An opening course for White (ECO C88)
3.Bb5 attacks the knight that defends e5, and it does not win a pawn. It never does. What it does is start a conversation Black has to answer on every move for the next twenty, which is why the opening has been the main line for four hundred years and why it costs more memorising than anything else on this shelf. The repertoire here is the classical one: 4.Ba4, castle, Re1, c3 and d4, and the queen's knight walks b1 to d2 to f1 to g3 while a4 pokes at Black's queenside. Two places where a club player should not follow the top of the profession are handled deliberately. The Marshall Attack gets declined with 8.a4 instead of memorising twenty moves of a pawn sacrifice, and the Berlin gets 4.d3 instead of the endgame Kramnik used to hold Kasparov. Both choices are what the coaches who write for club players recommend, and both are still current main-line theory.
This course is part of your daily work.
Every beginner plays 4.Bxc6 dxc6 5.Nxe5 at some point and every one of them loses a piece to ...Qd4 or ...Qg5, forking the knight and something else. The bishop on b5 is not attacking e5, it is attacking the piece that defends it, and the difference is the whole opening. Play the position, not the tactic.
Ba4 and then Bb3 look like wasted moves and they are the point. From b3 the bishop looks at f7 for the rest of the game and drops back to c2 when Black chases it, where it lines up behind the queen at the black king. Never trade this bishop off without a reason. It is called the Spanish bishop for a reason.
This is the skeleton in almost every line. The pawns take the centre, the queen's knight walks around the back to the kingside, and Re1 and h3 make room for both. If you learn nothing else, learn the route: knight to d2, then f1, then g3 and sometimes f5. It is the same manoeuvre in the Chigorin, the Breyer, the Zaitsev and the anti-Marshall.
The Marshall Attack is a sound pawn sacrifice with a book of theory behind it, and 8.a4 sidesteps it for one tempo. The Berlin endgame is holdable and dry, and 4.d3 keeps queens on. Neither is a cop-out, both are played at the top, and both mean the time you have goes into positions you will actually reach.
Learning order, one scoresheet per chapter. The coach serves review one line a day; enter any line directly when you want it now.
Nine moves, no theory to memorise, and the two things that make this opening what it is: the bishop that never gets traded, and the pawn on e5 that is never actually hanging.
Six named ways for Black to arrange the pieces after 9.h3. White usually builds with d4, but the knight route and the moment to challenge the queenside depend on Black's setup.
When Black castles on move seven instead of playing ...d6, the Marshall Attack is on: 8.c3 d5 and a pawn sacrifice with a book behind it. 8.a4 costs one tempo and takes the whole book off the table.
Black takes the pawn and gives back the centre. The positions are sharper than anything in the Closed chapter and the pieces come out fast on both sides.
The most popular defence at the top and the one that turns the Ruy Lopez into an endgame. This course plays 4.d3, keeps the queens on, and shows the endgame so you know what you are declining.
Six alternatives to 3...a6. The Cozio and Fianchetto need immediate central play; the sharper defences demand their own concrete answers.
The Tarrasch trap in the Steinitztrap
vs 3...d6 4.d4 Bd7 5.Nc3 Nf6 6.O-O Be7 7.Re1 O-O, 16 moves
Two more Black systems after the bishop drops back, and the one trap in this opening that costs White a piece rather than winning one.
Club games that started in the Ruy Lopez produced these tactics, and you solve every one from White's side, the seat you actually sit in. Difficulty follows your solving, the same as the puzzle room.
The Ruy Lopez is the chess opening that begins 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5 a6, and it is filed under ECO C88. This course teaches it from White's side in 27 drills across 7 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
8 branches are deliberately not drilled here, and the course records which and why rather than leaving the gap silent.
Questions
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