[Sorry to pick, Paddy, but "whilst," really? I was assured by Cox that this was rare in English usage, yet I see it all the time. Anyway ontopic, I noticed in my CA database, when recently selecting a move, that an early f4 against the Czech Benoni has done pretty well in practice. So I made this "mistake" on purpose and won, though I admit that my opponent was much weaker. My plan had been to return to a serious examination of this move to see what could be made of it. You're telling me I shouldn't bother? [/quote] Markovich, On the f4 point, I stand by all I wrote earlier. Unless White can find some way of gaining control of e5, 1 d4 Nf6 2 c4 c5 3 d5 e5 4 Nc3 d6 5 e4 Be7 6 f4 (6...exf4!) just seems a positional howler. The only basis for white optimism I can think of is that in positions where this pawn formation arises from the Closed Spanish, playing for f4 has become an established procedure for White. If the Czech Benoni ever becomes really popular, we'll probably see a lot of different ideas being tried by White against it, and maybe the theory will begin to change ("the proof of the pudding..."), but f4 has been regarded as antipositional since at least the 1950s. In Megabase and TWIC I can find very few examples of the use of 1 d4 Nf6 2 c4 c5 3 d5 e5 4 Nc3 d6 5 e4 Be7 6 f4 by 2400-plus players, so I'd be interested to see what you've found. Of course, it's a different matter altogether in the lines where White plays g3 first, enabling him to recapture on f4 with the pawn and thus control e5 On the linguistic point, where I come from, "whilst" (long ago condemned as obsolescent by Fowler) is still alive and kicking. A linguistic point that to my knowledge is "unbooked" so far is that some of us Brits seem to prefer "while" in the time sense, but "whilst" when we want to stress the contrast (= whereas); not sure how widespread that is, if at all. I find it interesting though.
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