The Modern Benoni is a chess opening that begins with the moves:
1. d4 Nf6 2. c4 c5 3. d5 e6
After the initial moves, Black proceeds to on d5, creating a of black pawns on the . To support their advance, the king's bishop is usually fianchettoed on g7. These two features differentiate Black's setup from the other Benoni defences and the King's Indian Defence, although transpositions between these openings are common.
Frank Marshall introduced the Modern Benoni in 1927, but his experiments with the opening went largely ignored for over 20 years. In the 1950s the system was revitalized by players in the Soviet Union, chief among them Mikhail Tal. Its subsequent adoption by players of a similarly aggressive and uncompromising style such as Bobby Fischer and Garry Kasparov established the opening's reputation as one of Black's most , albeit risky, responses to 1.d4.
The Modern Benoni suffered a serious theoretical crisis in the 1980s and 1990s, when players as Black encountered great difficulties in meeting the Taimanov Attack and the Modern Main Line. Only in the 21st century has the opening's reputation and theoretical standing made a recovery. Vladimir Kramnik chose it when he needed a win with Black in the penultimate game of the 2004 World Championship, though that particular game resulted in a draw.
Initial moves
The standard move order for Black to enter the Modern Benoni is 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 c5. Here it is possible for White to avoid 3.d5: respectable alternatives include 3.Nf3, typically transposing to a line of the English Opening, as well as 3.e3. Taking the pawn with 3.dxc5 is hardly ever seen, because Black easily recovers it after 3...e6 followed by ...Bxc5.
Still, 3.d5 has long been considered White's most challenging move, as it gains in the . While it is possible for Black to avoid ...e7–e6 for the time being and play other moves such as 3...d6 or 3...g6, delaying this move until after White plays e2–e4 gives White the extra option of recapturing on d5 with the e-pawn. While recapturing in this fashion does not give White a central pawn majority, it maintains White's spatial advantage and denies Black the associated with possession of a queenside pawn majority. Thus players who are seeking the typical imbalance in pawn structure associated with the Modern Benoni tend to prefer the immediate 3...e6 followed by 4...exd5.
Alternative move orders and transpositions It is possible, indeed common, for Black's second and third moves to be reversed: thus 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 e6 3.Nc3 c5 and 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 e6 3.Nf3 c5 will both transpose into the Modern Benoni if White allows it with 4.d5. The latter move order has been especially popular since the 1980s, as it allows Black to reach the Modern Benoni while sidestepping the Taimanov Attack. It also gives Black the additional option of meeting 4.d5 with 4...b5, the Blumenfeld Gambit. Players who use this move order will often choose a different defence against 3.Nc3, such as the Nimzo-Indian with 3...Bb4.
Another frequent transposition into the Modern Benoni occurs when White invites a Catalan Opening with 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 e6 3.g3 and Black responds with 3...c5. If White responds with 4.d5 exd5 5.cxd5, Black can play 5...d6, which often transposes into the Fianchetto Variation; but a common alternative is 5...b5, which leads to independent positions.
Black can also try to reach the Modern Benoni through a Benoni Defence move order, i.e., 1.d4 c5 2.d5 Nf6, when 3.c4 e6 would complete the transposition. In this move order, White is not obliged to put the c-pawn on c4 and often avoids it, since c4 is a useful square for a white knight. Several lines of the King's Indian Defence, such as the Four Pawns Attack, the Sämisch Variation and the Fianchetto Variation, can also transpose into variations of the Modern Benoni if Black plays ...c5 followed by ...e6 and ...exd5 and White recaptures with the c-pawn.
History
Frank Marshall introduced the Modern Benoni at the New York 1927 chess tournament. He played it twice, gaining a draw against José Raúl Capablanca in the Fianchetto Variation, but losing soundly to Aron Nimzowitsch, who played the Knight's Tour. Nimzowitsch received the third special prize of the tournament for this game and labelled Marshall's opening an "unfortunate" "extravagance" in his annotations; as a result, it lay virtually abandoned for decades. However, Karel Hromádka's experiments with the Benoni Defence in the 1930s occasionally featured the moves ...e7–e6 and ...exd5, resulting in a transposition to the Modern Benoni.
Interest in the Modern Benoni was revived in the 1950s, when the King's Indian Defence gained in popularity among Soviet players and their investigations branched into related opening systems. The imbalance inherent in the Modern Benoni's pawn structure and the counter-chances this implied for Black appealed to aggressive players such as Rashid Nezhmetdinov and Alexander Tolush; the Israeli master Moshe Czerniak also employed it frequently. Lev Polugaevsky, Boris Spassky and Alexey Suetin were among the younger generation of Soviet players who used it regularly in the 1950s and 1960s.
But the player primarily responsible for elevating the Modern Benoni to the status of a major opening was Mikhail Tal, who took up the opening in 1953 after seeing one of Nezhmetdinov's games. The tactical positions it led to were a perfect fit for Tal's combinatorial gifts and he crushed many opponents in brilliant style. Famous examples include his game against Bukhuti Gurgenidze at the 1957 USSR championship, excerpted below, and his win against Yuri Averbakh at the same tournament the following year. He also became the first player to use the Modern Benoni in a world championship match, playing it twice against Mikhail Botvinnik in 1960. Former World Champion and opening authority Max Euwe acknowledged Tal's contribution to the opening by naming it the "Tal-System" in his 1965 opening encyclopedia.
