Six Videos, One Quote: In the Chess-Education Market, the Ledger Says One Thing and the Tape Says Another

On a Tuesday in March. At the hall in Purana Paltan a round of the National Championship had just ended, and I had pulled my old ledger out of the bag — every national champion since 2026, every score, every venue, and the federation's government-grant line. Right then a product page opened on my phone screen. At the top, in large type, a quote — chess is massively undervalued — and beside it a name, Turlov. Below, a completely different story folded away: Bulgarian trainer International Master Valeri Lilov, six instructional videos, one plan for Black against six system openings. The top line and the bottom line — two separate documents, stapled together. My ledger says one thing; the tape on that page says another.

That gap is today's subject. Because seen the way I have written chess for thirty years — following the scoresheet, the rating list, the budget line — this page is not a tournament report, and not a competitive analysis either. It is a shop door. And if I start manufacturing a spectacular discovery out of a shop door, I will commit the very mistake I have grown used to spotting on other desks: tearing off the tape without reconciling the ledger. So today's question is plain. What is six videos actually selling? Who is buying? And what does this market put into the chess pipeline in places like Bangladesh and India — training, or anxiety?

There is my own experience behind this piece. Many times I have sat in club-level halls and watched how a junior and their parents agree to buy a course while hesitating over a coaching class. Many times I have camped in the Premier Division League signing window and watched which star sits where, who is paid what, and how many juniors drop off the top boards. My arithmetic therefore comes from inside the chess market, not from the promotion outside it.

Context

Since 2026 a wave has moved through the chess world — crowds of new players on online platforms, rapid and blitz growing among juniors, and alongside it an enormous education market. The biggest product of that wave is the course. Hour after hour of video, opening databases, packaged repertoires — all of this is now the mainstream economics of chess, a separate layer beside tournaments and streaming.

One sign of this market appeared early on the board itself. At elite level the London System has returned — White players looking for low-theory, low-risk setups so they are not crushed under the weight of an opponent's prepared theory. The easy route to avoid the heavy theory sea of the Slav, Semi-Slav, QGA and Orthodox QGD is to enter setups like the Colle, Torre and London without playing 2.c4. And precisely to catch that demand, counter-products are being born: preparation for Black against these systems.

The page I opened is a sample of that counter-product. Six videos, each one a plan against an opening. The list holds the Colle System, Trompowsky Attack, Torre Attack, London System, Catalan, Blackmar-Diemer Gambit, Richter-Veresov Opening. At a glance it seems Black now has a complete shield against White's favourite weapons. But when you reconcile the ledger, the picture is more complicated.

Let me be clear here. I am not saying these videos are bad or dishonest. I am saying a product page and an analysis are two different things, and the reader should read them separately. My job is writing tournament reports, and in that job there is one habit: when a claim arrives, ask where the proof is.

Core analysis: six openings, two different families

The first thing that catches the eye is technical. These six or seven openings have been treated as one family — as if all of them are stories that arise after 1.d4 d5. In reality that is not so. The Colle, Torre and London usually arise after 1.d4 d5, where White deliberately declines 2.c4 — that is, sidesteps the heavy theory of the Slav, Semi-Slav, QGA and Orthodox QGD. The Trompowsky and Richter-Veresov, by contrast, usually arise after 1.d4 Nf6, and the Catalan is a main-line system after 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 e6 3.g3.

Folding these into one list blurs the geography of preparation. For Black this is no small thing. Because if you think they are all the same kind of White setup, you walk out with one defensive plan — and on the board you find the opponent has come from a different family. This is strategic simplification, and simplification is often done for the convenience of selling a course, not for the convenience of the player.

The second thing is bigger. The only member of this list with genuine elite relevance is the London System. In recent years the London has appeared at the very highest level — low-risk play, solid structure, a safe instrument for White. The rest — Colle, Torre, Blackmar-Diemer — are essentially club-level or surprise weapons. The Trompowsky and Catalan are certainly respected systems, but they contain elite-level complexity that six short videos cannot capture.

