Courses (1095)

The English Opening can be like a Sicilian with an extra tempo, and White usually spends that tempo on comfort. Develop quietly, keep the centre fluid, wait to see how Black commits, and only then choose a plan. The whole appeal of 1.c4 is that White gets to be patient while Black reacts.
GM Mahammad Muradli's repertoire is built to take that comfort away. From the opening moves, Black becomes the side asking the questions — either out-waiting White with a quiet finesse, or forcing an immediate confrontation in the centre. The tempo may belong to White, but the initiative does not.

The most uncomfortable recommendations tend to come from the other side of the board. GM Pier Luigi Basso has spent years building and playing White's sharpest tries against the Accelerated Dragon — and in Accelerated Dragon: Dynamic Sicilian Counterplay, he hands Black the exact setup he would least like to meet himself.
The appeal is easy to state. The Accelerated Dragon offers everything the ordinary Dragon does — the bishop on g7, pressure down the c-file, a real three-result game — but with one structural bonus. Because the d-pawn stays on d7, Black keeps ...d5 in reserve as a single move, and the Yugoslav Attack that gives the classical Dragon its reputation never gets the same grip.

The Maroczy Bind carries the name of a player who never set it up with the white pieces. As Malakhov points out, Géza Maroczy — oddly enough — never played the structure as White at all; he appears on the Black side of the game that gave it its name, Swiderski–Maroczy, Monte Carlo 1904.
It is a fitting emblem for a structure that always had to be read from both sides of the board. The same two pawns on c4 and e4 can mean a slow, suffocating squeeze or a springboard for counterplay, depending entirely on who understands the position better.
That double vision is the premise of The Maroczy Bind - Strategic Foundations by GM Vladimir Malakhov. It is a structures course, not a repertoire — there are no long forcing lines to memorise. Instead it studies the formation itself: what each side is trying to do, which pieces to exchange and which to keep, where the pawn breaks live, and the exact moment a natural-looking move becomes a serious error.

Material is the first thing chess teaches you to count, and the last thing you learn to distrust — the moment someone gives up the exchange for a square, the arithmetic stops working. This Guided Practice course trains the judgment that replaces it, across four themes: gambit play in attack and defence, positional exchange sacrifices, long-term piece sacrifices, and the remaining forms of imbalance. Examples run from Chigorin and Botvinnik to Anand, Shirov and Abdusattorov, with each exercise asking you to decide before the solution is revealed.

Where Part 1 treated pawns as structure at rest, Part 2 puts them in motion: the storm thrown at a castled king, the blockade that freezes an opponent's play, the defence that meets an avalanche, and the rook-pawn advance that modern practice has turned into a standard weapon. Petrosian anchors the blockading material, while Carlsen, Ding Liren and Gukesh illustrate the newest ideas. Four themes, trained the Guided Practice way — decide first, then compare.

Calculation is really two skills pulling in opposite directions: the fast, forcing sequence that decides an attack, and the quiet move that decides everything else. "What is the move that changes nothing — and yet changes everything?" — GM Dhopade trains both, from converting an attacking intuition into a concrete win to spotting the silent resource most players walk straight past. The most extensive exercise collection in the series, with full solutions, lecture recordings, and PGN.

We are taught that strategy means quiet manoeuvring and calculation means tactics, but GM Dhopade's point is that strategic advantages often have to be calculated for — candidate moves and forcing lines used to win a positional argument rather than material. The course pairs that idea with a session on attacking combinations, which sharpen the same skill through sacrifice and pattern. Fifteen test positions with full solutions, plus complete lecture recordings and PGN.

Every strong player knows the reflex: you look at a position, count the material, and reach a verdict — until the board refuses to agree. GM Baadur Jobava describes exactly that reaction the first time he met the key endgame of this repertoire. White seems to hold a sound extra pawn, yet the two bishops tell a different story, and Black equalizes.
That quiet contradiction — the extra pawn that looks decisive and isn't — runs through the whole of The Austrian Defence: A Dynamic Weapon for Black. After 1.d4 d5 2.c4 c5, Black meets the Queen's Gambit not by accepting or declining it, but by answering one gambit with another.

The Open Sicilian is a race of memory — the Sveshnikov, the Taimanov and the Najdorf are ground Black's specialists know well. GM Vladimir Malakhov spent most of his career declining that race. His answer to 2...Nc6 is 3.Bb5, the Rossolimo: White gives up the bishop to damage Black's pawn structure, and in return plays for plans rather than long forcing lines, with clear, durable trumps of his own.
The Rossolimo Revolution: A Powerful Sicilian Repertoire for White, by GM Vladimir Malakhov, GM Pier Luigi Basso and IM Dragos Ceres, is built on that idea and sharpens the old system with directions well off the beaten path.

Players reach for the Slav to put White to the test. The heavy main lines after 3.Nc3 when Black captures on c4, the Chebanenko with ...a6, the sharpest Semi-Slav tabiyas — each one asks White to remember a great deal of theory before the real game even starts. The Positional Way against the Slav sidesteps all of it.
GM Abdulla Gadimbayli, the 2022 World Junior Champion, meets 1.d4 d5 2.c4 c6 with 3.Nf3 and 4.g3 — a Catalan-flavoured fianchetto that moves the struggle off memorized lines and onto strategic ground. White develops naturally, places the bishop on g2, and keeps the structure flexible rather than forcing an early clash.