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 In this new edition, GM Baadur Jobava and GM Pier Luigi Basso argue that the reputation is out of date.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.
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5h 27m PGN Download Memory Booster Interactive Tests
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The French Defense has experienced a dramatic renaissance. From club tournaments to elite events, 1...e6 is back—sharper, more resilient, and better prepared than ever. White's response needs to be equally uncompromising.
GM Jose Martinez Alcantara and GM Pier Luigi Basso present the Advance Variation not as one approach among many, but as White's most forcing, most ambitious weapon against the French. With 3.e5, White seizes massive central space, restricts Black's position before coordination is achieved, and launches concrete attacking plans that demand precision from move one.
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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.
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There is a particular satisfaction in playing your opponent's own setup back at them, a tempo up. Part 4 pushes that idea into lines where White takes up structures that usually belong to the defender, with the extra move already in hand.
Two examples run through the volume. One is the Pirc structure, where Black answers with ...g6, ...Bg7 and later ...e5. The other is the ...d5/...Nc6/...Bf5 treatment that Baadur Jobava has long recommended for Black — reached here after 1.Nf3 d5 2.g3 Nc6 3.d4 Bf5, a Jobava London with colors reversed.
After 1.Nf3 d5 2.g3 g6 3.Bg2 Bg7 4.O-O e5 5.d3, Stella observes that the position is almost a Reversed Pirc. Black is objectively fine, but the extra move changes the practical picture, and the authors have found fresh ideas to pose problems exactly where theory promises Black an easy life.
Sequence: KIA According to Stella »
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5h 51m PGN Download Memory Booster Interactive Tests Computer Practice
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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.
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1h 43m PGN Download Memory Booster Interactive Tests
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The Benoni has always carried a reputation against the fianchetto. Play 3.g3, allow 3...c5, and conventional wisdom says Black has found the right answer — the g3-setup is supposed to be exactly what the Benoni player wants to see.
In The Catalan against an Early ...c5, GM Pier Luigi Basso neither disputes that reputation nor avoids it. He accepts it and turns it around. The Benoni is a good option for Black. It is also, as the course sets out to demonstrate, a very good one for White. The author's own description of the strategy is worth keeping in mind throughout: invite the opponent into your territory, let them believe they have achieved something, and let them regret the choice later.
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With 4.Bg5, White tries to change the subject. Rather than the direct 4.e5 that Part 1 was built to answer, the bishop develops and invites the French player onto different ground. Stella's reply, 4...Be7, quietly declines the argument — after 5.e5 the game folds straight back into the Steinitz pawn chain the whole repertoire is built around. The move meant to sidestep the Steinitz becomes another road into it.
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5h 14m PGN Download Memory Booster Interactive Tests
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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 »
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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.
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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 »
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