Courses (1089)

For most of the Carlsbad's history, the conversation began from a single assumption: Black answers 3.Nc3 with 3...Nf6, and the familiar Exchange structure follows. That assumption no longer holds. In around half of today's games, Black sidesteps the automatic knight move and reaches instead for a different order — the Triangle, an early ...a6, a Ragozin-style ...Bb4, the fashionable ...h6, or a direct ...c5. Carlsbad Structure for White – Part 4 by GM Pier Luigi Basso is built around exactly this shift, completing the repertoire against everything Black plays instead of 3...Nf6.

For decades, meeting the Caro-Kann with 3.e5 was treated as the modest reply. Releasing the central tension so early seemed to hand Black the very thing the opening is chosen for — a light-squared bishop developed to f5 in the open air, before ...e6 ever shuts it in. Nigel Short's advocacy in the early 1990s reshaped that judgment, showing that White's extra space in the Advance Variation is a lasting asset rather than a concession.
Crushing the Caro-Kann with 3.e5: White's Space Advantage, the new course by IM Deboushnik De, extends that idea instead of repeating it. Where Short built the space advantage slowly, this repertoire expands on both wings and starts posing questions from move four, aiming to deny Black the settled, comfortable game the Caro-Kann promises.

Somewhere along the way, the Italian Game quietly changed character. The first three moves stayed the same — 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 — but the fourth became a slow d2-d3, and the Italian became known for patient maneuvering rather than early fireworks.
GM Mitrabha Guha's new course restores the Italian's older, faster character. The starting position is the familiar one, but at every crossroad, the repertoire takes the direct road rather than the quiet one.

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.

Classical theory treated an early rook-pawn move as a small concession — a tempo spent on nothing while the real pieces waited. The engine age has quietly overturned that verdict. Again and again, a flexible waiting move has proven worth more than a routine developing one, and today's practice is full of early …h6 and …a6 ideas an older generation would have dismissed as slow.
4…h6 in the Queen's Gambit Declined is a clean expression of that shift. After 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 e6 3.Nf3 d5 4.Nc3 h6, Black spends a move to deny White the g5-square — and with it, the whole theoretical forest that grows around the Bg5 pin.

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.

There is no shortage of repertoires against the London System. What there has never been is seven of them, side by side, produced independently by strong players who did not know what the others were writing.
That is what the Modern Chess Autumn Challenge produces, and this database is the result of its first stage. Each of the seven participants was handed the same two problems — a repertoire for Black against the Classical London (1.d4 d5 2.Nf3 Nf6 3.Bf4) and against the Jobava London (1.d4 d5 2.Nc3 Nf6 3.Bf4) — and each solved them their own way.
Fourteen recommendations. No two alike.

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.