Some openings are not refuted so much as inherited as refuted. The Lowenthal is the textbook case. For decades it was called dubious, then written off as refuted outright, and most players believed that and moved on. GM Baadur Jobava's starting point is that nobody went back to check the evidence with modern tools — and that when you do, the picture changes. The engine era, so often the executioner of romantic systems, turns out to be the Lowenthal's best defence attorney.
That is the leitmotif running through all nine chapters, including the famous engine "refutation" with 13.Be2 that keeps most players away from the variation entirely. Jobava's conclusion is stated plainly: Black holds, all the way down to a draw the opponent will never find over the board.
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1h and 34min PGN Download Memory Booster Interactive Tests Video Content
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The London System survives on a simple promise — White never has to think, assembling the same setup no matter what Black does. GM Mitrabha Guha's repertoire refuses that arrangement from the start: after 1.d4 Nf6 2.Bf4 d5 3.e3 c5, Black strikes at d4 immediately, brings the knight to c6, and pins the defender with ...Bg4, denying White the undisturbed development the system depends on. Built on one repeatable scheme you can play game after game, it turns the London from an opening you tolerate into familiar territory where Black is the one asking the questions.
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2h and 18min PGN Download Memory Booster Interactive Tests Video Content
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Chess literature overflows with books on attack, yet the equally decisive skill of defence is left almost untrained. In this Guided Practice course, IM Siegfried Baumegger fills that gap through prophylactic thinking — the habit of anticipating your opponent's plans and neutralising them before they arrive, ideally with a move that improves your own position at the same time. Across exercises and annotated model games from defenders like Lasker, Korchnoi and Tal, it trains both halves of great defence: the strategic anticipation that keeps you out of danger, and the tactical resources that save you when danger comes anyway.
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2h PGN Download Interactive Tests Video Content
When the kings castle on opposite wings, the game becomes a race — both sides hurl their pawns at the enemy king, and a single tempo separates a winning attack from a losing one. In this Guided Practice course, IM Siegfried Baumegger trains the whole toolkit of that race through exercises and annotated model games: exchanging the key defenders, forcing weaknesses, timing the sacrifice, and knowing when to switch to counterplay before the opponent's attack arrives first. Drawing on games from Tal and Fischer to Kramnik and Gelfand, it teaches the hardest balance in chess — attacking as fast as possible without ever attacking prematurely.
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2h and 18min PGN Download Interactive Tests Video Content
Opposite-coloured bishops have a reputation for drawishness — but that verdict only holds in the endgame; in the middlegame, the same imbalance turns the bishop into a devastating attacker with no opposite number to stop it. In this Guided Practice course, IM Siegfried Baumegger works through all four faces of the position across carefully selected exercises and annotated model games: the middlegame attack, strategic play to increase an advantage, converting an extra pawn, and defending the ending. Drawing on games from Rubinstein and Smyslov to Carlsen and Ding, it teaches you to recognise when the opposite bishops draw, when they win, and how to steer the play so they do what you need.
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2h and 5min PGN Download Interactive Tests Video Content
Some ideas live in a coach's private files for years before they reach anyone else. This repertoire is one of them. GM Alexey Dreev built the 2...b6 system for his own students over many seasons, and he shares the reason plainly in his introduction: this is a line prepared to play for a win with Black, and to sidestep the forced draws that so often decide games against 1.d4.
The move itself is the statement of intent. After 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 b6!?, Black declines the well-trodden Classical Queen's Indian (2...e6 3.Nf3 b6) in favor of something sharper. The queenside fianchetto arrives a tempo earlier and on Black's own terms, and the resulting positions carry more tension and far more winning potential than the structures Black is usually steered into here.
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There comes a point in almost every endgame where the variations run dry. The pieces are few, the position is quiet, and no forcing sequence promises anything at all. For an inexperienced player this is where the trouble starts — the reflex is to keep calculating, to burn energy searching for a line that simply isn't there. For players like Capablanca or Petrosian, this is precisely where the game was decided.
That reversal sits at the heart of Schematic Thinking in the Endgame by IM Boroljub Zlatanovic. When a position offers nothing to calculate, the decisive skill becomes something quieter and harder to teach: building a long-term plan the opponent cannot prevent, and finding the ideal square for every piece — the king included — in the unhurried manner Capablanca made his own.
Sequence: Practical Endgames »
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2h and 34min PGN Download Interactive Tests Video Content
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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 and 28min PGN Download Memory Booster Interactive Tests Computer Practice Video Content
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Reykjavik, 1972, Game 5. Boris Spassky plays the Nimzo-Indian's most popular system, and Bobby Fischer answers with an idea that looks almost careless: he captures on c3 without waiting for a3, voluntarily giving up the bishop pair. Then comes the point — ...d6, ...e5, and a blockade that slowly suffocates White's position. Twenty-seven moves later, Spassky resigns.
That blockading concept, refined by GM Robert Hübner in the late 1960s and 1970s, is the foundation of GM Mitrabha Guha's new course. Against the Rubinstein System with 4.e3 — by far White's most popular reply — Guha recommends exactly the Hübner treatment: 4...c5 followed by an early exchange on c3 and the strategic clamp with ...d6 and ...e5. It is a repertoire built on plans, not on memorizing long lines of theory.
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3h and 14min PGN Download Memory Booster Interactive Tests Computer Practice Video Content
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Part 1 gave White a reliable structure against Black's classical setups. Part 2 answers a different question: what happens when the opponent has done the homework? GMs Alexey Dreev and Pier Luigi Basso built this course around Black's sharpest, most computer-tested tries against 3.Bf4 — the exact positions a well-prepared opponent will steer toward today. The repertoire doesn't just patch holes; it turns the London into what Dreev calls "a complete, future-proof weapon."
Sequence: Dreev's London »
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4h and 21min PGN Download Memory Booster Interactive Tests Computer Practice Video Content
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