These developments did not go unnoticed outside the Soviet Union: the name "Modern Benoni" had appeared in print by 1955. In the 1960s Larry Evans began employing the system frequently, and from 1966 onwards, Bobby Fischer also included it in his repertoire, albeit as a secondary weapon. Even so, Fischer was responsible for one of the most famous games ever played with the opening: down 2–0 in the 1972 World Championship match, he answered Spassky's 1.d4 with the Modern Benoni in Game 3 and scored a momentum-changing victory.
The successes of Tal and Fischer inspired a new generation of players to take up the Modern Benoni in the 1970s and 1980s, including Walter Browne, Ljubomir Ljubojević, John Nunn, Dragoljub Velimirović, Lev Psakhis, Mihai Șubă and Nick de Firmian. The young Garry Kasparov also had the defence in his arsenal—his win against Viktor Korchnoi at the 1982 Lucerne Olympiad was considered the highlight of the tournament and remains one of the most famous games ever played in the opening. It became a favoured weapon for players needing to win against 1.d4: for example, Psakhis used it to defeat Yuri Razuvaev in the penultimate round of the 1980 USSR Championship, catching Alexander Beliavsky in the lead and ultimately sharing first place with him.
But in the early 1980s, White scored several crushing victories at high-profile tournaments using the aggressive Taimanov Attack, which caused players to question the fundamental soundness of Black's opening. By the end of the decade, the Modern Main Line had also emerged as a dangerous weapon for White, which only compounded Black's troubles. As a result, the opening declined in popularity and a number of grandmasters gave it up altogether. Those who continued to play it often chose to do so via the move order 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 e6 3.Nf3 c5 4.d5, when White's early of the knight to f3 rules out the Taimanov Attack and gives Black opportunities to avoid the Modern Main Line.
Mired in this theoretical crisis, the Modern Benoni remained unpopular in the 1990s. Veselin Topalov was the only top-level player to play it regularly, and he too generally preferred the 2...e6 3.Nf3 c5 move order. At the beginning of the new millennium, the theoretician John Watson published a well-regarded survey of the opening that may have contributed to the opening's revival. Many of the ideas he recommended, such as 9...Qh4+ versus the Taimanov Attack and 9...Nh5 in the Modern Main Line, grew in popularity after its publication. The opening regained some more of its former respectability when Vladimir Kramnik, needing a win with Black against Peter Leko, played it in the second to last game of the 2004 World Championship. While he did achieve a winning position at one point, the game ended in a draw. Nevertheless, Étienne Bacrot, Boris Gelfand and Vassily Ivanchuk have all since used the Modern Benoni at the highest levels of competition, while Vugar Gashimov became the opening's most notable proponent. He was the strongest player willing to use the original 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 c5 3.d5 e6 move order and defend Black's cause in both the Taimanov Attack and the Modern Main Line.
Strategy The Modern Benoni is one of Black's and most active defences against 1.d4. The exchange of White's c-pawn for Black's e-pawn leaves White with a pawn majority in the centre and Black with one on the queenside. This asymmetry suggests that White will try to play on the and in the centre, while Black will seek counterplay on the queenside. However, this simplistic generalization does not hold in many cases—depending on how the pieces are arranged, either side may be able to fight back on the flank where they are theoretically weaker.
The creation of such a pronounced structural imbalance so early on in the game implies that Black aims to counterattack rather than equalize. Thus the opening has acquired a reputation for being risky: as Psakhis once wrote, the Modern Benoni "is definitely not an opening for cowards." Since White's central superiority typically constitutes a positional advantage, Black must frequently resort to tactical play and material sacrifices in order not to be forced into passivity.
Black's queenside play
The game Donner–Tal, Zurich 1959, was a classic demonstration of the power of Black's queenside pawn advance, backed up by the bishop on g7. After Black's 20...Qb4! White was unable to exchange queens, as 21.Qxb4 cxb4 22.Nd1 Nc5 would fork the pawns on a4 and e4. However, the actual game did not last long after Donner's 21.Qf1: Tal set his pawns in motion with 21...c4 22.Re2 b5 23.axb5 axb5 24.Kh1, created a passed c-pawn with 24...Bxc3! 25.bxc3 Qxc3 26.Rxb5 Qd3 27.Qe1 c3 28.Rb1, and forced Donner's resignation with 28...Nc5! when White could neither save his e-pawn nor stop Black's c-pawn from queening. According to Donner, while he spent over two hours on the game, Tal used only fifteen minutes.
White's kingside play
The central pawn majority is White's main positional trump in the Modern Benoni. By staking out an advantage in space on the kingside, it allows White to develop an initiative on that side of the board. The most important tool in White's arsenal is the e4–e5 pawn advance, which can open up lines and squares for the white pieces, and result in the creation of a passed d-pawn if Black answers with ...dxe5.
A famous example of the e4–e5 break leading to a kingside attack occurred in the game Penrose–Tal from the 1960 Leipzig Olympiad. With 19.e5! dxe5 20.f5! Bb7 21.Rad1 Ba8 22.Nce4 White installed a powerful knight on e4, while Black's pieces were hemmed in by the pawn on e5. Penrose soon crashed through on the f-file and scored a stunning upset over the reigning world champion. Other classic examples of this central breakthrough include Ojanen–Keres, Estonia–Finland match, Helsinki 1960 and Korchnoi–Tal, USSR championship, Yerevan 1962.
Black's kingside play