A single capture gives this repertoire its shape. In GM Sina Movahed's Ruy Lopez it's Bxc6 — White trading the Spanish bishop for the c6-knight, an old resource that here turns on when it's played. Movahed's case is structural: reach for it at the right moment and Black is left with pieces poorly suited to the position that results.
His foundation is the deferred exchange: 5...Be7 6.Bxc6. Instead of capturing on move four, Movahed waits until Black has committed the bishop to e7 and the knight to f6 — and then argues those very pieces sit awkwardly for the pawn structure that arises after ...dxc6. The aim is not to refute the Ruy Lopez, but to hand Black an unfamiliar middlegame from an entirely familiar move order.
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3h 42m PGN Download Memory Booster Interactive Tests Computer Practice
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For decades, meeting the Caro-Kann with 3.e5 was treated as the modest reply. Releasing the central tension so early seemed to hand Black the very thing the opening is chosen for — a light-squared bishop developed to f5 in the open air, before ...e6 ever shuts it in. Nigel Short's advocacy in the early 1990s reshaped that judgment, showing that White's extra space in the Advance Variation is a lasting asset rather than a concession.
Crushing the Caro-Kann with 3.e5: White's Space Advantage, the new course by IM Deboushnik De, extends that idea instead of repeating it. Where Short built the space advantage slowly, this repertoire expands on both wings and starts posing questions from move four, aiming to deny Black the settled, comfortable game the Caro-Kann promises.
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Somewhere along the way, the Italian Game quietly changed character. The first three moves stayed the same — 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 — but the fourth became a slow d2-d3, and the Italian became known for patient maneuvering rather than early fireworks.
GM Mitrabha Guha's new course restores the Italian's older, faster character. The starting position is the familiar one, but at every crossroad, the repertoire takes the direct road rather than the quiet one.
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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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4h 27m PGN Download Memory Booster Interactive Tests Computer Practice
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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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When English club players of the 1980s needed something reliable against the Pirc and Modern, many reached for the same recipe: Be3, Qd2, f3, long castling, and a pawn avalanche with h4-h5. The system picked up a nickname — the 150 Attack — because a player graded around 150 on the old British scale, roughly 1800 today, could handle it without memorising a lot of theory. The plan carried the ideas; the burden on memory stayed light.
Crushing the Modern Defence inherits that logic and gives it grandmaster precision. In the Modern, Black concedes the centre on purpose, intending to strike back at it from the flanks once the hypermodern set-up is complete. Roiz and Arnaudov reply before that plan matures — occupy the centre, castle queenside, and pry open the h-file with h4-h5 while the opponent is still arranging his pieces. In line after line White gains space and leaves Black cramped.
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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.
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2h 48m PGN Download Memory Booster Interactive Tests Computer Practice
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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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Few openings carry a pedigree quite like this one. The Evans Gambit was conceived in 1827 by William Davies Evans, a Welsh sea captain, and every attacking generation since has reached back for it — Morphy and Chigorin in the romantic era, and later Kasparov, who reintroduced it at the highest level against Anand in 1995. It is one of those ideas that never truly retires; each generation rediscovers its bite and adds something of its own.
That is exactly what GM Baadur Jobava and GM Pier Luigi Basso do here. The gambit's logic is unchanged since 1827: after 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 Bc5 4.b4, White hands over a pawn to gain time on the bishop, build a broad centre with c3 and d4, and open lines straight toward f7. What is new is the modern, engine-tested precision the authors bring to it — including a fresh queenside idea in the main line that gives the whole system a second life.
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There is a kind of player who spends an entire career inside 1.d4, 1.c4, and 1.Nf3, and never once feels the pull of 1.e4. GM Tamás Bánusz was one of them. Then, by his own account, he had "a sudden moment of madness," opened 1.e4 for the first time, and went looking for a way to handle the 2…d6 Sicilian. What he found was 1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 d6 3.c3 — and, in his words, he fell in love.
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3h 28m PGN Download Memory Booster Interactive Tests Computer Practice
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