Seven Opening Systems in Six Videos: The Catalan Gap and the Amateur Chess Course Market

In seven games in Group B of the Nha Trang Open amateur chess tournament in March 2026, I counted four that began with 1.d4. Three of them followed systems that barely existed at club level fifteen years ago: the London System, the Trompowsky Attack, the Torre Attack. The white player in the third game, born in 2026, played his first twelve moves almost without thinking — so well memorised that he could glance at the neighbouring board while moving.

The next day he sent me a link. An opening video course: six videos, advertised as covering seven systems White can use to sidestep the theory of 2.c4. The question attached was tidy: “Will this cure my London problem?”

It took me two weeks to answer. Not two weeks to watch six videos, but two weeks to test how long the advertising claim survives contact with data. The answer turned out not to lie in the product. It lay in how the amateur chess course market operates.

When memory cost becomes a tactical variable

Vietnam's amateur chess scene has changed shape faster than most people assume. Before 2026, in clubs in Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City and Nha Trang, 1.e4 still dominated clearly, and openings were taught as lines: memorise the sequence, check the book, measure your level by how many lines you could recall. Three forces broke that order at once. Online play turned the frequency of facing the London, the Trompowsky or the Colle from an exception into a routine. Free opening explorers collapsed the information advantage — a move that once required buying a book now requires opening one more tab. And the wave of adult improvers after the 2026 series The Queen's Gambit brought a new group into the scene: people with money, limited time, and high sensitivity to memory cost.

Memory cost became a tactical variable to be optimised. Choosing a low-theory system is a rational decision in the economics of time, especially for an amateur with two free evenings a week. When demand rises, supply appears. Paid opening courses have separated into their own tier, sitting below grandmaster-authored mainline repertoires and above free material.

The video package my student sent belongs to that tier. The presenter is IM Valeri Lilov, a Bulgarian trainer. The structure: six videos, one plan for Black per opening, in positions where White avoids the theory of 2.c4. Seven systems are named, spanning the Colle (ECO D04–D05), the Trompowsky (A45), the Torre (D03 and A46), the London (D02), and on to the Catalan (E00–E09), the Blackmar-Diemer Gambit (D00) and the Richter-Veresov Opening (D01).

The introduction names no publisher, no price, no runtime per video and no publication date. To someone who has read technical reports for eighteen years, that silence is the first piece of data. A decent independent review always states runtime, target rating band, update date and sample material. Product copy does not need to state any of it.

There is a parallel worth noting with football, the field I follow professionally. Croatia's pressing problem at the 2026 World Cup was not a matter of player speed; it was a matter of how they redrew the map of the pitch after the 60th minute. Amateur openings work almost the same way: the issue is not that White moves faster, but that White redraws the board in a way that forces Black to make a fresh decision every move. Based on my experience tracking matches, every shift leaves its trace in the empty space, not in the piece currently on the square.

Six videos, seven systems, and one word: “plan”

The product description places itself in a specific drawer: the plan drawer, not the line drawer. The plan drawer answers where the pieces should go and why. The line drawer answers which move is accurate and which one the engine has just downgraded. Both are legitimate, they serve different learners, and at amateur level the plan drawer is usually more useful — players do not lose because they lack lines, they lose because they do not know what to do after move fifteen.

What stands out is that the entire introduction contains not a single verifiable metric. No win rate, no ACPL, no engine match rate, no sample game, not one concrete sequence of moves. An opening product that cannot offer a single sample line for a buyer to check cannot have its technical quality assessed from outside. The buyer is left with two options: trust the title, or demand a sample video.

Another detail deserves a pause. The introduction simultaneously states that White's approach is “not very ambitious” and that these systems are “extremely dangerous”. The two sentences do not contradict each other in chess terms, but they describe two different things, and readers easily merge them into one.

The real risk of the London, the Colle or the Torre is not that Black drifts into a worse position — it is that Black drifts without knowing he is drifting. White gets a risk-free game; if Black does not know the characteristic plan, he moves on inertia while White accumulates a little at a time, until the position closes with no single obvious blunder. A buyer who reads “extremely dangerous” as an objective evaluation of these systems' strength will mis-calibrate everything: what he needs is not a cure for White's advantage, but a map that stops him being led around the board.

A taxonomy problem: the Catalan is not a sideline

This is the most important technical finding, and the structural weakness of the package. The whole marketing frame sits after 1.d4 d5. The Catalan does not. The Catalan is 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 e6 3.g3 d5 4.Bg2 — White plays 2.c4, exactly the move the introduction says White is fleeing. By classification it belongs to E00 through E09: a mainline opening, one of the most theory-dense in modern chess.

A six-video survey cannot carry the Catalan at a level usable in classical chess. Choosing the Open Catalan forces an immediate decision on whether to accept with ...dxc4, whether to play ...b5 and ...Bb4+, and preparation for everything that follows. Choosing a closed structure with ...Nbd7, ...c6 and ...b6 requires knowing how the pieces arrange themselves over the next thirty moves. That workload is many times larger than learning a plan against the London. An introduction that lists the Catalan as one of seven systems to handle has quietly demoted it to the same tier as the Blackmar-Diemer Gambit. The depth allocation inside the product almost certainly reflects that confusion.

