The Theory Tax and the Detour: The Opening Battle Beneath the Top of Chess

At an amateur chess tournament in Nha Trang in April 2026, I sat beside board four for nearly four hours. The game opened 1.d4, then 2.Nf3, 3.Bf4, 4.e3, 5.Bd3. The player with the white pieces, a mathematics teacher, never once touched 2.c4. When I asked him why, he answered briefly: “I don't have time to learn the Slav and the Semi-Slav. I learn how to place my pieces.”

Before the game ended I asked him three things: about the mechanical clock he carried, about the scoresheet book with frayed corners, and about the pencil he sharpened with a knife. I have kept that habit since the years I commentated on chess for VTC — to understand a player, you begin with the objects he touches every day. A record never grows old; it is only waiting for someone who knows how to listen.

His answer explains something anyone who has sat at an amateur event recognises: most club-level players deliberately avoid the main lines and choose systems instead of theory.

Context: the untitled tax

After 1.d4, White has two roads. The first is 2.c4, opening the Queen's Gambit with four enormous theoretical branches: the Slav (2...c6), the Semi-Slav, the Queen's Gambit Accepted (2...dxc4) and the Orthodox Queen's Gambit Declined (2...e6). The second road skips 2.c4, builds a fixed setup and plays to a plan.

The second road has names. The Colle System (1.d4 d5 2.Nf3 Nf6 3.e3, followed by Bd3, c3, Nbd2). The Torre Attack (1.d4 Nf6 2.Nf3 e6 3.Bg5). The Trompowsky (1.d4 Nf6 2.Bg5). The London System (1.d4 with an early Bf4, then e3, Nf3, Bd3). The Catalan (1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 e6 3.g3). The Blackmar-Diemer Gambit (1.d4 d5 2.e4). The Richter-Veresov (1.d4 Nf6 2.Nc3 d5 3.Bg5).

What they share: a player does not need to recall the fifteenth move of a forced line, only a setup and a few ideas. For someone working eight hours a day, that is a bargain.

Across the board, Black often has no matching plan. He knows the Semi-Slav to move twenty but freezes against 2.Bg5. That gap creates a market: opening courses aimed specifically at Black against this family.

Core: when plans crowd out theory

Promotional material appeared for a chess course presenting six videos by IM Valeri Lilov, a Bulgarian International Master, teaching Black to meet exactly that family: London, Colle, Torre, Trompowsky, Catalan, Blackmar-Diemer and Richter-Veresov.

Read closely, the material's central claim holds up as a description of a phenomenon. Amateur players skipping 2.c4 to dodge the Slav, Semi-Slav, QGA and QGD block is real; I have watched it for two decades at amateur and semi-professional events. What deserves discussion lies elsewhere.

Those seven systems carry genuine venom. The Colle and the London give White a low-risk setup, easy to play, hard to punish. The Trompowsky and the Torre force Black to solve bishop-versus-knight structural problems alone. The Catalan is different in kind: it still plays 2.c4, it still has strategic depth, and the players who use it usually understand positional chess very well.

Put another way, this is a family Black must prepare for, but the preparation cannot be solved by memorising more moves. It has to be built from plans: which pawn to push, which piece to trade, which file to open.

Based on my experience following these games, I find that games in this family are usually decided between moves fifteen and twenty-five, when both sides have run out of the book and must begin to think. Whoever has the clearer plan wins. That is why a six-video course, one opening per video, sounds appealing to club players.

Contrarian: missing data and a misplaced name

What I could not find in that material was data. No win rates, no sample games, no ACPL figures, no database statistics proving this family is extremely dangerous. Every strong judgement comes from the writer or from the person selling the course. For an educational product that is normal; for a technical claim it has to be said plainly.

Then there is the name. The title of the piece is “An interview with Timur Turlov”. The body beneath it discusses Valeri Lilov's course. Timur Turlov — known in chess circles as a financier linked to sponsorship activity — appears in no information point at all. Valeri Lilov, meanwhile, appears nowhere in the title.

To me this is the most notable detail in the whole document, and it belongs to a class of error I meet often in documentary work: a headline and a body that belong to two different stories. Every stadium I walk through has a secret door, and the entrance is always a person — but when the sign on the door carries the wrong name, people lose their way.

There is one more technical point. The material frames everything around 1.d4 d5, yet the Trompowsky (1.d4 Nf6 2.Bg5) and the Torre (1.d4 Nf6) never arise after 1.d4 d5, while the Catalan still includes 2.c4. That taxonomy shows a document organised for selling rather than for theoretical order.

What is worth keeping

Six months later, the teacher in Nha Trang still plays the London System. He still has not learned the Semi-Slav. But he began recording every game against a plan: which pawn to push, which piece to trade. He did not become an International Master. He became a player who understands what he is doing.

In the age of the 30-second video, I spent three months listening to a man talk about the 400 metres in 2026. For chess, I am willing to spend three more months on an amateur game. Courses like Lilov's are useful, but their real value lies in telling Black one very concrete thing: after the book runs out, what to do.

The question I leave for chess content makers: when the headline and the content disagree, which part should readers believe?