Dynamic, tactical, and positional in one

A new weapon for Black is back!

Andrew Martin's "ABC of the Czech Benoni" reviewed by Bob Long

In Martin’s 4 hour DVD he has a lot of material on this “discredited” system. Discredited because of the “Spassky Grip” as Andrew Martin calls it. The deal is, years ago Spassky faced the Czech-Benoni and he couldn’t stop sacking material until he won. It was a very impressive game—giving up at least two Exchanges and ramming two pawns down the center of the board. So Martin covers at least 5 “grip” positions to show you how to deal with that.

Do people still play this? Of course and one of them is a big gun named L Nisipeanu. There are others too and a lot of them are eating some seriously hard rock candy.

However, another system which seems to “defy” gravity is White’s play of g3. Martin says, this is NO problem! In fact, Andrew believes a complete answer to the fianchetto system is Black playing the King’s Indian and he gives a couple of examples where White takes it big time.

Click her for a sample video from the first g3-lecture.

Martin introduces a new feature this time: Quizzes. He has at least 5 positions where he asks you to look at the setup position, pause your monitor, and try to figure out the best move according to him (Andrew Martin).

Now for a little sermon. If you watch a DVD in which Andrew Martin is the featured speaker, you can’t help but be interested. He could talk about the Zero Opening and he would show you possibilities. Some think he is too optimistic. You have to read between the lines! When he

 showed a game where T. Bosboom was White he took great pains to tell us how “amazed” he was at several of her moves. This was his way of saying that “the move really sucked, what was she thinking?” but Andrew doesn’t operate that way. He believes that being nice gets you farther. In most cases I agree with him.

If you like Benoni type systems and you want to charge up the h-file, or punish White on the Q-side, this system is for you. Dynamic, tactical, positional—it has everything.

It was fun watching Andrew’s acting (grimacing, mugging, and such). He is the best presenter ChessBase has.

Original review at www.chessco.com

More Anderw Martin DVDs:

The ABC of The Modern Slav
The ABC of the Caro Kann
The ABC of the Benko Gambit
The Trompowsky – The easy way
The Scandinavian - The easy way
ABC of Chess Openings
The ABC of the King‘s Indian
The ABC of the Ruy Lopez
The basics of winning chess