Courses (102)

In the 1980s, English club players gave a modest name to their favourite weapon against the Pirc. The "150 Attack" (named after a British grading of roughly 1800) needed no deep theory: Be3, Qd2, castle long, push the h-pawn. It was a plan any club player could follow.
Decades later, this simple scheme is still the main reason many players are afraid to play 1...d6. In Jobava's Pirc: A Dynamic Repertoire for Black – Part 2, GM Baadur Jobava answers it with one modest move: 4...a6!

GM Baadur Jobava opens with a direct admission: he hates it when White decides the game is a draw at move ten. The Pirc is his answer — Black hands over the centre deliberately, lets White build it, and then takes it apart, so that every White plan carries a concrete price and there is no early simplification, no dead symmetry, and no forced route to a draw. Part 1 is anchored in the Austrian Attack across six chapters, with the Classical System, the Italian-style 4.Bc4 and the Fianchetto System completing it — and the author singles out the position after 7.O-O e5! as the most important chapter in the course.

After 1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 d6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 Nf6 5.Nc3 a6, White faces probably the most theoretical position in chess. Millions of games have been played, and the main lines are analyzed deep into the middlegame.
Finding something fresh here is a real test. That is the task of this stage.
This database continues the Modern Chess Autumn Challenge. In the Carlsbad stage, four authors built repertoires for Black. Now the challenge switches sides: GM Baadur Jobava, GM Lorenzo Lodici and GM José Martínez Alcántara received the same task, a repertoire for White against the Najdorf. Each of them worked on it independently.

Every strong player knows the reflex: you look at a position, count the material, and reach a verdict — until the board refuses to agree. GM Baadur Jobava describes exactly that reaction the first time he met the key endgame of this repertoire. White seems to hold a sound extra pawn, yet the two bishops tell a different story, and Black equalizes.
That quiet contradiction — the extra pawn that looks decisive and isn't — runs through the whole of The Austrian Defence: A Dynamic Weapon for Black. After 1.d4 d5 2.c4 c5, Black meets the Queen's Gambit not by accepting or declining it, but by answering one gambit with another.

For most of its long life, the Philidor has been filed under "solid but passive" — an opening you reach for to hold the balance, not to fight for the initiative. In this new edition, GM Baadur Jobava and GM Pier Luigi Basso argue that the reputation is out of date.
The whole repertoire turns on a single reassessment. Where Black used to keep the central tension with ...c6 and settle into a slightly cramped position, the authors now release it at once with ...exd4, plant a knight on e5, and obtain fast, comfortable piece play.
That one idea runs through the entire course, and it is why this is a genuinely new course rather than a revision of the previous edition. The authors are explicit about it: the main directions have been rebuilt, and many chapters rewritten from scratch.

There is no shortage of repertoires against the London System. What there has never been is seven of them, side by side, produced independently by strong players who did not know what the others were writing.
That is what the Modern Chess Autumn Challenge produces, and this database is the result of its first stage. Each of the seven participants was handed the same two problems — a repertoire for Black against the Classical London (1.d4 d5 2.Nf3 Nf6 3.Bf4) and against the Jobava London (1.d4 d5 2.Nc3 Nf6 3.Bf4) — and each solved them their own way.
Fourteen recommendations. No two alike.

The minor defences are the lines 1.e4 players tend to neglect — the Philidor, the Scandinavian, the Alekhine, the Nimzowitsch, the Owen. Against most repertoires, reaching a comfortable, roughly level position counts as success. This course sets a higher bar and holds to it from the first chapter to the last.
The recommendation follows a single idea across every defence: occupy the centre, castle long where the position allows, and play for the attack rather than a quiet plus. The Old Philidor tabiya is the clearest expression of the method. After 1.e4 d6 2.d4 Nf6 3.Nc3 e5 4.Nf3 exd4 5.Nxd4 Be7, White uncorks 6.Bf4!, follows with Qd2, and castles queenside — the exact setup Abdusattorov faced, now examined from the side that presses for the full point.

Few sidelines have reshaped everyday 1.d4 play over the past decade like the Jobava London — 1.d4 Nf6 2.Nc3 followed by 3.Bf4. Baadur Jobava did more than anyone to bring it into serious practice, which makes him an unusually credible guide to taking it apart. Here he does exactly that, showing Black how to defuse a system he understands from the inside.
That gesture sets the tone for the whole course. King's Indian Defense: A Complete Repertoire – Part 6 is the volume where GM Andrea Stella and GM Baadur Jobava turn to everything White plays instead of a real King's Indian — the sidelines designed to sidestep the fight rather than enter it.

For most of its life, the Vienna Variation asked Black to walk a tightrope. After 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 e6 3.Nf3 d5 4.Nc3 dxc4 5.e4, the classical road ran through 5…Bb4 — the pin on c3, the threat of …Nxe4, and behind them a thick layer of forcing theory that every prepared opponent had already memorized.
GM Baadur Jobava and GM Pier Luigi Basso take a sharper turn. Grab the pawn on c4 and keep it, then answer 5.e4 with the immediate 5…b5 — defending the extra c4-pawn before White can round it up, and steering the game into wild, unbalanced positions where Black can also be the one playing for a win from move five.

For a long time, 3.f3 against the Caro-Kann lived up to the faintly dismissive name it was given. The Fantasy Variation was treated as a club-level ambush, a line to spring on an unprepared opponent rather than a serious try for an opening advantage. That reputation is now out of date.
Modern engines evaluate many of the critical positions after 1.e4 c6 2.d4 d5 3.f3 as comfortable for White, and the move has crossed over from the world of surprise weapons into the repertoires of top grandmasters. What was once "fantasy" has become a grounded, objectively sound way to fight for the center from the third move.