Six Videos for Eight Openings: When a Chess Lesson Misnames Its Teacher

At a small chess club on Rubinstein Street in Saint Petersburg, I once sat beside a fifteen-year-old student for twenty minutes. He was not calculating the position. He was searching his memory for which move of the Semi-Slav variation he had reached. When the clock ticked to the thirtieth minute, he said something I have never forgotten: "I am not afraid of losing. I am afraid of forgetting." That is the shortest definition of what the amateur chess world calls the "theory tax" — the price paid in memory every time you sit down at the board. Every club-level game is two battles running in parallel: one on the board, one inside the player's head, where memory and forgetting fight for every square. The winner is often not the better calculator, but the one who remembers less yet remembers it in the right place.

This season, a familiar phenomenon has resurfaced. At amateur and intermediate events, more and more White players are steering away from 2.c4. They do not want to enter the labyrinth of the Slav, the Semi-Slav, the Queen's Gambit Accepted, or the Orthodox QGD — systems demanding hundreds of memorized moves. Instead, they turn to "system" openings: London, Colle, Torre, Trompowsky, Catalan, Blackmar-Diemer, Richter-Veresov. These are closed move sets, light on branches, easy to reuse. Learn them once, deploy them for hundreds of games.

That territory is exactly what IM Valeri Lilov, a Bulgarian trainer, targets. He introduces a six-video course for Black, promising "a relevant plan for each single opening." Eight or more systems compressed into six films. It sounds convenient. But like every promise on the instructional market, it must be read through the eyes of someone who has sat on both sides of the board — and paid for more than a few courses only to discover he bought a prettier title than a real plan.

To picture it concretely: the London System opens with 1.d4 and an early Bf4 in a compact setup; the Colle System rests on the Nf3, e3, Bd3, c3 frame; the Torre Attack runs through Bg5; the Trompowsky is 1.d4 Nf6 2.Bg5 at once; the Catalan is 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 e6 3.g3 — a space-and-position system; the Blackmar-Diemer is the gambit 1.d4 d5 2.e4; and the Richter-Veresov is 1.d4 Nf6 2.Nc3 d5 3.Bg5. Each is a different philosophy of handling White.

First, let it be clear: the phenomenon is real. Based on my experience watching amateur games across Russia and Europe over many years, the share of club players avoiding 2.c4 is undeniable. The theoretical pressure of the modern Semi-Slav — with lines running thirty moves deep — pushes most amateurs toward the safer memory option, even if it is less sharp positionally. This is a rational allocation of resources: cap the memorization hours, buy back the ability to play more games. For someone with eight hours a week, learning three London lines beats dreaming of fifteen Slav lines.

Systems like the London or the Colle carry real practical strength. They are closed, light on branches, reusable across many positions. A White player who knows the London by heart can sit down confident he will not be ambushed in the first fifteen moves. But precisely for that reason, they become ideal targets for a well-prepared Black. The "danger" the promotional material mentions lies not in theoretical depth, but in the unpredictability of the middlegame plan. When White chooses safety, Black is handed the initiative to shape the position — and that gift is worth more than any theoretical advantage.

A notable structural point: the course is positioned as "a plan for each opening," not "theory to the end." Six videos for eight systems means each topic gets a condensed dose. For club players, that is entirely acceptable. For those climbing higher, it is a ceiling. The product's real value lies in curation, not in analytical depth. A course like this is more a map than a compass: it tells you which lands exist, not how to cross them in a storm.

But stopping there would mean missing the most important thing — and that is the real story.

The original article's headline reads "An interview with Timur Turlov." Across the entire body, the name Timur Turlov appears not once. Conversely, IM Valeri Lilov — the actual subject — appears nowhere in the headline. One name is written on the door; another person sits inside the room. For someone who has edited for nearly twenty years, this is no minor detail. It signals an editorial identification failure: either the source page was scraped incorrectly, or the headline belongs to an entirely different article and was wrongly attached to this promotional content. In my trade, when the headline and the body no longer speak of the same person, reader trust begins to crack.

Furthermore, many claims in the piece are sourced as "none." Phrases like "extremely dangerous" or "help with six videos" originate from the vendor, not from data. There is no sample game, no win rate, no engine evaluation figure. And there is a notable opening-taxonomy error: the Trompowsky and Torre do not arise after 1.d4 d5, while the Catalan includes 2.c4. The article's logical scaffolding — "everything happens after 1.d4 d5" — wobbles on its own. When an instructional document misclassifies the very subject it teaches, its professional credibility deserves a question mark before any discussion of technical value. A buyer has the right to know whether he is paying for a plan or for a label.

I recall a line I once wrote while witnessing a major event distorted by the media: "When the stadium has no ball, memory begins to score." The same holds here. When what is right no longer stands in its right place, readers begin to rewrite the story in their own way — usually the wrong way. A misdirected headline does not merely ruin one article; it ruins a community's habit of trusting.

The opening-course market is a beautiful paradox: people sell memory to those who do not wish to remember. "The transfer market is where people sell the future to buy hope" — and here, people sell preparation to buy a sense of safety. Lilov's course may help a certain slice of readers: those facing the London for the first time as Black, needing a foothold rather than a detailed map. But the larger lesson lies elsewhere. In an era of exploding chess content, when hundreds of courses appear each month, the scarcest thing is not a plan for Black. The scarcest thing is a headline that names its speaker correctly, and a page honest about the origin of every promise.

And the student on Rubinstein Street? He still sits there, still afraid of forgetting. And perhaps, amid endless promises, the only trustworthy thing remains the next move on the board.