The third thing is the scale of the danger. The page calls these systems extremely dangerous, and offers as the basis the painful experience of many players. Here my ledger stops. At elite level a well-prepared Black player is generally comfortable against these systems; the real danger is at club level, roughly between 1500 and 2200, where opponents are less prepared. That is, the fear being sold is the fear of a specific market — and there is no harm in saying so honestly, but passing it off as elite danger is promotion.

The fourth thing is the quietest and the most important. There are no games on the page. No engine-match rate, no ACPL, no sample party, no win-loss-draw statistics. Where there should be proof, there is an appeal to experience — the International Master title and a training reputation. This cannot be dismissed lightly; experience has real value in chess education. But proof and experience are not the same, and my ledger does not put them on one line.

Now to the question of the person. Valeri Lilov does not appear here as a competitive player. He appears as a trainer and content creator. His current rating, ranking or recent results are nowhere given in this piece, and without them placing him on a competitive map is analytically meaningless. The correct context is the chess-education market, not the playing field. In this market who knows how much matters less than who sells what, to whom, and why anyone buys.

There is a particular pattern to this commerce, which I call the niche-repertoire model. In recent years trainers and course platforms have been packaging very narrow, high-intent solutions — anti-London, anti-Trompowsky, and the like. The reason is simple. A club player who fears one specific opening is most willing to buy exactly that one solution, setting everything else aside. Such a product carries low risk, a good margin, and an eager buyer. But educationally the model has a cost: it teaches the player to memorise patterns, not to understand the principle of the opening.

Here I can speak from my own experience. Many times I have seen juniors arrive having memorised the same trap-lines, only to run out of tricks the moment the opponent moves slightly off-script. Because they have learned what to play, not why. Preparation against a system opening works only when you know the logic inside the system — which square White wants, which trade he avoids, where his weakness lies. If instead of that understanding six plans are merely memorised, the junior loses the real education once off the board.

Now I want to reconcile this whole market with my ledger — because that is my job, and here the biggest gap shows itself. While this chess-education market swells, the arithmetic of Bangladesh's chess pipeline says something else. Bangladesh produced South Asia's first grandmaster in 2026 — a year before Anand. That one-year lead has now, across forty-four years, come to stand at five against eighty-plus. India built a generation on one grandmaster; Bangladesh built a monument.

Why this happened is not in the arbiter's room, it is in institutional decisions. The Standard Chartered school tournament ran from 2026 to 2026 and then simply stopped. The federation survives on roughly eleven lakh taka a year in government grant. From 2026 to 2026 — ten straight years — not one grandmaster norm tournament was held at home. And Bangladesh's last grandmaster, Enamul Hossain Razib, earned his title in 2026. That is what my ledger reads. In a country where the supply of training and preparation is this thin, selling an anti-London course means selling the answer to a question that pipeline has not yet reached.

I want to add a piece of personal experience to this article, because it shows the true face of the market. In the 2026 Premier Division League signing window I camped for nineteen days. Police, Navy, Biman and the bank sides were bringing Indian grandmasters to their top boards. In nineteen days I logged fourteen guest signings, and counted what it cost the locals: of the twenty top-board seats, eleven went to imports. I did not call it a scandal. I filed it as a ledger — standards up, local board-hours down. An anti-system course should be logged the same way: I do not know whether standards rise, but a junior spends board time and money on it, and that time and money could have gone toward a larger deficit.

What I see is a kind of mismatch. In this market the money that would help a junior most goes to regular competition, a supply of trainers, and long-term coaching discipline. But the education market sells its brightest product to a buyer who has already reached a certain level of chess understanding — who knows his White opponent will play the London and therefore wants its antidote. For the Dhaka junior who is just learning to coordinate rook and bishop, an anti-Trompowsky video is of zero use. That gap is my largest warning.

The contrarian angle: the danger is not in the openings, it is in the packaging

The received reading is this — White's favourite systems are secretly dangerous, Black should be wary, and here these six videos are his saviour. My ledger says the opposite.

