Seven Systems, Six Videos: When the Opening-Course Market Misprices Itself

A Number Knocking at 3 A.M.

One October evening I sat re-sorting my chess commentary notes from 2026 onward. Thirty-two years of commentating for VTC left me with a strange habit: whenever someone says "this opening is very dangerous," I open the numbers and check. That night an English headline stumbled into my eye — "The right king road." Four broken words, wrong syntax, empty semantics. It took me a few minutes to realise it is almost certainly a machine translation of the German idiom der richtige Königsweg — "the right royal road." A broken title. And behind it, an entire market.

The first number that stopped me: seven opening systems advertised as covered, across six videos. A discrepancy of exactly one unit. It sounds small. But in opening-repertoire construction, one unit of discrepancy is sometimes an entire chapter of theory compressed into a few minutes.

I once believed in emotion, until a number knocked at 3 a.m. That night was one of those times.

Context: when White learns not to learn

To understand why the seven-over-six number matters, you have to understand the market it serves.

White plays 1.d4. Instead of 2.c4 — the move that opens the entire theory of the Queen's Gambit, Slav, Semi-Slav and Catalan — White chooses the "quiet" systems: Colle, Trompowsky, Torre, London, Veresov, Blackmar-Diemer. These are not new. The Colle System dates to the 1920s, tied to the Belgian player Edgar Colle. The Trompowsky is named for the Brazilian Octávio Trompowsky in the 1930s. The Torre Attack carries the name of Carlos Torre, the Mexican player of the 1920s. They have existed for nearly a century.

But they have never been as popular at club level as they are now. The reason lies in a simple economic calculation: memorisation cost. 2.c4 demands thousands of moves of theory. 2.Bf4 (London) demands a piece setup and about a dozen concrete moves. For a club player with two hours a week to study openings, it is no choice at all.

The product under analysis is a "cure" for Black: a video course by an International Master, Bulgarian, Valeri Lilov. The marketing says the course "demonstrates a relevant plan for Black for each single opening." Six videos. Seven systems. One promise.

The list of systems deserves to be read slowly:

• Colle System (ECO D04–D05): 1.d4 d5 2.Nf3 Nf6 3.e3, then Bd3, c3, Nbd2. Slow build-up, little theory.
• Trompowsky Attack (A45): 1.d4 Nf6 2.Bg5. A strike at f6 immediately.
• Torre Attack (D03/A46): 1.d4 Nf6 2.Nf3 e6 3.Bg5.
• London System (D02): 1.d4 with Nf3 and Bf4.
• Catalan (E00–E09): 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 e6 3.g3 d5 4.Bg2.
• Blackmar-Diemer Gambit (D00): 1.d4 d5 2.e4. A romantic pawn sacrifice.
• Richter-Veresov (D01): 1.d4 d5 2.Nc3 Nf6 3.Bg5.

Reading this list, an experienced eye stops at the fifth entry. The Catalan does not belong to the group. The Catalan is mainline, theory-dense theory, and it sits precisely in the territory the marketing says White is fleeing. I will return to this point.

Core: anatomy of seven systems

Now I open each system and check how a product that teaches "plans" handles it.

Colle System and Torre Attack — the low tier

These two are the easiest part of any course. White builds a fixed setup: d4, Nf3, e3, Bd3, c3, Nbd2, then pushes e4. Black only needs three counter-plans: trade the bishop on f4/g5, control e4 with ...Nd7 and ...f5, and strike at the centre with ...c5.

The memorisation cost of both systems together could fit in thirty minutes of video. If six videos were split evenly, Colle and Torre should occupy one sixth of the runtime. But difficulty is not even, and that is precisely the unresolved problem.

Trompowsky and London — the middle tier

The Trompowsky (2.Bg5) raises a real move-order question: it arises before Black commits to ...d5. If Black plays 1...d5 immediately, White can transpose to 2.Bg5 as a different line, not the classical Trompowsky. The marketing groups both under one heading "after 1.d4 d5," but these are two different move-order decisions. A repertoire builder needs to know which question he is answering.

The London System is different. At club level it is the most popular system — and the biggest pain for Black. White places Bf4, Nf3, e3, Bd3, c3, Nbd2, then attacks. Black's defensive plan requires accuracy against the ideas ...c5, ...Ne4, ...h6, and against the dark-squared bishop trade. This is where a "plans" course can genuinely create value — if it is correct.

Catalan — the high tier mislabelled

This is my biggest structural finding.

The Catalan is not a system White uses to avoid 2.c4. The Catalan is 2.c4. The typical structure: 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 e6 3.g3 d5 4.Bg2. White has played c4, has opened the whole theory. It is a mainline, theory-dense opening, one of the most complex defensive lines in modern chess, used at the highest level by Tarrasch and later by world champions Karpov, Kramnik and Carlsen for decades.

One video in a series of six — less than one sixth of the runtime if split evenly — cannot carry the Catalan. To teach the Catalan for Black properly, you must decide between the Open Catalan (...dxc4, ...b5, ...Bb4+) and the Closed Catalan (...Nbd7, ...c6, ...b6). Those are two different theoretical worlds, each enough for its own multi-hour course.

Core conclusion: this product sells a "plans" course but labels a mainline opening as a sideline.

Blackmar-Diemer and Veresov — the chaotic tier

The Blackmar-Diemer (1.d4 d5 2.e4) is a romantic gambit, not a quiet system. Placing it beside the Colle and London mixes two strategic categories into one box. The Veresov (1.d4 d5 2.Nc3) sits somewhere in between, with transpositions into the Trompowsky when Black replies ...Nf6.

Both systems are rare at top level but common enough at club level to matter. The memorisation cost is low. The problem is not difficulty but the coherence of the classification. A buyer is not buying a list; he is buying a system with logic.

The arithmetic does not add up

Seven systems, six videos. If Colle and Torre can be merged, and Blackmar-Diemer with Veresov can be merged, the Catalan still needs its own video. But one Catalan video is not enough. Simple arithmetic shows: either one video must carry two systems, or the Catalan is compressed. In both cases the buyer does not receive what was promised. This is not speculation about production quality; it is subtraction about runtime.

The counter-intuitive angle: "dangerous" is a sales word

The marketing says White picks these systems because they are "not very ambitious" — then immediately says they are "extremely dangerous." These two sentences sound contradictory. In fact they do not contradict; they sell.

The real danger of the London and Trompowsky is not an objective White advantage. It is drift risk: White gets a riskless game, and Black who does not know the characteristic plan drifts slowly, loses the initiative while White accumulates a small but compounding edge and pushes e4 or Ne5. That is "danger of drift," not "danger of being worse."

A buyer who reads "extremely dangerous" as an engine evaluation will mis-calibrate. He will think he is buying a weapon against strong openings. In fact he is buying a map so as not to get lost.

And here the data gap is severe. Not a single figure appears in the promotional material: no ACPL (average centipawn loss per move against the engine's best), no engine match rate, no win rate, no sample game. Not one number. For a 57-year-old who has spent most of his career checking claims against spreadsheets, this is a gap that cannot be ignored.

There are players who get forgotten, but the data never forgets them. Here it is the reverse: a product that is very well remembered, while the data about it is empty.

The economics of the opening game

Setting the product aside, I want to talk about what it represents.

Over the past decade the chess-opening content market has shifted from "reference material" to "plans courses." The reason is supply and demand at once. Demand: the club-player population grew after the Queen's Gambit series and the pandemic-era online shift. Supply: video production costs fell, analysis engines became free, and more recently AI assists script-writing and variation building.

The result is a paradox: opening information has never been cheaper, and courses have never been more numerous. Value no longer lies in data — everyone has an engine, everyone has an online database. Value lies in pedagogy and in experience verified at the board.

That is why I always check two things before judging any opening product: whether the author has played the system at a real board, and whether the content has data to cross-check. With this product, I can verify only two words: "IM" and "Bulgarian trainer." No rating. No date. No tournament. No recent activity.

