Re-reading an anti-1.d4 opening course: six videos, seven systems and the Catalan gap

A SILENT BOARD Late at night I mute the laptop and rewatch a club game. No commentary, no crowd, just pieces lifted and set down inside my head. White plays 1.d4. Then 2.Nf3. Then 3.Bf4. No 2.c4. Black, a player around 1800, reacts on instinct: ...d5, ...Nf6, ...e6, ...Bd6, ...c6, ...Nbd7. Every move is book-correct. By move fifteen the position is still level on the scoresheet. I freeze the frame at move 22 and draw the piece map on paper. White owns a triangle: knight f3, bishop f4, pawn e3, a drill aimed at e5 and d6. Black owns six pieces sitting on theoretically correct squares with no drill pointing anywhere. Black's death in that game did not come from a tactical blow. It came from eighteen unchallenged moves that added up to a position with no way forward. People call that drift. Not losing because you moved badly. Losing because you did not know where you were going. That is the emotional funnel an entire opening-content industry aims at. And this week I read a piece sitting right inside the funnel. WHAT THE MARKET SELLS FOR THAT PAIN The article's English headline reads "The right king road." That title is almost certainly a machine translation of the German idiom "der richtige Königsweg" — literally the right royal road. A name like that does not appear in sports reporting. It appears on a sales page. The object being introduced is a video course by IM Valeri Lilov, a Bulgarian trainer. Six videos teaching Black how to meet the family of openings where White plays 1.d4 but declines 2.c4. In other words, White voluntarily skips the heavy theory of the Slav, the Semi-Slav, the accepted Queen's Gambit and the Orthodox QGD, trading it for a low-memorisation setup. The writer of the promotional piece himself admits that approach is "not very ambitious." A few lines later the same writer calls these systems "extremely dangerous." Both sentences sit in the same document. I will return to that, because it is the pivot on which buyer expectations should be calibrated. Seven systems are named. They run from the gentlest structures in chess to the most theory-dense. The Colle System, ECO D04–D05 in the Encyclopaedia of Chess Openings. The Trompowsky, A45. The Torre, D03 and A46. The London, D02. The Catalan, E00–E09. The Blackmar-Diemer Gambit, D00. And the Richter-Veresov, D01. The Encyclopaedia of Chess Openings has been published by Chess Informant since its first volume in 2026, and those ECO codes remain the reference standard today. Seven systems. Six videos. One plan per opening. One author. Not a single sample game cited. Not a single statistic. PLANS AND LINES ARE TWO DIFFERENT THINGS Before criticising, I owe a fair statement: plan-based teaching is a legitimate pedagogical choice, often superior for club-level learners. I have sat for hours with beginners, and what they lack is almost never a concrete line. What they lack is an answer to the question: once the opening ends, what do I do. But the two content layers must be kept apart, because confusing them is the source of most course-buying disappointment. The first layer is the line. A concrete sequence, engine-verified, with an evaluation attached. Example: White's twelfth move in some branch is graded as losing 0.15 pawns against the engine's best. This layer demands exact recall and is machine-checkable. The second layer is the plan. A qualitative description of where the pieces go, which squares must be controlled, when to trade, when to push. This layer cannot be machine-checked. It is checked only at the board. The course described positions itself on the second layer. The promotional language says it "demonstrates a relevant plan for Black for each single opening." That is the description of a plans product, not a theoretical reference work. And in that segment, the competition is not information — opening information is now essentially free — it is the ability to retell a plan so that a learner remembers it. That is where I see the product's genuine value. It is also exactly where its biggest problem becomes visible. THE CATALAN SITS IN THE WRONG PLACE If I could keep only one judgement from this entire analysis, it would be this: the Catalan is misplaced inside the promotional frame. The Catalan begins 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 e6 3.g3 d5 4.Bg2. Read White's third move again. It is 2.c4. Precisely the move the promotional text says White is trying to avoid. Put differently, the course claims to teach Black against systems where White refuses 2.c4, then lists the Catalan. The Catalan is not a White system that dodges theory. It is a mainline, theory-dense opening with its own branching taxonomy, with branches the world's top grandmasters still argue move by move. It sits squarely inside the theoretical category the article says White is fleeing. This is not a small catalogue slip. It is a slip that breaks the product's frame. What would serious Catalan preparation for Black require inside a six-video course? First, a repertoire decision: does Black take on c4 and go for ...b5 and ...Bb4+, or choose closed structures with ...Nbd7, ...c6, ...b6? Those two choices open entirely different theoretical universes. After choosing, the learner still has to handle dozens of sidelines, each with its own pawn-structure and bishop-placement character. One sixth of the runtime cannot carry that weight. It is a simple subtraction. And it is precisely where the most