I love playing the Benko Gambit as Black, so I try to reach it whenever I can. But it doesn't always go so smoothly. Normally the Benko Gambit is reached after 1. d4 Nf6 2. c4 c5 3. d5 b5:
Typically White will play cxb5 at some point, and Black will respond with a6 (a pawn gambit), and White can choose to take the pawn with bxa6 (gambit accepted--the most common response) or to push with b6 (gambit declined). When the gambit is accepted, Black will fianchetto the king's bishop, put the knight on f6, play d6 (some players prefer e6), castle kingside; White will typically get e2-e4 in (even though this is not an e4 opening). A position like this might arise:
Black will eventually recapture the a6 pawn, and White will have a passed a-pawn, but Black will have tremendous activity on the queenside, with moves like Bxa6, Nbd7, Qb6, Rfb8 (after Black castles kingside), etc. Note that in the "old main line", which I don't particularly fancy, Black plays Bxa6 before White plays e4, so that when White plays e4, Black responds with Bxf1, and White plays Kxf1 and will manually castle their king with g3 and Kg2.
I've had quite a bit of success playing the Benko as Black. This graph shows the win percentage (in green), draw percentage (in blue), and loss percentage (in red) by opening when I play a rapid or classical game (> 8 minutes) as Black on lichess.org. In fact, my highest win percentage comes from games where I've played the Benko (10 games, win percentage = 80%; see middle of the graph):
So I'm somewhat justified in trying to reach this opening when I can. Against 1. e4, there are a few ways to try to reach this opening. An uncommon one is the St. George defense, with 1. e4 a6 (since both e4 for White and a6 for Black are moves in Benko lines). A more common opening that allows one to hope to reach a Benko position is the Robtasch (or "Modern") defense with 1. e4 g6, which is what I played in this game (incidentally, notice that the Robatsch seems to be one of my worst openings in the graph above). In this game I was facing a stronger opponent (2142 blitz on chess.com), and we reached the following position after 1. e4 g6 2. d4 Bg7 3. Nf3 a6 4. c4 d6 5. Nc3 Nd7 6. Be2 c5:
Up to here I've played all moves that are consistent with the Benko so that I can transpose into it were the opportunity arise. And we're really close to it: If White plays d5, I'll respond with b5 and we will have reached a position consistent with the Benko gambit. But my opponent doesn't have to humor me, and indeed he chose not to, and simply played 7. O-O. But I was not ready to give up though I should have been, and I played 7. ... b5? 8. cxb5:
And here I played a move that would simply be impossible to play in the Benko gambit since White would have played d5 earlier. I played the ridiculous-looking 8. ... cxd4?! 9. Nxd4 axb5?? (9. ... a5) 10. Bxb5:
And once the smoke has cleared, this is not a Benko gambit, and White has two connected passed pawns on the queenside! (With a normal Benko gambit White would only have a passed a-pawn.) Stockfish gives White a two-pawn advantage at this point, and my opponent went on to kick my butt. I later gave up one of my knights for his two pawns but it was already too late.
So, lesson learned: Don't part with all three of the c-, b-, and a-pawns in the Benko Gambit, because White will have two connected passed pawns on the queenside. It seems obvious, but I had to learn the hard way.
The full game is available here:
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