Are you tired of playing the same old openings time and time again? Perhaps it's time for a change, but you cannot decide between the numerous options available? Here's the answer: choose Dangerous Weapons and amaze your opponents with new and exciting opening ideas!

In this book, four renowned opening experts get together to take a revolutionary look at the Benoni, the Benko and all their associated variations. Instead of travelling down welltrodden and analysed paths, they concentrate on fresh or little-explored variations, selecting a wealth of 'dangerous' options for both colours. Whether playing White or Black, a study of this book will leave you confident and fully-armed, and your opponents running for cover!

Dangerous Weapons is a series of opening books which supply the reader with an abundance of hard-hitting ideas to revitalize his or her opening repertoire. Many of the carefully chosen weapons are innovative, visually shocking, incredibly tricky, or have been unfairly discarded; they are guaranteed to throw even your most experienced opponent off balance.

• The Benoni and Benko in a whole new light
• Packed with original ideas and analysis
• Ideal lines to shock your opponents

Grandmasters John Emms and Chris Ward , and International Master Richard Palliser are all highly respected and prolific authors who have written over forty chess books between them. Gawain Jones is one of the UK's most talented Grandmasters.

Preface

One might consider both the Modern Benoni and the Benko Gambit to be danger­ous weapons in their own right. That's true to an extent, but even these lively counter-attacking openings have built up a certain body of theory in their main lines. However, a significant amount of fertile territory still exists after both of Black's main replies to 1 d4 Nf6 2 c4 c5 3 d5.

In keeping with the Dangerous Weapons ethos, the reader will find in this work a number of ways for both White and Black to surprise the opponent. Benko players should certainly appreciate the ideas (chapters 10,12 and 13) of one of the open­ing's leading exponents, Gawain Jones. Meanwhile I'm pleased to say that I man­aged to persuade John Emms to change sides against one of his favourite open­ings, resulting in two tricky and quite dangerous anti-Modern Benoni weapons for White (chapters 1 and 5). This book is not just restricted to the Modern Benoni and Benko, though; both Chris Ward (who contributed chapters 4, 8 and 9) and I have enjoyed researching some rather aggressive systems for White against the likes of the Czech Benoni and the Snake Benoni, while those playing Black can equip themselves with weapons in both the real and 'pseudo' Blumenfeld gam­bits.

All of the authors really enjoyed analysing the lines which they propose here, and are looking forward to employing them in their own games. I hope that readers will also enjoy getting to grips with the many dangerous lines featured here, be­fore springing them on unsuspecting opponents!

Richard Palliser,

York,

May 2008

005 Preface

007 Series Introduction

011 1 A Troublesome Check

(1 d4 Nf6 2 c4 c5 3 d5 e6 4 Nc3 exd5 5 cxd5 d6 6 Nf3 g6 7 Qa4+)

031 2 The Sosonko-Kramnik Gambit

(1 d4 Nf6 2 c4 e6 3 g3 c5 4 d5 exd5 5 cxd5 b5 6 e4)

043 3 Radjabov's Extended Queenside Fianchetto

(1 d4 Nf6 2 c4 c5 3 d5 e6 4 Nc3 exd5 5 cxd5 d6 6 Nf3 g6 7 g3 Bg7 8 Bg2 0-0 9 0-0 Re8 10 Nd2 b6)

062 4 Not Castling in the Modern Classical

(1 d4 Nf6 2 c4 c5 3 d5 e6 4 Nc3 exd5 5 cxd5 d6 6 e4 g6 7 Nf3 Bg7 8 h3 a6 9 a4 Nbd7 10 Bd3 Nh5)

078 5 Epishin's Deadly 8 Qe2

(1 d4 Nf6 2 c4 c5 3 d5 e6 4 Nc3 exd5 5 cxd5 d6 6 Nf3 g6 7 e4 a6 8 Qe2)

098 6 A Direct and Powerful h-pawn Advance

(1 d4 e6 2 c4 c5 3 d5 exd5 4 cxd5 d6 5 Nc3 g6 6 e4 Bg7 7 Bd3 Ne7 8 h4)

114 7 Killing the Snake

(1 d4 Nf6 2 c4 c5 3 d5 e6 4 Nc3 exd5 5 cxd5 Bd6 6 Nf3 Bc7 7 g4)

134 8 The Super Extended Fianchetto

(1 d4 Nf6 2 c4 c5 3 d5 e5 4 Nc3 d6 5 e4 Be7 6 g3 0-0 7 h4)

152 9 Adventures in the Blumenfeld Accepted

(1 d4 Nf6 2 c4 e6 3 Nf3 c5 4 d5 b5 5 dxe6 fxe6 6 cxb5 d5)

168 10 A Paradoxical Bishop Retreat

(1 d4 Nf6 2 c4 c5 3 d5 b5 4 cxb5 a6 5 bxa6 g6 6 Nc3 Bxa6 7 g3 d6 8 Bg2 Bg7 9 Nf3 Nbd7 10 Rb1 Nb6 11 b3 Bc8)

180 11 Tromping the Benko

(1 d4 Nf6 2 c4 c5 3 d5 b5 4 Bg5)

213 12 Central Control

(1 d4 Nf6 2 c4 c5 3 d5 b5 4 cxb5 a6 5 e3 g6 6 Nc3 Bg7 7 a4 0-0 8 Ra3 Bb7 9 Nf3 e6)

230 13 Dark-Square Magic

(1 d4 Nf6 2 c4 c5 3 d5 b5 4 cxb5 a6 5 f3 e6 6 e4 c4)

244 14 The Pseudo-Blumenfeld Gambit

(1 d4 Nf6 2 Nf3 c5 3 d5 e6 4 Nc3 b5l?)

269 Index of Variations

270 Index of Games