An Englishman, an Irishman and The Benko.

Hi This week we look at the Benko


And next week we look at the Alekhine.


Russ I cannot be bothered looking at The Benko. I don’t play it.




The opening moves of the Benko. are 1. d4 Nf6 2. c4 c5 3. d5 b5

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White takes the pawn on b5 (4 cxb5) and Black plays 4...a6.

As White I would not take the a6 pawn. That is what Black wants and they will be
booked up to eye lids on it. So I suggest we don’t play 5.bxa6 but 5.Nc3 instead.

There are two well known traps in this line. RHP players have fell for both of them,

rsand2 - blither RHP 2007

The other trap. This time it is for Black and it is White’s turn to lose a piece.

Novaboy - bagger RHP 2003

To take this further I thought we would look at the game between the Irish player
Tim O’Shenko and the English player Michael Adams. They have met twice and...


These two have met twice, both times Adams was Black and the Benko was played.

In the first game Adams played a suspicious 7th move but got away with it and won.
In the second game, played one year later, the Russian was waiting for Adams to
make the same 7th move but in this game (the one we look at it) Adams deviated first.

G. Timoshchenko - M. Adams, London, 1992

Back on move 18.Bg5 (Black to play)

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Timoshchenko gives a wonderful variation in Informator 55 which
I have dug out to show what can happen if Black had played 18...h6.

Remember that all of this would have been crafted without a computer.
So here we acknowledge the blood and sweat that went into this line.




One of the great things about doing this blog is fishing for a position or a situation
( I was looking for a lone Knight mating a King and a Rook’s Pawn in the corner.)
and just when I thought I’d seen every kind of blunder on a chessboard RHP finds
another. This one is incredible, totally unexpected and I’m sorry ...I had to laugh.

First the lone Knight checkmate in the corner I was looking for.

irishgreen - iosebah RHP 2011


And now we look what else I found.
Aleshka54 - Arayn RHP 2022 (Black to play)

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White has just played a5-a6 and Black should now play 1...Nd8 to answer 2. a7 with
2...Nc6+ and 3...Nxa7 a draw. Instead we saw 1...Kc7 expecting White to play axb7.
White, wide-eyed and cheerful slide the pawn past the Knight and played 2. a7 1-0.

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OOPS! I nearly forgot this weeks puzzle. This is from Alexander’s Book ‘Chess Positions.’

Matokhine - Kuzmine USSR 1970.

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Black to play and win. I’ll show a picture of the book cover and then the solution.




The thread accompanying this blog is Thread 198285