The Quiet Market of System Openings: Six Videos, a Disconnected Quote, and the Shifting Demand of Club Chess

Last winter, in a club chess room in Delhi, I stood beside one table for almost forty minutes. The player with the white pieces opened 1.d4, then Nf3, Bf4, e3, c3, Bd3—a familiar, almost domestic rhythm. Nobody was looking at the clock; nobody was hurrying. At the next table, someone was weaving exactly the same setup. I did not understand then that I was standing inside a market, not merely a game.

A few days later a headline arrived in my feed that tried to explain everything with a single sentence: "Chess is massively undervalued." The quote was attached to the name "Turlov." When I opened the link, there was no analysis of chess inside. There was an advertisement for six instructional videos by the Bulgarian trainer IM Valeri Lilov—an "anti-system" repertoire for Black. A crack between the headline and the body.

I am tired of writing results. I now write the cracks nobody wants to see. And this piece begins with a confession: there is no competition here, no tournament, no rating line. There is a product page, a disconnected quote, and a market of demand that the chess world rarely names aloud.

The subject of this piece is not a player but a product. To be honest about that product's market, I first need to say who Lilov is. He is a Bulgarian trainer whose reputation rests not on competitive results but on coaching and instructional content. His role here is that of a coach, not a player. Each of his six videos offers one plan, so that a Black player can be prepared against a specific system.

Put those systems together and an image forms: the Colle System, the Trompowsky Attack, the Torre Attack, the London System, the Catalan, the Blackmar-Diemer Gambit, the Richter-Veresov Opening. These are essentially White's quiet tools—the ones he uses to sidestep main-line theory. For Black, the package's core promise is practical coverage, not theoretical novelty.

Here is the first factual problem. The Colle, London, and Torre usually arise after 1.d4 d5, where White does not play 2.c4; that avoids the heavy theory of the Slav, Semi-Slav, Queen's Gambit Accepted, or the orthodox QGD. The Trompowsky, Richter-Veresov, and Catalan, by contrast, usually arrive after 1.d4 Nf6. Folding these two families under one umbrella is a simplification. In a training product that simplification is harmless; as analysis, it is incomplete.

And here is my second confession. Most of what I write about chess I learned in club rooms—not on a stage, not on a scoresheet. Watching Bangladesh's team at the 44th Olympiad in Chennai in 2026, what I understood was this: the real audience for these systems sits at club level, somewhere between roughly 1500 and 2200. That is where opponents are unprepared, and that is where these openings are genuinely uncomfortable.

The real story is not the six videos; the real story is why products like this are being made now. Over the past few years a quiet shift has taken hold in chess: at elite level and at club level, people are leaning toward low-theory openings for two different reasons. At elite level the reason is practical—less preparation, less risk. At club level the reason is simple—less memorization, less time. The causes differ, but the result is the same: the London, the Colle, the Torre, and the Trompowsky are being played more than ever.

Take the London System. It was once dismissed as the club player's irritating weapon, presumed to have no place at the top. Now the picture has flipped. Top-level players use it as a low-risk White weapon, especially late in long tournaments, when fatigue and preparation gaps are greatest. That single fact shows that low-theory openings are no longer marginal; they are a live demand. And that demand is what gives products like Lilov's their market.

This is where the economics sit. The chess-education market is separate from the chess-event market. Events mean prize funds, sponsors, broadcasts—one world. Courses, video series, subscriptions, affiliate links—another world entirely. Lilov's package is a specimen of the second world, and it shows a specific tactic: turning a narrow, high-intent problem into a product. Anti-London, anti-Trompowsky, anti-Colle—this niche-repertoire model offers high margin at low risk, because once a video is made it sells for years.

Why does the model work? Because the product stands on fear, not on confidence. The buyer plays White, the opponent plays an unfamiliar system, and he loses. Next time he goes looking for preparation. Such a buyer is indecisive but loyal—once he buys, he buys again. This emotional economy of the education market is nothing new in chess, but in the post-2026 chess boom it has grown much larger.

Nobody predicted the wave chess rode after 2026. New player numbers on online platforms exploded; schoolchildren stayed up late playing blitz; and a large share of them learned system openings first, because those are easy and because their videos are the most plentiful on YouTube. A natural consequence followed: a vast number of new White players play systems, and a vast number of Black players look for answers against them. Between those two demands stands the education market.