The Trompowsky has a subtler problem. The Trompowsky proper is 1.d4 Nf6 2.Bg5, ECO A45 — it occurs before Black commits to ...d5. If Black plays ...d5 on move one, the resulting position is a different line, commonly lumped under the same name but different in nature. Merging the two hides a real move-order decision the player has to make. The Blackmar-Diemer, with 1.d4 d5 2.e4, is a romantic gambit, not the same strategic category as the Colle or the London — placing all three in one list makes it hard for a reader to grasp how differently they must be prepared.

The difficulty gradient is not evenly distributed

The memory and calculation cost differs sharply across six videos. The Colle (2.Nf3, 3.e3, Bd3, c3) and the Torre can be handled with plans plus about a dozen concrete moves, enough against most amateur opponents. The Trompowsky and the London demand accuracy against ...c5, ...Ne4, ...h6 ideas and against the trade of the dark-squared bishop — if Black loses the bishop pair without compensation, the position sours quickly. The Catalan demands a genuine repertoire decision, as noted.

The practical consequence: the buyer is purchasing one strong module, several average ones, and at least one thin one. At fast time controls the plan layer holds up better than half-remembered lines, so early success feels encouraging. In classical chess against a specifically prepared opponent, the plan layer thins faster than people expect. This conclusion needs no engine to verify: it follows directly from six videos having to share seven systems whose theoretical weight differs by an order of magnitude.

Coverage gaps visible from outside

The Jobava-Prie London — 1.d4 Nf6 2.Nc3 d5 3.Bf4, named after Baadur Jobava — is one of the most popular systems at modern club level, and it does not appear in the advertised scope. So do g3/Bg2 “pseudo-Catalan” setups without c4. A Black repertoire built on a 1...d5 frame will naturally miss systems that reach the same structures by another road. The videos may cover them; the introduction cannot tell us. Buyers should audit the table of contents rather than trust the summary.

In another sense, the list of seven systems is an asset independent of the product. It is the minimum checklist any Black player should hold, whether or not he buys the package. At elite level the picture inverts: Le Quang Liem and Nguyen Ngoc Truong Son operate around mainline openings, where move-level accuracy is a precondition rather than a reward. Sideroad systems appear at that level only as one-off anti-preparation weapons, not as a career foundation.

Signals from the author side

The only verifiable professional attribute is two letters: IM, and Bulgarian trainer. No rating, no recent tournament data, no title year, no competitive activity of any kind. In the online course market, title level functions as a positioning signal. IM-authored courses typically target club and improving players; grandmaster-authored courses with verified tournament records typically target the 2100-plus segment. On the available evidence, this product reads as belonging to the first tier.

A structural risk of the prolific video-author model is that experience with a line may be second-hand: the engine analyses, the presenter narrates, and the plan layer becomes the only part carrying a personal signature. There is nothing unethical about that, but it changes expectations. The buyer pays for a way of telling, not for a discovery. The product description stopping at the plan layer is consistent with that possibility.

The simplest subtraction

Seven systems, six videos. That subtraction forces at least one video to bundle two systems, or forces one system to be compressed. The most likely pairing is the Catalan with the Blackmar-Diemer, or the Richter-Veresov with the Torre — the rarest and least demanding lines. If so, the Catalan segment is orientation-level only. The most common buyer complaint, if there is one, will almost certainly be “not enough Catalan”.

The biggest blind spot is expectation calibration, not quality

If I had to name the single largest risk for a buyer, it is expectation calibration. The “extremely dangerous” framing invites buyers to price these sideroad systems above their objective value. Below 2026 that claim holds: most opponents do not know the characteristic plan, and a good enough map changes results. Above 2200, where concrete knowledge dominates, the strength of these systems falls away sharply. Nobody at that level builds a career around the Colle or the Torre; they use them as anti-preparation weapons for a handful of games.

Free substitution is the second risk. Opening explorers and engines supply most of the background information in these six videos. The only thing that is not free is the narrative layer: why a piece should go there, and which signals show the plan going off course. Buyers should be clear about which layer they are paying for. Paying for the plan layer is reasonable; paying for informational exclusivity is not.

There is a self-cancelling effect worth noting. The more Black players buy anti-London plans, the more White players switch systems, and demand for new courses rises again. This market does not saturate in the ordinary sense; it saturates cyclically. Add supply-side inflation: as opening content can be drafted faster with assistance tools, prices in the plan tier face downward pressure, and the only durable value left is experience verified in play plus teaching ability.

What I will verify next season

A tactic is only complete when it is told in a language the player dares to trust. For a six-video course, that trust does not come from the presenter's title. It comes from three concrete actions: checking the table of contents against a full list of anti-1.d4 systems, checking the update date and runtime of each video, and asking whether the Catalan is treated as a mainline opening or as a footnote.

It is not where the piece stands but where the piece is about to go that is the real spatial piece. For a buyer, that piece lies outside the six videos: a list of what the package does not include. My answer to my student, after two weeks, is shorter than his question. This package can teach you not to be led around for the first thirty moves, and it is almost certainly not enough to make you comfortable in a classical game if your opponent opens 2.c4.

What I want to measure over the next six months is smaller and more practical: how many amateur players who buy a package like this actually change their opening choices, and how many simply watch it through and return to their old moves. Whether the plan layer is real, the market will answer with the rate of second viewings.