demanding buyer will be most disappointed — not because the content is poor, but because a runtime allocation cannot match an opening's true theoretical mass. THE MOVE ORDER THAT GETS HIDDEN The second issue is move order. In chess the same position can be reached by many routes, and choosing the route is a strategic decision, not a technical detail. The promotional frame collapses everything into one formula: after 1.d4 d5. But the Trompowsky does not happen that way. The Trompowsky proper is 1.d4 Nf6 2.Bg5, meaning White strikes before Black commits to ...d5. If Black has already played ...d5, the position becomes a different, more loosely named line with different tactical problems. Bundling the two under one roof is not pedagogically wrong, but it hides a move-order decision the learner needs to see clearly. With the Catalan the problem is worse. The Catalan cannot arise from a move order beginning with ...d5. It requires Black to play ...Nf6 and ...e6 first, and only then ...d5. The course therefore has to teach two different move-order structures, not one. This is the kind of detail beginners skip and then pay for. Move order is where club players lose the most points, because one move in the wrong sequence turns a comfortable position into forty moves of suffering. THE ARITHMETIC OF SIX VIDEOS Seven systems. Six videos. That division has only two solutions: one video bundles two systems, or one system is compressed into an introduction. Looking at the difficulty of each system, I would guess the compressed one is the hardest. The Colle and the Torre can be handled with plans plus a dozen concrete moves. The Trompowsky and the London demand accuracy against early ...c5, ...Ne4, ...h6 ideas and against a dark-squared bishop trade. The Catalan demands a genuine repertoire decision. Those three difficulty tiers are not the same category. A product uniform in format cannot be uniform in content quality when the input difficulty varies that much. What the buyer is really purchasing is one strong module — the London and Trompowsky section, where plan-based teaching genuinely closes the largest gap club players have — plus several thinner ones. I say that not to diminish the product but to tell buyers what they are buying. Based on my experience watching games at Hanoi club level, club players lose to the London and the Trompowsky many times more often than to the Catalan. If that holds, the thin module happens to be the one they need least. An accidental advantage. THREE SYSTEMS THAT ARE ABSENT There is one thing I always check before judging any opening system: what it leaves out. The frame of "1...d5 plus plans" naturally misses systems that reach the same structures by other roads. The two most notable absences from the promotional material are the Jobava-Prie London and g3/Bg2 setups without c4. The Jobava-Prie London, named after Georgian grandmaster Baadur Jobava, runs 1.d4 Nf6 2.Nc3 d5 3.Bf4. It is one of the most popular anti-establishment systems today, appearing at club level and at grandmaster level alike. Leaving it out of an anti-1.d4 course means leaving out one of the names buyers will meet most often at the board. The g3/Bg2 pseudo-Catalan without c4 is similar. White plays 1.d4 d5 2.Nf3 Nf6 3.g3, building a slow, unshowy position that becomes deeply uncomfortable for Black without a plan against the g2 bishop. I have to state the limit of this observation: the promotional article does not list those two systems, but I have no way to confirm whether the videos cover them. That is a gap in the source text, not evidence of a product flaw. Buyers should check the table of contents themselves. THE REAL RISK IS DRIFT, NOT BEING SQUEEZED Back to the central question. Are these openings "extremely dangerous"? The answer depends on the level you mean. At grandmaster level, these systems appear only sporadically, as one-off anti-preparation weapons, used once and discarded. Nobody builds a career around the Colle. At club level, the story reverses completely. A Black player with no plan loses to the London System slowly — not to a blow, but to twenty moves of silent strangulation. That danger is not an objective White advantage. It is drift risk. White gets a riskless game, and if Black does not know the characteristic plan, Black drifts while White accumulates small gains. The correct reading is: dangerous because of drift, not dangerous because White is objectively better. A buyer who reads the sales line the second way will mis-calibrate his entire expectation set, then blame himself when those systems still lose to a prepared opponent. Tactics never lie. Only the reader of a position gets it wrong. THE DATA VACUUM There is one thing I have to say plainly, because my entire writing career rests on this principle: where is the evidence? Across the entire source document, not one verifiable metric appears. No ACPL — the average centipawn loss per move against the engine's best, lower being better. No engine match rate. No sample games. No user feedback. No win-draw-loss statistics from any database. A high-quality opening product usually shows at least one of those. Their complete absence does not prove the product is poor. It proves that no technical claim in the promotional text can be verified from outside. And when a piece offers no data, the reader should ask why. Two possibilities. One: the product has no data to show. Two: the writer did not care to provide any. Both lead to the same action: treat the entire promotional