Is the Czech Benoni good/sound?

I have been thinking about adding the Czech Benoni to my repertoire as a secondary/side/surprise weapon against 1. d4. I get the feeling that white should retain some small advantage here, because he has more space out of the opening. But the pawn structure and black's plans interest me for some reason. I feel like I can see myself playing this opening and enjoying it.

So I go into the chess.com analysis engine and set up the position. To my surprise, after 1. d4 Nf6 2. c4 c5 3. d5 e5 4. Nc3 d6 5. e4, Stockfish 10 is already showing a 1.13 advantage to white (at a depth of 28). What?! How can this be a sound opening if black is already down more than a pawn in position after 5 moves?

I know that computers are supposed to be bad at evaluating closed positions, and the pawn structure in the center is very closed. But computers are a lot better than humans at chess. If the Czech Benoni really is an okay defense, how could they be so wrong, so inaccurate, on the evaluation of this position? How could the likes of Richard Palliser be right in recommending this defense, when a computer that can beat any human's ass is giving white a strong advantage immediately? It feels practically inconceivable that the computer could give such an inaccurate evaluation in 2019, even though the center is closed. How could this be? 

If the Czech Benoni really is bad, that is a real bummer. I wanted to learn how to play the Czech Benoni! But computers are amazing in 2019, even if they still in theory have trouble analyzing openings and closed positions. When the computer is scoring the position at +1.13, how could this opening be any good for black?

While it's true engines overly like structures with the white pawn on d5, this particular structure is pretty bad. I'm no GM of course, but the way I see it there's no central pawn break, your pawns block your pieces, and f5/b5 are hard to get in without sacing a pawn. Both knights and black's dark square bishop will be very hard to activate.

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Having said that, the jiu-jitsu (as I call it) to capitalize on this sort of... pure space advantage, is not easy. White could be +1 (according to the engine) for 15 or 20 moves, and then 1 or 2 innocuous inaccuracies make the advantage disappear.

So if this sort of position appeals to you, then you should at least try it out in some games. Play over GM games to get a feel for the basic ideas (which side of the board does black play on, where are the pawn breaks, that sort of thing) and try it online for a while, even in a few tournaments. If you end up not playing it that's fine because you'll have increased your general knowledge of chess.

Oh, and to answer you other question... no one has ever accused the benoni of being a good opening

It's not as bad as, say, a Latvian, but it's a fringe existence. Eccentrics like Rapport play it now and then, but I'm not sure any GM is regularly playing any variation of the benoni.

Yes, you're probably right, it probably just sucks. I'll play something else.

If you want something sort of cramped and positoinal, maybe you'd like the hedgehog, (which you can pretty much play as a system against anything). Well, I say positional, but it tends to explode with tactics later.

If you want something active with more piece play, maybe a chigorin or baltic.

You reached Leela and Alpha Zero's favorite position for white!!

Strategy for Leela is to push h4, h5 immediately.

The king will be likely be in center d3 square, see how a lovely cozy home. b5 break will be countered by b3!

Please note! Artificial Intelligence engines Learn and play with pattern like human + search , rather than massive search with poor evaluations like traditional AB engines (stockfish)

P.S additional funny king shelter for Leela,

In some positions when we do pawn storm from our own pawn shelter, we always have concern about our own king safety. But for Leela, she always have her own idea like the picture. (black king has to run away from pawn storm due to her aggressiveness). Not exact position, but showing pawn shelter sample whereas there are massive major pieces remaining on the board.

A kind of funniest but innovative ideas from Artificial Intelligence.

Hans Kmoch discusses the structure in detail in book (diagramm 233: german: Groß Benoni) and both sides have pawn levers: b4 and f4 for White vs. b5 and f5 for Black. Pawn levers for Black are easier to achieve but can make the lack of space more pronounced. I'm aware of two books which cover that topic solely:

1) Richard Palliser: How to play against 1 d4 - which is a Czech Benoni repertoire

2) Hoffmann/Keener: The Czech Benoni in Action

In my opinion, and I tried a bit, the plans are clear but I didn't pursue further as I always ran in to some problems which I couldn't grasp. The main idea of Palliser is to play g6 but develop the Bishop to Be7 followed by ...O-O, ...Ne8, ...Ng7, ...f5 which takes some time but solves quite some problems. Also the bad bishop can be exchanged (sometimes) after ...Bg5.

To summarize: it is sound, problably not the best, plans are clear and it is playable. The argument of being bad because of a lack of central pawn breaks is not understandable for me for above reasons.

