An opening course for Black (ECO C42-C43)
2...Nf6 leaves e5 hanging and counterattacks e4 instead, so both sides lose a centre pawn and the structure Black wanted is on the board by move five. Kramnik, Anand, Karpov and Caruana all built careers on it, and what they got for the trouble is an opening that never hands you a bad position. The cost is real too: a well-prepared opponent who wants a draw can usually get one. This course answers all five of White's serious third moves and stops where its sources stop.
This course is part of your daily work.
Every other answer to 2.Nf3 defends the pawn on e5 or gives it up for something. Black does neither. The knight goes to f6 and hits e4, White takes on e5, Black takes on e4, and a pair of centre pawns comes off before anybody has developed a piece. The position that results is symmetrical, short of targets, and easier to hold than to win.
After 3.Nxe5 the pawn does not come back straight away. 3...d6 chases the knight, and only then does Black take on e4. Grabbing it a move early runs into 4.Qe2, when the white queen and the black king are on the same file and the knight on e5 is one discovered check away from the black queen. That is the single most common way to lose this opening in ten moves.
Black's knight sits on e4 for most of the game and White spends the middlegame trying to shift it, usually with c2-c4 and Re1. White generally manages it, but the moves it takes leave marks: a pawn committed to c4, a rook on a file that opens for both sides. Black's job is to keep adding defenders, ...d5 first, then ...Bf5 or ...Re8, then ...f5 if the position closes.
The one line where the Petrov turns violent is 5.Nc3, where White takes doubled c-pawns in exchange for fast development, castles queenside and throws the h-pawn forward. Black is not defending there. The queen goes to a5, the bishop to e6, the knight to c5 and e4, and every one of those pieces points at c1. The habit worth building is counting: which pawn storm arrives first.
Learning order, one scoresheet per chapter. The coach serves review one line a day; enter any line directly when you want it now.
White takes the pawn in more than half of all games, and the first thing to learn is that Black does not take back yet. 3...d6 chases the knight, 4...Nxe4 restores the balance, and then White picks a plan: 5.d4 to undermine the knight, 5.Nc3 to trade it and attack, or 5.Qe2 to trade queens and shake hands. The gambit at the end of the chapter is what happens when your opponent has decided none of that is fun.
White opens the centre before taking anything, and Steinitz recommended it in print in 1889. Black takes on e4 anyway, meets the bishop on d3 with ...d5, and then chooses the modern 5...Nd7, which is the move Kramnik and Anand made the main line and the one Larsen used to rescue the whole variation in 1980.
Three ways of declining the argument: 3.Nc3 heads for a Four Knights, 3.Bc4 offers a gambit that has never quite worked, and 3.d3 defends the pawn and waits. Together they are a quarter of all games in the opening, and each one has a specific answer worth knowing before you meet it over the board.
Club games that started in the Petrov's Defence produced these tactics, and you solve every one from Black's side, the seat you actually sit in. Difficulty follows your solving, the same as the puzzle room.
The Petrov's Defence is the chess opening that begins 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nf6, and it is filed under ECO C42-C43. This course teaches it from Black's side in 9 drills across 3 chapters, with a coach note on the moves that need one, every position checked with Stockfish at depth 20, and every plan credited to the author who wrote it down.
Lines you will drill
Theory credited to
7 branches are deliberately not drilled here, and the course records which and why rather than leaving the gap silent.
Questions
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