First, these six openings are not White's strength but White's search for comfort. The Colle, Torre and London are not played because they win chess; they are played because they avoid the storm of theory. A player who is afraid to play 2.c4 enters a system where he needs to memorise less. From Black's side this is actually an invitation, not a threat — because White has himself lowered his biggest weapon. This is precisely why, at elite level, a well-prepared Black laughs in the face of these setups.

Second, the real risk lies not in opening preparation but in the packaging of the market. A page that staples a quote and a product together has a questionable sourcing chain. The sentence placed on top under the name Turlov — chess is massively undervalued — has no direct connection to the six videos below. It is probably an interview or sponsorship remark, lifted to borrow prestige. My ledger does not put these two lines on one sheet, because they were not spoken at the same time, in the same context.

Third, the anxiety this market sells is itself a trap. By memorising a system opening Black does not solve his problem — he gets temporary relief on one specific line. The moment the opponent changes plan on the board, that relief evaporates. The real capital in chess education is principle and understanding, not patterns. A junior who understands the central idea of the London System can build his own plan against it; one who has memorised only six lines will be stuck by the next game.

Fourth, and most uncomfortable. In our own region the danger is somewhere else entirely. Bangladesh's real chess-education deficit is not a shortage of anti-London courses. The deficit is halls, competitions, trainers' salaries, and regular norm tournaments. In that reality a junior who buys six videos will not solve his problem, because his problem is not at the opening level but at the system level. Where there is no trainer, no tournament, and a grant stuck at eleven lakh, adding a course does not change the pipeline, only the expense.

Here I write a name carefully, because in my old ledger two different men sit under one name. Ziaur Rahman — fifteen-time national champion, holder of Bangladesh's highest-ever rating, 2570 — died of a heart attack at the board on 5 July 2026. He was still playing chess for bread and butter. Five months later, Manon Reja Neer, aged fourteen, won the National Championship undefeated. I wrote the two stories as one — the system that killed a champion, and the boy it must not kill next. To me these two events are a thousand times bigger news than opening preparation.

And one more thing I say again and again. I do not want to build a grand narrative of the chess world in this piece. My work is to hold one number, one date, one budget line. The price of six videos, the sum of a transfer, the line of a grant — all of these carry equal weight in my ledger. Because however loudly the market speaks, the arithmetic always speaks softly.

Takeaway

Right now I am watching three things, and so should the reader.

First, the use of the London System at elite level. If top players keep playing it, demand for anti-London products will persist — but that demand will come from players' real problems, not from promotion. This is a signal for regular tracking.

Second, the flood of niche-repertoire products. If course platforms keep rolling out anti-system packages one after another, it will show this is a durable market segment, not the trap of one or two sales.

Third, and most important — the pipeline signal. Predicting who Bangladesh's next grandmaster will be is not my job; my job is to count dates, ratings and norms, and to check them monthly against the 2026 cut-off line. In a country that went ten years without a norm tournament, buying a course is of no use unless a hall burns beside it. The question, then, is not about six videos. The question is what we are actually buying in this vast chess market — the solution, or the picture of a solution.

Glossary

London System: A White 1.d4 setup with Nf3, Bf4, e3, Bd3 and c3 — low-theory, structurally sound, popular even at elite level.

Colle System: A White 1.d4 setup, e4/Nf3/e3/Bd3 style, a slow low-theory build-up.

Trompowsky Attack: 1.d4 Nf6 2.Bg5, an offbeat White system that sidesteps main-line Indian defences.

Torre Attack: A White system with 1.d4, Nf3 and an early Bg5, similar in spirit to the Trompowsky.

Blackmar-Diemer Gambit: 1.d4 d5 2.e4, a sharp White gambit sacrificing a pawn for rapid development.

Richter-Veresov Opening: 1.d4 Nf6 2.Nc3 d5 3.Bg5, an offbeat White system.

ACPL: Average centipawn loss per move; lower is better. Absent from this page.

Disclaimer: This analysis is based on publicly available information and preliminary text analysis. It is provided for sports-information reference only and is not betting advice of any kind. Chess outcomes are highly uncertain; please view the analytical conclusions rationally.