After four months of studying the fundamental structures of the 1.Nf3 complex — Réti and Catalan-type formations, King's Indian and Grünfeld structures, English Opening positions with symmetrical setups, Hedgehog formations and Maróczy-type structures — we are now ready to translate that understanding into concrete theoretical preparation.
In this phase, theory is no longer kept light. We look at concrete move orders and specific variations, where precise theoretical knowledge is required. The bet the whole project has been making is cashed in here: with the typical ideas and structures already familiar, the theory is absorbed quickly rather than memorised painfully.
This first half of the theoretical part covers all Black setups involving the move ...d5.
The material is based on the camp of the same name and is now transformed into a complete digital product, including full video recordings of all lectures, a structured PGN file following the logic of the training sessions, and extensive theoretical analysis for deeper study.
Labels:
6h PGN Download
The Opening Builder – Réti for White: Fundamental Structures after 1.Nf3 c5 2.c4 is the fourth part of our six-month Réti project. It continues the work started in the first course on the structures after 1.Nf3 d5 2.g3, the second on 1.Nf3 Nf6 2.c4 e6 3.g3, and the third on 1.Nf3 Nf6 2.c4 g6 3.Nc3.
This part addresses what happens when Black meets our move order with the most independent try of all — 1...c5, steering the game into the English Opening complex. These are among the most flexible and strategically rich positions in modern chess: symmetrical setups, Hedgehog formations, and Maróczy-type structures, all of which are central to a 1.Nf3 repertoire and all of which reward deep structural understanding rather than concrete preparation.
The material is based on the camp of the same name and is now transformed into a complete digital product. It includes full video recordings of all lectures, a structured PGN file that follows the logic of the training sessions, and additional model games and theoretical examples for further study.
Labels:
6h PGN Download
Every Classical Sicilian player has a 6.Bg5 file. Ask them to meet it and the answers come quickly, deeply, with confidence. Then White plays 6.Be2, or 6.Bc4, or 6.Be3, or 6.f3 — and the same well-prepared player is suddenly improvising.
These are "sidelines" only because most preparation ignores them, not because they're harmless. Meet one unprepared and the game doesn't crash — it drifts. A natural move here, a slightly worse structure there, until you're defending something you expected to enjoy.
Part of the difficulty is that these tries don't share a single character. 6.Be2 invites a slow, restrained middlegame; 6.Bc4 plants the bishop on Black's most sensitive diagonal; 6.Be3 and 6.f3 point toward the sharp, opposite-side race of English Attack structures. One block of memorized theory was never going to hold them all together, and that is the problem GM Rodrigo Vasquez set out to solve.
He isn't offering new theory to be memorized. He's sharing this material the way he teaches it to his own students — through complete model games, where the plans, the recurring structures, and Black's concrete resources unfold move by move.
Labels:
3h and 2min PGN Download Interactive Tests
Multilingual Database:
The Scotch Game took its name from a correspondence match played in 1824 between the chess clubs of Edinburgh and London, where the Scottish side struck in the centre with 3.d4. It was a fixture of nineteenth-century play before slipping quietly out of fashion. Then Garry Kasparov brought it back to the very top, wheeling it out in World Championship play and reminding everyone that an early central strike still carries real venom.
That is the spirit GM Mitrabha Guha builds on in The Scotch Game: A Modern Repertoire for White. After 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.d4, White challenges Black in the centre at once and plays for active pieces from the very first moves — no slow manoeuvring, no waiting for a plan to arrive.
Labels:
2h 48m PGN Download Memory Booster Interactive Tests Computer Practice
Multilingual Database:
When the pieces come off and the evaluation settles on equality, most players reach for the draw. Anatoly Karpov spent a career doing the opposite. He treated "equal" as a starting position rather than a verdict, tightening his grip until an ending that could not be lost was quietly lost anyway.
That instinct sits at the heart of one of the most common mistakes in chess: the assumption that an equal endgame must end in a draw. Nothing could be further from the truth. Equal endgames — precisely because both sides relax once the position looks balanced — are where the heaviest errors are made, and where a patient player finds wins that were never supposed to exist.
Sequence: Practical Endgames »
Labels:
6h 21m PGN Download Memory Booster Interactive Tests
Multilingual Database:
Around 1610, the Italian master Giulio Cesare Polerio set down a knight sacrifice so violent that his countrymen named it after what it left on the board: the Fegatello, the "fried liver." Four centuries later, the same leap onto f7 is still one of the most direct ways to drag Black's king into the open. And the wider 4.Ng5 attack, rather than being refuted by modern engines, has been re-armed by them.
The move that sets it all in motion, 4.Ng5, looks almost like a beginner's lunge. That is exactly its value. From that moment every line revolves around a single square, f7, and Black is forced to solve concrete problems from the very first moves.
Labels:
2h 13m PGN Download Memory Booster Interactive Tests
Multilingual Database:
The Caro-Kann has spent most of its life being praised for the wrong thing. Solid. Sound. Structurally impeccable. All true — and all of it has left the opening with a reputation as the defence you choose when a draw would do. GM Abdulla Gadimbayli picked it up for precisely the opposite reason.
He is candid about how he arrived there. A grandmaster from Azerbaijan rated 2524, he spent much of his career struggling for a reliable answer to 1.e4 — and his style, by his own account, has never leaned towards solid games. For a long time the answer was 1...e6. Then he turned to 1...c6, and found something he had not expected: an opening offering an unusual number of ways for Black to play for the win. This course is the result of that work, and his first for Modern Chess.
Labels:
3h 3m PGN Download Memory Booster Interactive Tests Computer Practice
Multilingual Database:
Not every Catalan player wants a theoretical duel. Many sidestep the sharpest main lines at move six, hoping a quieter set-up will hand them a small, nagging edge without a lot of memorization. Fighting the Catalan: A Complete Repertoire for Black – Part 2, by GM Michael Roiz and GM Petar Arnaudov, answers that hope with a single recurring counterpunch: the timely ...c5, striking at White's centre while his development still lags.
Where Part 1 covered the main lines after 6.O-O dxc4, Part 2 takes on everything else — the queen sorties, the early bishop developments, and the knight tours White uses to avoid the main paths. The unifying message is that none of these deviations changes Black's plan. Whatever White tries at move six, the central break is waiting.
Sequence: Roiz versus the Catalan »
Labels:
42m PGN Download Memory Booster Interactive Tests
Multilingual Database:
There is a kind of move a Slav player learns to dread — 4.g3, 4.Qc2, 4.Qb3, 4.Nbd2 — whose whole purpose is to avoid a theoretical debate rather than win one. White keeps the tension low, sidesteps the heavy theory, and hopes a small pull quietly does the work.
These systems are popular because they are easy for White and awkward for Black to meet without drifting into a slightly worse, passive game. This course takes them seriously, treating each as a battleground that deserves a concrete answer — and giving Black two of them.
Sequence: Malakhov's Slav Defense »
Labels:
5h 3m PGN Download Memory Booster Interactive Tests
Multilingual Database:
Ask a Catalan player where Black's difficulties really begin, and the answer is almost always the same: the light-squared bishop on c8. For decades it has been Black's problem, restricted behind its own pawns while White's fianchettoed counterpart controls the long diagonal unopposed. Fighting the Catalan: A Complete Repertoire for Black – Part 1, by GM Michael Roiz and GM Petar Arnaudov, is built around a single unifying idea — in every critical line, that bishop is given a purpose.
Sequence: Roiz versus the Catalan »
Labels:
1h 13m PGN Download Memory Booster Interactive Tests
Multilingual Database: