Benko's Opening
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| Moves | 1.g3 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| ECO | A00 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Parent | Flank opening | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Synonym(s) | Benko's Opening Hungarian Opening Barcza Opening Bilek Opening |
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The King's Fianchetto Opening or Benko's Opening (also known the Hungarian Opening, the Barcza Opening, and the Bilek Opening) is a chess opening characterized by the move:
White's 1.g3 ranks as the fifth most popular opening move, but it is far less popular than 1.e4, 1.d4, 1.c4 and 1.Nf3. It is usually followed by 2.Bg2, fianchettoing the bishop. Nick de Firmian writes that 1.g3 "can, and usually does, transpose into almost any other opening in which White fianchettos his king's bishop". Included among these are the Catalan Opening, the King's Indian Attack and some variations of the English Opening. For this reason, the Encyclopaedia of Chess Openings has no specific code devoted to 1.g3. The move itself is classified under A00, but the numerous transpositional possibilities can result in various ECO codes.
While it has never been common, the Madras player Ghulam Kassim noted that "many of the Indian players commence their game in this way" in annotating the 1828 correspondence match between Madras and Hyderabad. The hypermodern player Richard Reti played 1.g3 several times at Baden-Baden in 1925, with mixed results. 1.g3 received renewed attention after Pal Benko used it to defeat Bobby Fischer and Mikhail Tal in the 1962 Candidates Tournament in Curaçao, part of the 1963 World Championship cycle. Benko used the opening the first eleven times he was White in the tournament.
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