piece as advertising, not as review. THE COPY THAT UNDERCUTS ITSELF I promised to return to the contradiction. Here it is. Sentence one: White's approach is "not very ambitious." Sentence two: those systems are "extremely dangerous." That sounds paradoxical, but in chess language both can be true — provided you separate two kinds of danger. Danger in evaluation means White holds an objective edge. Danger in pressure means White gets a riskless game while Black must find balance with no map. The interesting part is that the writer himself downgrades White's strength, then immediately upgrades it to sell. The "extremely dangerous" frame is calibrated to the buyer's pain point — the club player who keeps losing to the London System — not to an engine evaluation. It is a sales device, and it works, because the pain is real. I do not blame the writer. I only want the reader to see the mechanism. A NAME AS A POSITIONING SIGNAL The only author information in the source is two words: IM, and Bulgarian trainer. No Elo. No title date. No recent activity. Nothing to compare against peers in the same segment. In the online course market, an author's title level functions as a positioning signal. IM-authored courses usually aim at club players and improvers. Grandmaster-authored courses, or repertoires tested by 2600-plus players, usually aim at the 2100-plus segment. On the available evidence, this product should be read as sitting in the first tier. There is a structural risk in the high-output video author model: the presenter's practical experience of a line may be second-hand — engine output re-narrated — rather than tested at the board. I have no evidence either way here. But a purely plan-level product description is consistent with that possibility. WHEN CONTENT GETS CHEAPER There is a bigger question under this product, and it matters more than the product itself. Opening information is now essentially free. Online platforms offer open databases, engines, and millions of games classified by ECO code. Anyone with a computer can look up move twelve of a Catalan branch within thirty seconds. So what is the remaining value of a paid course? Pedagogy. Tested experience. The ability to retell a plan in a way a learner remembers, rather than the way an engine ranks it. And here is what I think buyers should weigh: if you pay for a course whose content is mostly plans you could infer from watching three sample games in an open database, you are paying for convenience, not exclusive knowledge. That convenience has real value. Just do not mistake it for something else. The second pressure is deflation. As opening content becomes easier to produce, mid-tier product prices fall. The only authors who hold their price are those with real data, real games, real competitive experience to offer. WHAT VIETNAMESE CLUB PLAYERS SHOULD DO I write this part for the people sitting in chess clubs in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, weighing whether to spend money on an opening course. People say girls know nothing about tactics. So I write for them to read. And what I want them to carry away is not praise or blame for a product, but a checklist. First, check the table of contents before buying. Seven systems in six videos is a problematic sum. If the Catalan module runs fifteen minutes, you already have the answer to the biggest question. Second, verify the publication date. A course with no date, promoted under a machine-translated German headline, is plausibly an older recording re-marketed. If that recording predates the Jobava London boom, its Black repertoire will feel dated to well-read opponents. Third, ask whether you are buying plans or lines. If you need plans against the London and the Trompowsky, a product of this type can genuinely help. If you need a complete Black repertoire after 1.d4, remember the mainline 2.c4 branches — QGD, Slav, Semi-Slav — sit outside the scope by design. Fourth, balance your study time. Every hour poured into opening memorisation is an hour not spent on tactics and endgames. For players under 2026, the highest-yield investment is almost always in those two areas, not in the opening. Fifth, remember the distinction between two kinds of danger. The goal of a decent anti-1.d4 system is not to seize an advantage. It is to equalise comfortably, with a map in hand, and to enter the middlegame with a plan. Sometimes, to understand an opening, you have to stand in silence longer than other people can bear. CLOSING The product is not bad. It is a decent plans product for a real segment, serving a real pain. Its problem is that it advertises itself as broader than it is: seven systems in six videos, a mainline opening labelled as a sideline, and a danger claim with no data behind it. More notable than the product is what it reveals about the market. An IM-level trainer can sell plans against club openings, and buyers will come, because the demand is real and durable. But as opening information becomes free, the only things that hold value are pedagogy and experience actually tested at the board. The question I leave with readers, and the one I ask myself every time I sit down at a board: if tomorrow I had to play Black against someone opening the London System, could I draw my plan on blank paper in three minutes? If the answer is yes, I do not need to buy anything. If the answer is no, I know exactly what I am missing — and I also know I should not pay for a video that only teaches me the first part of the answer.