Black is Back: Old Benoni Opening course by IM Yuriy Krykun

Beat ’em with the Old Benoni

Do you find yourself unable to settle on a response to 1.d4 as Black? There are many to choose from, but maybe you’re turned off by the theory required to play the King’s Indian or Grünfeld well.

Or maybe you want something with more of an element of surprise.

Introducing the Old Benoni (1.d4 c5)…

Black is Back: Old Benoni is just the course you’re looking for. In under 100 lines, you get a viable attacking option against 1.d4. One few opponents will have taken the time to prepare for. And while you’re memorizing fewer lines, you’re learning more with detailed instruction from International Master Yuriy Krykun. With each course he makes, Yuriy tries to make it less about lines and more about ideas. This one is his most compact repertoire by far.

The Old Benoni gives you opportunities to fight for the center with your pawns and opportunities to rip open the kingside or the queenside, depending on where play happens.

Know exactly what your plan is: first, you close the center. Then, you trade off your bad bishop and leave the opponent with a bad one, like so:

This compact course is structured beautifully as the attacking potential of this opening. Here’s what it looks like:

♛ A chapter on typical ideas and structures – so you develop an understanding and feel for the opening before delving into concrete move orders

♛ Chapters on each of White’s main setups – including the mainline with or without c2-c4, fianchetto setups, and sidelines

♛ 3 model game chapters – showing different types of plans in the Old Benoni – mainline plans, “slow” plans, and plans in the sidelines

Put into practice by one of the hardest working authors on Chessable

Your author, IM Yuriy Krykun, used the Old Benoni as his main response as Black from the time he was 1600 to 2000 FIDE, so he knows exactly the practical struggles you’ll face and will armor you up against them all.

Yuriy was inspired by the long-term strategic ideas of this opening, which he saw used by such strong players as the world’s best coach Mark Dvoretsky, and made it his main opening.

And he knows what makes a good course, having produced several of them. In fact, he released more courses than any other author on Chessable in 2022, all on openings, and all with a focus on explaining the ideas, not forcing you to just memorize lines. Many of which were nominated for “Best Course of the Year”. This is what students love about Krykun – his ability to introduce structures and ideas and weave them into the lines taught.

More to his teaching credit, he has 7+ years and 15,000+ hours of experience teaching club-level players.

If you want to beat 1.d4 players with an old yet underplayed gem, you’ll want to pick up Black is Back: Old Benoni.