An opening course for Black (ECO A56-A79)
Black gives White a pawn centre on move three and takes a queenside pawn majority for it. The bishop goes to g7, the rook to e8, the pawns to a6 and b5, and White spends the game trying to break with e4-e5. It is the sharpest answer to 1.d4 on this shelf, and the honest version of that is that Black counterattacks rather than equalises.
This course is part of your daily work.
The trade of Black's e-pawn for White's c-pawn leaves White with the extra pawn in the centre and Black with the extra pawn on the queenside. White's counts sooner, because e4-e5 opens lines at once. Black's does not go away. Almost every plan on either side for the next twenty moves comes back to those two pawn masses.
Black's dark-squared bishop guards the king and looks straight down the long diagonal at White's queenside. When the knight on f6 steps aside the bishop bears on c3, which is what makes the queenside pawns dangerous rather than merely numerous.
The rook on e8, the knight on d7 and the pawn on d6 all cover e5, and that is usually enough to stop e4-e5 outright. The second method is to pressure the d5-pawn instead, so that when White does push, the pawn behind it falls.
The break is ...b5, and it needs preparation, because a4 and the pieces on c3 and e2 all cover that square. The standard preparation is ...a6 and ...Rb8. The other routes are the knight to c7 by way of a6, and ...c4 first, which cuts a white bishop off from b5.
Learning order, one scoresheet per chapter. The coach serves review one line a day; enter any line directly when you want it now.
White plays e4 and owns the middle of the board. Black's answer is always the same in outline: fianchetto, castle, put a rook on e8, and start the queenside pawns moving before White's centre can move.
7.f4 is the move that gave the Benoni its bad decade. Three different attacks come out of it, and they need three different answers: a knight on b4, a king walk that wins a pawn, and a queenside push that starts before White's centre gets going.
With 6.Nf3 White keeps the e-pawn home, so there is no target on e4 and no half-open file to lean on. These four lines are about the other half of Black's game: the queenside break, and the squares White's pieces leave behind while they set up.
Five games in six from the starting position go 3.d5 and the course above. The other one goes somewhere else, and three of those somewhere-elses are common enough to recognise on sight. Two of them are still a Benoni. One is not, and knowing which is which saves a bad opening.
Club games that started in the Benoni Defence produced these tactics, and you solve every one from Black's side, the seat you actually sit in. Difficulty follows your solving, the same as the puzzle room.
The Benoni Defence is the chess opening that begins 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 c5, and it is filed under ECO A56-A79. This course teaches it from Black's side in 14 drills across 4 chapters, with a coach note on the moves that need one, every position checked with Stockfish at depth 20, and every plan credited to the author who wrote it down.
Lines you will drill
Theory credited to
8 branches are deliberately not drilled here, and the course records which and why rather than leaving the gap silent.
Questions
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