Courses (357)

Most players who open 1.d4 accept an unspoken bargain: in exchange for a sound, ambitious first move, they agree to meet whatever their opponent has prepared — the Nimzo-Indian, the Grünfeld, the King's Indian, the Queen's Gambit Declined, each with its own library of theory. This course is built on refusing that bargain. With 2.Bg5, White sets the strategic agenda from the second move, sidesteps the heavily prepared mainstream defences, and steers the game into positions where understanding matters far more than memorisation.

Every opening asks you to pay for something, and the Tarrasch Defense names its price out loud. In return for free development, active pieces and a clear plan, Black accepts a long-term structural weakness — most often the isolated pawn on d5. The moves that reach that position have shifted across a century of practice; the pawn on d5, and the plans it demands, have barely moved at all.
That constancy is the entire premise of Tarrasch Defense - Strategic Foundations by IM Dragos Ceres and GM Vladimir Malakhov. It is built not as a theoretical file but as a study of the structures behind it— because, as Malakhov puts it, once you recognize the structure you already know the plan.

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.

In 1918, at Berlin, Milan Vidmar reached for an opening that barely anyone took seriously. It was a pawn sacrifice first tried by the Hungarian master Maróczy in a casual game back in 1896, and Vidmar used it to defeat Akiba Rubinstein — one of the finest technicians the game has ever produced.
That single result pulled the Budapest Gambit out of obscurity and sparked a wave of popularity through the early 1920s. It has been a rare guest at the top ever since.
But the reason Vidmar's idea worked has never gone away. After 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 e5, Black hands over a pawn and receives, in return, rapid development and pieces that come to life at once.

The Modern Benoni was not understood in a single generation. Its defining imbalance — Black concedes space and a central pawn majority to White, and takes in return a queenside majority of his own, active pieces, and the ...b5 and ...f5 breaks — took the chess world decades of practical play to read correctly. That slow accumulation of understanding is exactly what GM Anton Korobov sets out to compress into one training course.

The subtitle is not decoration. Everything in the Benoni flows from a deliberate structural bargain, and the player who grasps that bargain — when the imbalance favours them, and how to convert it — is the player who scores. Theory tells you which moves to make; this course is about the positions those moves produce.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The Catalan built its reputation on a paradox. White frequently lets the c4-pawn go, trusting the fianchettoed bishop and a lead in development to pay it back with interest, and much of the opening's venom lives in that slow, pressure-filled squeeze. In his new course, GM Mahammad Muradli hands that logic straight back across the board.

With 4...c5, Black refuses to sit and be pressed. After 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 e6 3.Nf3 d5 4.g3 c5, the move undermines White's center and creates tension, so that Black is never left absorbing the free, unopposed pressure the Catalan thrives on. And in the critical 5.cxd5 cxd4, it is Black who lets the material question wait — the plan, in Muradli's words, is to prioritize development over material.