The leela/Alpha Zero strategy makes sense to me, however, I didn't look into it that much (and I'm also not that good) to judge on that.

One surprise weapon, which works quite well is: 1.d4 c5 which might transpose into Czech Benoni but one can go other paths as well (this is also covered in the Palliser book).

GM Finegold did a few videos about some of his games in this structure for the St. Louis Chess Club, let me see if I can find one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=049NnoR1LGE Finegold says he got the idea from Anand. This has also been played by Nisipeanu with the Nd7-f8-g6 plan which is also covered in the Palliser if I remember right. 

Just a note on that Leela analysis (engines are not good in the opening especially something like Leela and) Leela seems to be suggesting Black transpose to the King's Indian there with g6 and Bg7 so it's not  really relevant to a discussion of the Czech Benoni which continues Be7.

How are you playing the Hedgehog against 1.d4?

Anyway the Czech Benoni is easily avoided with 2.Nf3, in addition to the points already made.

Oh right, you could play a Hedgehog type setup via the Nimzo-Indian, forgot about that

You can get a hedgehog with anything. I knew a guy who'd play e6, b6, Nf6 Bb7 (in some order) against pretty much everything. All you need after that is d6, e6, and an eventual c5, and you often get hedgehog (or hedgehog-like) positions.

Against 1.d4 it starts out as a queen's indian. Against 1.e4 it's a Larsen... but this was just that guy's move order. I'm sure there are other ways (I don't play 1.d4, and I don't play the hedgehog, I so I don't personally know the best move orders).

Yeah, I can't explain it well because I'm not a GM. This structure can happen from several different openings though (sometimes starting with 1.e4) and it's not fun for black... at least not for me. Like I told the OP, the engine overvalues this stuff, and he can give it a try.

I'm familiar with trying to trade off the DSB (a common theme in multiple openings) and the funny knight maneuvers with an f5 break (I play the benko, which has similar structures to benoni).

This structure I know as the Benoni wall. I like to play the Nimzo-Indian or Queen Indian but when I end up in something that looks like this ( a Benoni wall ) it mostly says that something went wrong in the opening.

Rooksarecannons' question is maybe off topic but to answer since I do play this, personally, when I used to play 3 and 5 minute Blitz on Lichess for years I would always go for this, and if the opponent didn't avoid it I think I had about a 90% or even higher win score, especially against higher rated opponents (I never got much more than 1900 consistently, I'm generally talking about a 2000 Lichess rating and no one with a title; I don't think I've ever defended 1. d4 against a titled player.) It's just the plans are all fixed so you it's not hard to Blitz out and in general I guess the opponents just hadn't studied it as much and tended to go wrong. It's like Finegold says in the video I linked above. When he played it mostly his opponents did random stuff and lost quickly. ... so Idk, I have mixed feelings about people on here just flat out badmouthing the opening. On the one if you actually learn how to play it don't think you're going to have a bad time with it, at least not in fast chess for sure. On the other hand if it ever loses its bad reputation then more people will play it, have more experience with it, and it could lose its surprise value... and also back to the original question, it does seem at least most of the strongest players to have played this all played it for a time and then stopped, maybe deciding it was bad if their opponent did prepare. I don't know if that's the reason.

Grischuk after a game in which he played the Benoni: «Benoni means son of sorrow. Now I understand why».

i love closed cozy positions with pawn thrusts but i never bought into the czech benoni. The pawn thrusts are never particularly convincing (since your pieces tend to not have real space advantage or concentration, in any side of the board) and they often can be stopped or significantly delayed. The engine hates it which is not necessarily damming, but it can be hard to tell when the engine is misvaluing and when you are just bad.

I'm no GM either but I do know a little about the Benoni. It was popularized by Tal in the 1950s and 60s when he won many brilliant games with it. Fischer, Kasparov, Smyslov, Reshevsky, Korchnoi, Alekhine and Tarrasch are just a few who used the defense (Fischer and Kasparov used it fairly regularly and also won brilliant games with it). So I can't say it's a bad defense but I can definitely say it's tricky to play. I does give more space to white and you (playing black) have a pretty weak backwards d-pawn. But it does create imbalances from the start, as black fights for control over the central dark squares and white for the central light squares. If you look at adadmator's YouTube channel you can find a handful of fantastic Benoni games played by the masters if you're interested in learning more about it...

According to chessgames.com Fischer played a benoni 12 times out of 412 games with black. So a little less than 3%.

Kasparov played a benoni 20 times out of 1031 games with black, a little less than 2%.

And these days it's hard to be creative because everyone essentially prepares with the same engine.