In the online-course segment, the author's title functions as a positioning signal. IM-authored courses usually target club level. GM-authored ones, especially lifetime repertoires with spaced repetition, target 2100-plus. On the available evidence, this product sits in the former tier.

That is not bad. It only means: do not expect it to replace a mainline repertoire.

The distribution hierarchy

Placing the product correctly on the opening-content ladder, it sits between two tiers. Above it are lifetime repertoires authored by grandmasters, database-verified and spaced-repetition-enabled. Below it are free platform explorers and engine lines anyone can access. Its position is the middle tier: cheaper than premium material, more structured than free short videos.

But the middle tier's competitive edge is thin. It cannot rest on exclusive information, because information is no longer exclusive. It must rest on storytelling and plans. And to rest on storytelling credibly, the storyteller must have real games to tell.

The buyer's trap

The typical buyer is an 1800-Elo club player who has lost three games in a row to the London System in a tournament and is looking for a cure at midnight. The product speaks to his pain. And the pain is real.

But there are two traps.

First, system holes. A Black system built on the "1...d5 + plans" frame naturally misses systems that reach the same structures by other routes. Most notably the Jobava-Prie London: 1.d4 Nf6 2.Nc3 d5 3.Bf4 — one of the most popular modern anti-establishment systems at club and grandmaster level, tied to Baadur Jobava. And the g3/Bg2 "Pseudo-Catalan" setups without c4, e.g. 1.d4 d5 2.Nf3 Nf6 3.g3. Neither appears in the promotional material. Whether they are taught in the videos cannot be determined from the source — and that absence, in itself, is a warning.

The transfer market does not buy the past. It buys what the data has forgiven. In chess it is the same: the course market does not buy titles. It buys what pedagogy has proven.

Second, the completeness illusion. The product does not provide a complete 1.d4 repertoire for Black. The mainline 2.c4 systems — Queen's Gambit, Slav, Semi-Slav — are placed outside its scope by design. The buyer must know he is buying part of the picture, not the whole picture. If he thinks he has solved 1.d4, he will sit down with a system that has natural holes and be exploited exactly there.

Risks ordered by level

The biggest risk is not content quality. It is expectation calibration. The "extremely dangerous" frame invites the buyer to overvalue the sidelines relative to the mainlines the marketing says White is avoiding.

The second risk is depth allocation: seven systems, six videos, one of which demands ten times the theory of the others.

The third risk is obsolescence. There is no publication date in the material. If the course predates the Jobava-London boom, its Black system will feel dated to a well-read club opponent.

The fourth risk is substitution. Free explorers and engines supply most of the underlying information. The buyer should pay only for the plan layer, not expect informational exclusivity.

The opportunity? Yes, and it is real. The plan-teaching against the London and Trompowsky addresses a real, persistent club-level gap: what to do after the opening. If the six videos focused on those two systems, the product would have real value. The problem is that it promises seven, not two.

What I light a candle for

When the stadium is empty, the true value of a person starts to speak. In chess too — when the marketing noise falls silent, what remains is a simple question: after buying, does the player play better?

I have no answer for this specific product. But I have an answer for the market behind it. That market is mispriced — not because the content is bad, but because the boundary between "opening data" and "opening pedagogy" has been erased. Data is free. Pedagogy is not. And the smart buyer should pay for the second, not the first.

There is a small detail I cannot ignore: a product aimed at an international market is advertised under a title machine-translated from German. No publisher, no date, no platform. That is not a technical mistake; it is a signal about editorial discipline. A genuine independent review would state runtime, target level, publication date and sample material.

I light a candle for the data. But I always let the emotional flame light the question. The question here is: if a course promises to cover seven systems but can only carry two, who holds the chess clock — the author, the buyer, or a marketing algorithm that never touches the board?

The club player sitting at the board at midnight does not need a promise. He needs a plan. The next move belongs to the buyer. And the data — as always — will be a witness, not a judge.