I want to draw a border here, because I work between two countries. India's chess world and Bangladesh's are not the same. India has more than eighty grandmasters, corporate leagues, sponsors, and an institutional pipeline reaching six-year-olds. Bangladesh has five grandmasters, and none new since 2026. Yet the demand for these system openings is almost identical in both countries, because the demand belongs not to institutions but to club players. Different pipelines, same habits.

And right here a cold truth is hidden. The product that promises to save Black from the systems actually makes White's systems stronger. Every anti-system course sends White's system players a message: your weapon is working, so your opponents are thinking about you. That is the market. Fear and its antidote are sold together, two faces of one demand.

Now the question: how effective is this material, really? At club level, if the training is good, it genuinely helps. These systems share a common weakness—if White merely memorizes the setup without understanding the plan, Black can use a precise breaking plan to make him uncomfortable. In the Colle, if White's c4 break never comes, the centre jams; in the Trompowsky, Black can chase White's premature bishop; in the Blackmar-Diemer Gambit, if Black returns the pawn correctly, White's attack burns out. Lilov's plans strike exactly there.

At elite level, though, the picture differs. Players rated 2600+ play the London or the Colle by choice, not from weakness. If they play these systems, it means they know the deeper plans, and they choose them precisely to cover gaps in preparation. Against them, anti-system material is no secret weapon; it is just another equal contest, in which both sides know where the game is heading. Here the limit of the "extremely dangerous" claim becomes clear.

Still, one thing is clear. This product is a signal from the chess-education market: low-theory openings are broad enough to sustain a dedicated product against them. For a course to sell, at least several thousand people must face the problem. In other words, the demand is real and measurable. This is not a signal of weakness; it is a signal of demand. And demand is never false—it is only more modest than the promise.

Now to the side a product page never writes about. First, "extremely dangerous" is advertising, not analysis. There is no engine match rate, no ACPL, no sample games, no win-draw-loss record. In chess, a claim without data behind it is an appeal to experience, not evidence. Across ten years of watching promotional chess products, I have found the same gap in almost all of them.

Second, the crack between headline and body is itself a red flag. The quote attached to Turlov has no logical link to Lilov's product. Who one of them is, who the other is—there is no bridge between the two worlds. Such disconnection usually shows that headline and body were sourced separately, outside editorial quality control, perhaps inside an aggregator or affiliate arrangement. A reader needs to know this, because it questions the reliability of the source.

Third, there is a pedagogical risk, and it matters most. Marketing system openings as solutions teaches a player to memorize patterns, not to understand. In small doses that is fine—a club player needs a usable weapon. But if an improving player spends years memorizing only systems and anti-systems, his understanding of openings stops developing. Principles, not theory, are the real foundation. A system is a door, not a room.

Let me return to that crack once more, because it is the most honest feature of this page. One quote, six videos, and an empty space between them. That empty space is the subject of this piece. Searching for a relationship between a Bulgarian trainer's six videos and a single sentence by an unknown Turlov, what I found was a market of demand that is not conscious of its own existence.

A personal illustration. Last year I was commentating an online club league where more than two hundred players played each night. Over six nights I counted—roughly one in three White games opened with the London or the Trompowsky. Nobody was playing them because they believed them best; they were playing them because they knew they were safe, and because they had no time to prepare. That habit creates the market, and the market sells the courses.

So what comes next? Two signals are worth watching. One, whether the number of anti-system courses keeps growing—if it does, low-theory openings are a durable market, not a passing fad. Two, whether the London complex keeps spreading at the elite table—if it does, the trend is not marginal; it is changing how the game is played.

A third signal is the hardest. Who is Turlov, really? If he is a known chess patron or corporate figure, then "Chess is massively undervalued" is not merely an advertising device—it may signal capital flowing into chess. In that case the quote matters. If he is unknown, the sentence is only a device for shining light. The gap between those two possibilities is enormous, and closing it requires a primary source, an interview, a press release.

My last thought is this. The chess-education market now stands in a place where fear itself is a product. The player buying a course to escape his opponent's system—is he really learning chess, or only buying the fear of the next game? The answer may change with every purchase. But the question does not change. And because the question does not change, this market is still alive, and will stay alive for a long time yet.