Courses (1099)

Inside Your Games – Edition 1 is a premium diagnostic training product built around 15 real games played by members of the Modern Chess Academy and analyzed in depth by GM Ioannis Papaioannou. These are not polished model games chosen for aesthetic value. They are authentic tournament games, containing the typical inaccuracies, wrong plans, and critical decisions that decide games at the board.

The goal of this project is simple but ambitious:
to teach you how to think better in real positions, not how to memorize perfect moves.

For decades, the Najdorf has been Black's sharpest weapon against 1.e4. But here's the problem: elite-level preparation in the main lines has become so deep that White increasingly looks elsewhere. The trend is unmistakable—Aronian's 3.Bc4, Nepomniachtchi's 5.Bc4, Sindarov's 5.Bd3, the resurgence of the c3-Sicilian among super-GMs. These aren't sidelines anymore. They're carefully chosen weapons designed to sidestep your Najdorf preparation and drag you into unfamiliar territory.
GM José Martinez Alcantara and GM Pier Luigi Basso built their Elite Najdorf Repertoire for Black - Part 1 and Part 2 to give you a complete main-line system. But what happens when White doesn't allow it? Fight the Anti-Najdorf Variations completes the picture. This isn't a collection of defensive resources—it's an active repertoire where Black imposes plans rather than reacts to White's ideas.

The Caro-Kann Defense has long been known as a reliable weapon for Black, but it faces a persistent challenge: how do you maintain flexibility without drowning in theory? The 4...Bf5 line demands encyclopedic preparation, while 4...Nf6 5.Nxf6+ exf6 commits Black to an unusual pawn structure that doesn't suit everyone’s taste. For decades, top players including Smyslov and Karpov understood that 4...Nd7 offered something different—a practical, flexible approach where strategic understanding matters more than memorizing many variations.

For decades, ambitious players have faced a familiar dilemma against the Ruy Lopez: how to fight for a win without compromising positional soundness. The Berlin Defence offers reliability but limited winning chances. The Open Variation creates imbalance but at the cost of structural commitments. GM Sina Movahed's new course presents the Arkhangelsk Variation as the solution—a system that delivers genuine double-edged play while maintaining strategic integrity.

The Queen's Gambit Declined with 4...Nbd7 has become the contemporary player's fortress—Carlsen's choice when solidity matters, Aronian's trust in critical moments, Kramnik's classical foundation. It's the line you expect to face when serious opponents sit across from you. But what happens when the expected is met with 5.Qc2—not the fourth most popular move, not even the third, but a choice that sits quietly at fifth, carrying precision over popularity?

This is the philosophy behind 1.d4 According to Lucas Van Foreest - Fight the Queen's Gambit Declined - Part 2, the eighth installment in the 1.d4 According to Lucas series. GM Lucas Van Foreest and GM Pier Luigi Basso don't promise magic bullets—they offer something better: a repertoire engineered for practical discomfort where Black's preparation evaporates.

The 2025 Chess World Cup delivered exceptional opening novelties and tactical brilliance—but as always, it was endgame technique that separated the contenders from the champions. GM Dejan Bojkov has distilled the tournament's most instructive conclusions into a comprehensive course, capturing the precise calculations, subtle maneuvers, and critical principles that decided games at the highest level. This isn't a collection of theoretical curiosities; it's a practical masterclass drawn directly from elite competition, where every inaccuracy carries consequences and technique becomes the deciding factor.

Every chess player knows the frustration: you've studied theoretical endgames, memorized key positions, understand the principles—yet over the board, critical half-points slip away. The gap between endgame knowledge and endgame performance remains one of chess's persistent challenges. GM Ioannis Papaioannou addresses this directly in Typical Mistakes in Practical Endgames, a course born from observation of what strong players actually do wrong when the position simplifies, not just what textbooks say they should do right.

The year 1851. Adolf Anderssen sacrifices everything—two rooks and a bishop—to deliver checkmate in what would become known as the Immortal Game. Nearly two centuries later, that same spirit lives on, but now armed with modern preparation, engine-tested improvements, and the fearless vision of GM Baadur Jobava.

This is not a museum piece. King's Gambit for White, co-authored with IM Dragos Ceres, resurrects 1.e4 e5 2.f4 as a fully functional weapon for the modern era. Where others see romantic nostalgia, Jobava sees concrete attacking chances. Where theory declares equality, he finds winning positions. The course doesn't begin with variations—it begins with the Immortal Game itself, reminding us why the King's Gambit was never meant to be tame.

For decades, 7.Bg5 defined the theoretical landscape of the Sveshnikov, with White trading the dark-squared bishop for the knight on f6 to establish firm control of d5. But 7.Nd5 offers a fundamentally different approach—one that preserves the bishop pair while transforming the d5-square from a blockading square into a space-gaining pawn formation. What initially seemed like an unorthodox sideline has evolved into a sophisticated strategic system, one that GM Michael Roiz, GM Petar G. Arnaudov, and IM Siegfried Baumegger have developed into a comprehensive fighting repertoire in Play the Sveshnikov - Top-Level Repertoire for White.

When GM Jose Martinez Alcantara and GM Pier Luigi Basso published their first volume on the Italian Game, they introduced a weapon that top players genuinely feared: the Bg5 systems after 5...d6. The setup was quite uncomfortable that Black's best minds started searching for alternatives—any move order that could sidestep the main battlegrounds entirely. This second volume is the authors' response to those escape attempts. Where Part 1 established dominance in the main lines, Part 2 systematically deals with every modern sideline Black has developed to avoid the pressure. The message is clear: there are no safe havens, no comfortable transpositions, no escape routes left.