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.
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2h 37m PGN Download Memory Booster Interactive Tests
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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 In this new edition, GM Baadur Jobava and GM Pier Luigi Basso argue that the reputation is out of date.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.
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5h 27m PGN Download Memory Booster Interactive Tests
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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.
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4h 43m PGN Download
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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.
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6h 37m PGN Download Memory Booster Interactive Tests
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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.
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4h 27m PGN Download Memory Booster Interactive Tests Computer Practice
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The minor defences are the lines 1.e4 players tend to neglect — the Philidor, the Scandinavian, the Alekhine, the Nimzowitsch, the Owen. Against most repertoires, reaching a comfortable, roughly level position counts as success. This course sets a higher bar and holds to it from the first chapter to the last.
The recommendation follows a single idea across every defence: occupy the centre, castle long where the position allows, and play for the attack rather than a quiet plus. The Old Philidor tabiya is the clearest expression of the method. After 1.e4 d6 2.d4 Nf6 3.Nc3 e5 4.Nf3 exd4 5.Nxd4 Be7, White uncorks 6.Bf4!, follows with Qd2, and castles queenside — the exact setup Abdusattorov faced, now examined from the side that presses for the full point.
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When the strongest players in the world want a defense to 1.d4 that holds up under preparation, they keep returning to the Semi-Slav. Kramnik built much of his elite career around it, Anand leaned on it through a World Championship match, and Carlsen has reached for it across dozens of games. It has earned its reputation as one of the most reliable answers to the Queen's Gambit — solid enough to trust, yet rich enough to play for a win.
In his new course, GM Harshit Raja sets out to package that heritage into something you can keep for life: a complete, top-level repertoire built around 1.d4 d5 2.c4 c6 3.Nf3 Nf6 4.Nc3 e6. The goal he states from the start is a lifetime repertoire — one set of answers, studied once and trusted for the rest of your career, rather than a collection of lines you patch and replace season to season.
Sequence: Semi-Slav Defense According to Raja Harshit »
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2h 48m PGN Download Memory Booster Interactive Tests Computer Practice
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Every Sicilian player learns the same warning early: do not hand White a permanent grip on d5. A knight installed there, with no pawn left to challenge it, is the textbook picture of a Sicilian gone wrong. The Kalashnikov opens by ignoring that warning on move four.
After 1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 e5, Black kicks the knight and concedes d5 — not for a moment, but for the rest of the game. Kazakouski is honest about how it looks; his first coach, he writes, would faint at the sight of it. Yet the position Black gets is the opposite of a wreck: quick, natural development, pieces landing on active squares, and a White player left holding a "hole" that still has to be shown to matter. The wager running through the whole repertoire is that, most of the time, it doesn't.
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3h 9m PGN Download Memory Booster Interactive Tests
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Every repertoire has a line the author quietly hopes nobody plays. For GM Luis Supi, it was the Panov — and he is unusually honest about how close it came to ending his relationship with the Caro-Kann altogether.
The problem was not that Black stands worse. Equalising against 4.c4 has never been hard. The problem was everything after that: positions with no realistic way to play for a win, and equality that felt dry enough that a strong technical player could still generate problems from it. For a player who chooses his openings by how much fight they contain, that was not good enough.
Caro-Kann according to Supi — Part 2 is the result of several months spent solving exactly that.
Sequence: Caro-Kann Defense According to Supi »
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1h 5m PGN Download Interactive Tests
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Some positions are settled not because anyone proved them, but because everybody plays the same move. After 1.e4 c6 2.d4 d5 3.Nc3 dxe4 4.Nxe4 Nf6 5.Nxf6+ exf6 6.c3, the bishop goes to d6. It has gone to d6 for decades. In Caro-Kann according to Supi, GM Luis Supi asks what happens if it does not — and answers with 6...g6, a move that looks ugly for about ten seconds and then starts to look obvious.
Sequence: Caro-Kann Defense According to Supi »
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1h 51m PGN Download Interactive Tests
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