For most of the Steinitz's history, 5.f4 was the main move. It was where White claimed the most space, and where every French player braced for the main fight. That has quietly changed. Modern theory has worked the 5.f4 lines out so concretely that White struggles to prove anything real — and a second front has opened at 5.Nce2, the positional try where understanding matters more than memory. Part 1 of GM Andrea Stella's Steinitz answers both, and treats them as two different problems needing two different kinds of preparation.
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7h 27m PGN Download Memory Booster Interactive Tests
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This course presents a practical Ruy Lopez repertoire based on the Modern Archangel variation (4...Bc5), as employed by GM Praggnanandhaa. Offering a sound alternative to the theory-heavy Berlin and Marshall lines, the system follows a clear strategic blueprint: bishop to a7, knight via e7 to g6, and the thematic ...Bb4+ check to disrupt White's center. GM Sina Movahed covers all critical responses, providing a double-edged yet reliable repertoire where understanding plans and typical maneuvers matters far more than memorizing endless variations.
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1h 53m PGN Download Memory Booster Interactive Tests
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For decades, the Italian Game has been an awkward place to be as Black. The quiet maneuvering plans and the many move orders leave plenty of room to drift, and it is easy to end up passively placed with no clear idea. Movahed's answer sidesteps the heavily analyzed main lines that follow 4...Nf6. After 3...Bc5 he meets 4.c3 with the flexible 4...d6, lets White build the center with d4, and only then drops the bishop back to b6 — giving up a pawn to seize the initiative before White can consolidate.
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2h 20m PGN Download Memory Booster Interactive Tests
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The Ruy Lopez is usually White's kind of fight. After 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5, the familiar roads lead to slow, deeply mapped positions where White keeps the tension and sets the pace, while Black spends the middlegame answering questions rather than asking them.
The modest-looking 3...g6 changes that on move three. Black declares the character of the game at once: fianchetto the bishop, aim it down the long diagonal at White's centre, and head for an unbalanced struggle where the full point is a genuine target for both sides. As Pier Luigi Basso frames it in the introduction, this is a way to fight the Spanish and play for a complicated game — not to equalise quietly, but to reach positions with rich play for either side.
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2h 30m PGN Download Memory Booster Interactive Tests
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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 34m PGN Download Memory Booster Interactive Tests
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Every Sicilian player has felt it: years invested in the Najdorf, the Dragon, or the Classical Sicilian, only to face a 2.Nc3 or 2.c3 from an opponent who clearly knows the position better. The statistics explain why. The Open Sicilian shows up far more often across a career than any single Anti-Sicilian system, so the experience naturally tilts away from these sidelines.
That imbalance is exactly where games get lost — not to superior chess, but to superior preparation in territory the Black player rarely visits.
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4h 3m PGN Download Memory Booster Interactive Tests
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Modern French preparation has narrowed. A handful of fashionable tabiyas now absorb most of White's attention, and the analysis around them runs deep. GM Felix Blohberger's second volume goes the other way — down older, classical roads that White players have quietly stopped studying.
That choice is the connective tissue of Part 2, which completes the repertoire begun in Practical French for Black — Part 1. Where the first volume handled 3.Nc3 and the early sidelines, this database covers everything that remains after 1.e4 e6 2.d4 d5: the Advance, the Tarrasch, and the Exchange.
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1h 48m PGN Download Memory Booster Interactive Tests
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For most of its history, 3.exd5 has been the move you play when you are happy to shake hands. Symmetrical pawn structure, an open centre, nothing structural to fight over — the Exchange French earned a reputation as the most peaceful reply to the French, the line you reach for on a tired afternoon. So it means something that one of the most inventive attacking players of his generation has built a serious repertoire with real winning chances.
In The Exchange French — Top-Level Repertoire for White, GM Baadur Jobava and GM Pier Luigi Basso set out to dismantle that cliché. The symmetry, they argue, is deceptive: beneath it lies a structure full of small, durable imbalances, and the better-prepared side can lean on them until they decide the game. This is the Exchange French as a fighting choice, not a truce.
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2h 21m PGN Download Memory Booster Interactive Tests Computer Practice
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This course is the next step in our series offering a complete 1.e4 e5 repertoire for Black, following two related projects: Italian Game for Black — Deep Understanding and The Spanish Arkhangelsk with Early ...Bc5 — Deep Understanding. With the Scotch Game, the series now completes one of the most important parts of the 1.e4 e5 universe.
For many players, the Scotch is one of the most unpleasant openings to face. It often leads to irrational positions, where standard plans do not apply and concrete understanding becomes critical — exactly the type of position where preparation based on memorisation breaks down. This course offers a solution built on deep understanding of the arising structures, plans, and practical decisions.
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10.5h PGN Download
Ask a Petroff player where they actually lose games, and the answer is rarely the heavily studied main line. It is the 3.d4 they never looked at, the quiet knight retreat that turns into a slow squeeze, the offbeat third move that drags them somewhere unfamiliar before the position even settles. Those losses come from the lines filed under "sidelines" — which is precisely the word this volume sets out to retire.
Part 2 completes the repertoire begun in Part 1. Where the first volume settled the absolute main line with 3.Nxe5, this one covers every other White attempt after 2.Nf3 Nf6 — and the largest of them is anything but a sideline.
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1h 49m PGN Download Memory Booster Interactive Tests
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