using the aggressive Taimanov Attack, which caused players to question the fundamental soundness of Black's opening. By the end of the decade, the Modern Main Line had also emerged as a dangerous weapon for White, which only compounded Black's troubles. As a result, the opening declined in popularity and a number of grandmasters gave it up altogether. Those who continued to play it often chose to do so via the move order 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 e6 3.Nf3 c5 4.d5, when White's early development of the knight to f3 rules out the Taimanov Attack and gives Black opportunities to avoid the Modern Main Line. Mired in this theoretical crisis, the Modern Benoni remained unpopular in the 1990s. Veselin Topalov was the only top-level player to play it regularly, and he too generally preferred the 2...e6 3.Nf3 c5 move order. At the beginning of the new millennium, the theoretician John Watson published a well-regarded survey of the opening that may have contributed to the opening's revival. Many of the ideas he recommended, such as 9...Qh4+ versus the Taimanov Attack and 9...Nh5 in the Modern Main Line, grew in popularity after its publication. The opening regained some more of its former respectability when Vladimir Kramnik, needing a win with Black against Peter Leko, played it in the second to last game of the 2004 World Championship. While he did achieve a winning position at one point, the game ended in a draw. Nevertheless, Étienne Bacrot, Boris Gelfand and Vassily Ivanchuk have all since used the Modern Benoni at the highest levels of competition, while Vugar Gashimov became the opening's most notable proponent. He was the strongest player willing to use the original 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 c5 3.d5 e6 move order and defend Black's cause in both the Taimanov Attack and the Modern Main Line. Strategy The Modern Benoni is one of Black's sharpest and most active defences against 1.d4. The exchange of White's c-pawn for Black's e-pawn leaves White with a pawn majority in the centre and Black with one on the queenside. This asymmetry suggests that White will try to play on the kingside and in the centre, while Black will seek counterplay on the queenside. However, this simplistic generalization does not hold in many cases—depending on how the pieces are arranged, either side may be able to fight back on the flank where they are theoretically weaker. The creation of such