Pal Benko's Opening Idea in the French Tarrasch

Last week, the legendary Pal Benko died at the age of 91. Benko was famous for his gambit and several other opening lines. But there's one particular opening idea that I remembered quite well but had missed in the many obituaries that I read online.

I came across it more than 20 years ago, while I was preparing some surprise weapons with Black against an 1.e4 player from my local chess club in Amsterdam, The Netherlands.  

Pal Benko was a versatile opening specialist who as Black deployed not only the Benko Gambit, but also the Queen's Gambit, the Grünfeld Indian and the Nimzo Indian. Against 1.e4, he often played the Sicilian Najdorf but his games also saw many Petroffs, the Caro-Kann and, of course, the Ruy Lopez in various shapes and forms. He was also a fan of the Pirc/Mordern Defence, in which he introduced many interesting ideas. For instance, against Robert Byrne he once played the following funny line: 

For the 1962 Candidates tournament in Curacao (ultimately won by Petrosian), Benko had prepared the French Defence as Black. However, early on in the tournament, both Tal and Fischer defeated him in straightforward fashion with 3.Nc3. A few rounds later, Benko faced Efim Geller. He again tried the French, and Geller played the Tarrasch variation (3.Nd2) against him.

It was then that Benko played the move that I found interesting enough to look at it myself as part of my preparation. Judge for yourself: 

Be honest: have you ever seen this wonderful move before?

Well OK, maybe I'm a little biased. I've had a life-long fascination with any opening attempts to solve the f2/f7 weakness by pushing the f-pawn forward. I've played the King's Gambit, the original Philidor (1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 d6 3.d4 f5?!) and various lines in the English Defence (for instance, 1.d4 e6 2.c4 b6 3.e4 Bb7 4.Bd3 f5!?). Recently, I've even experimented with the crazy-looking but actually rather underestimated Colorado variation of the Nimzowitsch Opening (1.e4 Nc6 2.Nf3 f5!?). Benko's move kind of fits in the same category, even though in the French, the f7 weakness is actually not very relevant. 

It's fair to say Geller achieved less than nothing against Black's third move (he took on f5 and then challenged the Black centre with c2-c4, but Black just developed and had an easy game). The ChessBase database evaluates Black's position as slightly better after 8 moves (which may be a bit exaggerated, but Black is certainly doing fine):

The game was drawn on move 18. But when Benko faced 1.e4 again a few rounds later, against Keres, he chose the Sicilian, and in his second black game against Fischer, also a French Defence, he faced 3.Nc3 again (and lost once again). 

Benko wasn't the first player to try 3...f5 against the Tarrasch variation (Gideon Stahlberg had tried it twice in the 1940s) but he certainly was the strongest, and he remains so. It's remarkable how little attention the move subsequently got, even though Black immediately grabs space and has a relatively free development of his pieces. The control over the e4-square, in particular, is noteworthy.

The German GM Eckhard Schmittdiel has played the move a couple of times (albeit against weaker players), and the former elite player Pedrag Nikolic played it once to achieve a quick and comfortable draw (it's quite possible I've witnessed this game live, as I participated in the same tournament myself): 

The great Anatoly Karpov faced the line once, but also didn't achieve a tangible opening edge, although he later won the game against his much-lower rated opponent: 

All this suggests that the line deserves more attention than it has received so far. I don't have any books on the Tarrasch Defence, but I actually suspect 4.e5 might be White's best practical try. Black's position does look a bit cramped after that, but he still has a lot of options, for instance to go c7-c5, Nc6 followed by Ng8-h6-f7. It doesn't seem all that much worse to me than many other closed positions in the French. 

As it happened, I never got the opportunity to test the line myself as my above-mentioned opponent didn't play 1.e4 at all on that day. In fact, I've hardly ever faced the Tarrasch variation whenever I played the French. But it might still happen. After all, any opening idea by the great Pal Benko deserves to be taken seriously.