Courses (424)

Ask a well-prepared opponent how they meet the Advance today, and you'll hear a dozen fashionable answers: an early ...Qc7, ...Bd7–b5 maneuvers, ...Nge7 setups designed to sidestep theory. GM Andrea Stella takes a different road. In French Defense for Black – Part 3, he goes back to what he calls the "good and old mainline" — 5...Qb6, 6...c4, 7...Na5 — the classical treatment of White's most ambitious try against the French.
The choice is deliberate. Stella recommends 5...Qb6 not because it hides from theory, but to keep the "classical spirit": pressure on d4 and b2 from move five, a healthy structure, and a plan Black actually wants to play. The result is presented as a sound, fighting repertoire against 3.e5 rather than a survival guide.

For most of its life, the Philidor was filed under "solid but passive." Black plays ...d6 and ...e5, holds the centre rather than fighting to seize it, and waits for White to commit first — and for a long time strong players read that waiting as a lack of ambition. It took the better part of the twentieth century for that verdict to change.
The story of that change is where this course begins. Its first model game is Teichmann–Nimzowitsch, 1911; its last is Niemann–Aravindh, 2026, with Pilnik–Benko, Sutovsky–Azmaiparashvili and Demchenko–Jobava marking the decades between. Across those hundred-plus years the moves keep shifting, but the structure — and the plans it demands — stays remarkably constant.

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 In this new edition, GM Baadur Jobava and GM Pier Luigi Basso argue that the reputation is out of date.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.

For most of its history, 1.e4 e6 2.d4 d5 3.Nc3 has been White's most challenging option against the French. It's the most common move here, and against 3...Nf6 it opens the door to the Steinitz Variation with 4.e5. In Creative French Repertoire for Black – Part 2, GM Renato Quintiliano and GM Yago Santiago don't play it safe for equality — they hand White a problem the engine tends to underrate.
The idea that sums up the course comes deep in the main line: 4.e5 Nfd7 5.f4 c5 6.Nf3 Nc6 7.Be3 Qb6 8.Na4 Qa5+ 9.c3 b6 10.Bd2 c4 11.b4 Nxb4! 12.cxb4 Bxb4 — two pawns and a three-to-one pawn majority on the queenside for the piece. The engine says White is better, and the authors don't dispute it. But that's not the whole story at the board: White's pieces stay tangled, the extra piece is hard to bring into play, and the defender has to solve real problems on every move.

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.

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.

Every Sicilian player learns the same warning early: do not hand White a permanent grip on d5. A knight installed there, with no pawn left to challenge it, is the textbook picture of a Sicilian gone wrong. The Kalashnikov opens by ignoring that warning on move four.
After 1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 e5, Black kicks the knight and concedes d5 — not for a moment, but for the rest of the game. Kazakouski is honest about how it looks; his first coach, he writes, would faint at the sight of it. Yet the position Black gets is the opposite of a wreck: quick, natural development, pieces landing on active squares, and a White player left holding a "hole" that still has to be shown to matter. The wager running through the whole repertoire is that, most of the time, it doesn't.

Some positions are settled not because anyone proved them, but because everybody plays the same move. After 1.e4 c6 2.d4 d5 3.Nc3 dxe4 4.Nxe4 Nf6 5.Nxf6+ exf6 6.c3, the bishop goes to d6. It has gone to d6 for decades. In Caro-Kann according to Supi, GM Luis Supi asks what happens if it does not — and answers with 6...g6, a move that looks ugly for about ten seconds and then starts to look obvious.

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.

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.