقتی می خواهیم درمورد لندن بحث کنیم ابتدا یک یا...نمونه را تجزیه تحلیل کنیم .تحلیلی کوتاه  و خلاصه و بعد وارد بحث شویم .نمونه دراین موارد درحقیقت مقدمه  محسوب می‌شود. 

Thanks for the nice recommendations. I´m aware of Petrov´s book, but not the other ones. Will check them out. 

Instead of 9...b5 we are aiming for 9...a6. 

Hahahahahaha

Hi Cyrus. 

Yes, I agree completely! Part of my student´s homework is to play some blitz games using the benoni and annalyzse them.

Cheers 

Nah, I don’t like QGD because of light squares bishop and the position feels passive to me.