Courses (1126)

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.

After 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 c5 3.d5 e5, the Czech Benoni gives the game a closed, strategic character where knowing the plans matters far more than knowing the theory — you need only the basic scheme of development and the typical middlegame ideas against White's four main setups. GM Ioannis Papaioannou is candid that the engine is unenthusiastic about Black's position, and argues that this is precisely the system's strength: in practical play Black scores well, because the opponent has almost certainly never studied these structures. Taught entirely through model games and educational examples, it is the second course in his Low-Theory Repertoires series — a complete answer to 1.d4 without months of memorisation.

Capablanca learned the Caro-Kann without a single engine line to lean on. He trusted structure, harmony, and the endgame, and in the 1920s and 30s he turned an opening still dismissed as second-rate into a defense he could rely on against the strongest players in the world. That is the thread GM Pier Luigi Basso follows here. He reads Capablanca's games as a diagnostic tool: the moments where the third World Champion's intuition already pointed to what modern theory confirms, and, just as revealing, the moments where he stopped short of ideas that would only be discovered decades later.

The Caro-Kann has spent a century as the opening players reach for when they want to be hard to beat. The structure stays healthy, the light-squared bishop escapes before ...e6 shuts it in, and there are very few ways for White to force matters over the board. That reputation is deserved — but it has also turned the opening into a synonym for quiet, and that is the reputation this repertoire sets out to revise. The Modern Caro-Kann: A Complete Repertoire for Black – Part 1 This course by GM Szymon Gumularz and FM Sebastian Reimann rests on a single conviction: solid does not have to mean passive. The repertoire keeps everything that makes the Caro-Kann reliable, then looks for the ambition in each position — the moment where Black can play for more than a draw. Part 1 is devoted entirely to the Classical Variation, White's most respected reply for a hundred years and the line any Caro-Kann player has to know first.

A single capture gives this repertoire its shape. In GM Sina Movahed's Ruy Lopez it's Bxc6 — White trading the Spanish bishop for the c6-knight, an old resource that here turns on when it's played. Movahed's case is structural: reach for it at the right moment and Black is left with pieces poorly suited to the position that results. His foundation is the deferred exchange: 5...Be7 6.Bxc6. Instead of capturing on move four, Movahed waits until Black has committed the bishop to e7 and the knight to f6 — and then argues those very pieces sit awkwardly for the pawn structure that arises after ...dxc6. The aim is not to refute the Ruy Lopez, but to hand Black an unfamiliar middlegame from an entirely familiar move order.

For the better part of a century, the Rubinstein Variation (4.e3) has been White's most trusted answer to the Nimzo-Indian, and for one reason above all: it commits to nothing. The knight stays home on g1, waiting to choose between f3 and e2 until Black has shown his hand. GM Alexey Dreev's answer is to out-wait the waiting move. At the heart of this repertoire sits a single, unassuming rook move — 5...Re8 — that hands the burden of commitment straight back to White. If the knight steps to f3, Black replies ...d6 and prepares the ...e5 break; if it goes to e2, Black switches to ...d5, where the e2-knight is awkwardly placed. Whichever square White picks turns out to be the wrong one. That is the "reload": an old main line given a new life, driven by move-order rather than memorization.

The French Defence has always carried one complaint louder than the rest: the light-squared bishop on c8, sealed behind its own pawns before the game has properly begun. The Fort Knox answers that complaint before it can be made. After 1.e4 e6 2.d4 d5 3.Nc3 dxe4 4.Nxe4 Bd7, Black's problematic piece steps out through d7 to c6 while the diagonal is open — the piece that usually spends the game being restricted becomes the first one developed. The idea is simple and durable. The bishop on c6 is no longer a liability but a piece which will be traded — Black is content to give it up for a white knight, often with ...Bxe4, easing the cramped position. Black finishes developing with ...Nd7, ...Ngf6, ...Be7 and short castling, reaching a compact structure with no real weaknesses to attack, and only then looks to challenge White's centre with ...c5 or, in some lines, ...e5.

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.