Yeah I honestly would prefer the King Walk to the Perunovic.

I spent many months recently investigating the Benko and mostly discovered that if you want to stay in fianchetto territory and not go ...e6, you might as well just allow the King Walk. It would be hard to expound upon why easily.  The depressing thing for me is 5.e3 - not because it's a refutation, but basically because I don't find it thematic or all that fun to play against. 

Last time I checked it's a draw, Black just has to be precise if White is also very precise. My experience in online games is that people basically know very little, at least up to the lichess 2300-2400 level - I can't speak for beyond that. My score with the Benko is one of the highest (61%) out of all the 1.d4 defenses I've looked at, and I've probably studied it the least. 

The ...e6 lines are also decent and worth looking at, I just think it's weird to even really call it a Benko. I feel like most players will like one approach or the other but possibly not both.

Keano wrote on 12/10/25 at 00:46:32:

That could be the epitaph of every "interesting" black opening.

Engine analysis is a fact of life, the only saving grace is nobody can remember it all. The real question is not "what is the engine eval?". It is "if one of the players deviates, either by prepared N or forgetting or even just not knowing the line, which color has a harder time finding good moves?". Another issue is, if everybody played the same solid openings, white's memory load would be even lighter.

I've considered adding the Benko to my repertoire, but there's a couple of lines that give me pause, the king walk being one of them. At the moment I have one better defense and one worse defense, so the Benko might be an upgrade for my "interesting" choice, it's the meta considerations above I am not sure about.

an ordinary chessplayer wrote on 10/08/25 at 23:07:01:


No time old friend. 

Here's the video for the white 5.e3 course.

• https://youtu.be/owp9VZ0pS9E (07:53) White powerful solution against Benko

There were 27 courses released on the same date, probably some technical reason for that, but the "most aggressive" Benko video makes it clear the black course is later.

I don't suppose we will be seeing ask-fluffy.com any time soon, but Avrukh has some other contributors on his site. It wouldn't hurt to send an email and ask about conditions.

Ah, so Avrukh has such courses. All you get is a blurb though unless you buy the whole thing? There is also a course for White on 5.e5 against the Benko. And they were released the same day. I'll check the videos though. Thanks AB.

The Lichess still means nothing to me. Blitz games, who cares. I am old so I download TWIC, but even that is polluted by chessdotcom games. I really think Chessbase should have a filter by time control.

It seems that if I want a bad position, the King's Indian is 'enough'.

fluffy wrote on 10/06/25 at 20:23:35:

Sorry, I wasn't clear. The lichess database just crossed 7 billion games, so it can be very useful in gathering information on less popular lines, since even those frequently have a large number of games played. 

I would agree that I think most people's issue (mine included) with 5.e3 is not the theoretical verdict, which seems just about as formidable as anything, but the fact that it's tough to get "the Benko position". Probably checking out the Avrukh or Kotronias coverage of the ...g6 lines would be your best bet.

I guess I consider the Benko to be a secondary weapon for fast time controls or 'surprise', and 5.e3 is indeed a buzzkill. I think the main lines can be (mostly) played with knowledge of ideas, while 5.e3 is more concrete, at least in the 5..axb5 and 5...e6 lines, while 5...g6 and then later ...e6 is the same story.

Every time I look at the Benko, I am ok with the +/= in the main lines of the King walk or fianchetto, but not in the 5.e3 lines. If you play the Czech Benoni, you may be worse, but you don't have to know a lot and you get 'the position'. 

The Lichess database means little to me; I mean, the Englund Gambit is popular right?!

Avrukh has something for Black on the Benko?

proustiskeen wrote on 10/06/25 at 17:11:33:

Maybe they call it the Bible because they don't expect anybody to actually read it. At least it's not in Greek.

I have to concur with this. It's typical for Kotronias' books with Russell, but this one is a trainwreck. I have no idea who this book is for, to be honest -- the corr players don't need it and no one else has reason to go that deep.

Even the endgame section, which I think is an interesting attempt at a value add, is insanely long. 300 of them? Who is going to read it?

TonyRo wrote on 09/28/25 at 18:30:12:

As a lifelong King's Indian player, I've always been interested in the various 'children' of the KID (Benoni, Benko, even Leningrad Dutch). The 'Modern' 5.e3 has always put me off. I think Black has to know too much for too little reward. In the 5...axb5 lines White has a lot of choice, and in many Black is just kind of holding (I compared the Thinkers books for Black to some repertoires for White) and 5...g6 looks like an inferior 'normal' Benko or else Black can play for some mess which looks like a lot of work too.

I'd take (some friendly) objection with most of what you wrote Lauri, and would be more than happy to try and get to the bottom of some of the variations that you talk about. 

12.a4! is certainly an annoyance, but is likely drawn with best play. That would take a lot of posting and proving, but I'd be interested. FWIW, I have never had a game make it as deep into the depths there to worry me. 

If you're worried about 5.b6, 4.Qc2, or 4.Nf3, I suspect you just don't like the Benko at all now. Those are quite palatable in my opinion, with multiple options even. 

To start, I'd say that 5.b6 Qxb6! or 5...e6! are about equal, but not 5...d6 6.e4! or 5...g6 6.Qb3!. 

And against most of the 4th moves besides 4.a4 Qa5+!, I think Black can even just push past with 4...b4 and play Benoni-like positions with the pawn on b4. People like to claim that with the queenside a bit more closed, White should have better prospects, but after analyzing a bunch I find things to be more complex, as White's development is a bit more awkward as well, and it's not like Qc2 is a very scary move in a Benoni.

Also, I think nowadays people are willing to admit that 2.Nf3 c5 3.d5 b5! is about equal, though Black definitely has to know a few things after, for instance 4.e4!? Nxe4 5.Bd3 Qa5+, etc. 

One thing I need to stress about this book again is how poorly it's edited. They really needed to separate some of this stuff into A/B/C main variations, with A1, A2, etc, and more bold. Perhaps even break some of these chapters into two. It's a real mess to read, as some of the analysis is SUPER deep. In fact, I'd argue it's just way too deep in general. For a correspondence player this might be super useful, but for someone actually trying to digest the material, I think I'd prefer they literally sheared about half of this stuff away. It's wild.

I remember reading several articles on the opening written by Pal Benko and published in Chess Life and Review. It's been said that "success has many fathers, failure is an orphan." Yet I'm not aware of anyone challenging Benko for credit in this sucessful opening.

With 592 pages for volume 1 and excellent authors, I expect this will be the bible for players on both sides of the board for some time.