Six Videos for Seven Opening Systems: IM Valeri Lilov and the Defensive Problem After 1.d4 d5

An Evening at the Club, and a Number That Does Not Add Up

A club player in Shanghai spent three evenings building a London System repertoire for White. He copied every move: 1.d4, 2.Nf3, 3.Bf4, 4.e3, 5.Bd3, 6.c3, short castling, then the e4 push at the right moment. Over six months, his win rate as White climbed from 52 percent to 68 percent. Then he met a young opponent who had prepared. Black played ...d5, ...Nf6, ...e6, brought the bishop to ...Bd6 to trade off London's dark-squared bishop, then ...c5 with ...Qb6, ...Nbd7 and short castling. Three games in a row, he created no attack at all. He had not miscalculated. Nobody had ever taught him that his system carries a structural weakness that must be defended before it is exploited.

That is the market gap a training product is aiming at. IM Valeri Lilov, a Bulgarian trainer, presents six instructional videos in a series titled "Power of Initiative". The content: build a plan for Black against systems he calls "extremely dangerous" — the Colle System, the Trompowsky Attack, the Torre Attack, the London System, the Catalan, the Blackmar-Diemer Gambit and the Richter-Veresov Opening. Seven systems. Six videos. That mismatched number was the first detail that made me stop, and it opens a much longer story than a sales notice.

Why 1.d4 d5 Became an Overlooked Battleground

After 1.d4 d5, most club-level White players face a choice that is more economic than chess-related. If they play 2.c4, they enter one of the densest theoretical forests in modern chess: the Slav Defense with 2...c6, the Semi-Slav with ...e6 and ...c6, the Queen's Gambit Accepted with 2...dxc4, and the Orthodox Queen's Gambit with 2...e6. Each of those branches has been dissected to move twenty-five at the top level, and each carries hundreds of pages of literature.

For a player rated 1,600 to 2,000, that time investment usually does not pay. They do not face opponents at that level consistently, they have no coach auditing every error, and they do not play enough games to turn theory into reflex. So a significant share of players choose to sidestep the entire forest with a different second move. They build the Colle, the London, the Torre, the Trompowsky — systems designed to be played by plan rather than by memory.

This is where the product introduction gets it right. It correctly identifies that many White players decline 2.c4, and that Black often enters the game with no preparation for that situation at all. Black studies the Slav, studies the Semi-Slav, studies the Queen's Gambit Declined, then suddenly faces 3.Bf4 and realises there is no plan in the file.

But a structural paradox sits just beneath the surface. The systems the marketing calls "extremely dangerous" are in fact the least ambitious weapons in White's arsenal. The Colle System has long been regarded as passive and slow, easy to neutralise. The London System is solid but unambitious — it wins by not losing first, not by imposing will. The Torre Attack usually transposes into neutral strategic positions. The Trompowsky is structurally disruptive but carries no outright ambition. The label "dangerous" here measures inconvenience for Black, not the objective strength of the move.

That distinction matters, because it determines what a buyer actually receives. If they are looking for a defensive system that seizes the advantage, they will be disappointed. If they are looking for a set of plans to neutralise cautious opponents, they are in the right shop.

Seven Systems, Six Videos: The Opening Map and What Black Actually Needs

I sat with the list of seven systems for a while. Based on my experience following games at grassroots events and training sessions in Shanghai, this list is not a single block. It is three groups of different natures, bundled under one marketing label.

The first group genuinely arises from 1.d4 d5 when White avoids 2.c4. The Colle System belongs here: 1.d4, 2.Nf3, 3.e3, 4.Bd3, 5.c3, with the plan of pushing e4 and opening a file. The London System does too: 1.d4, 2.Nf3, 3.Bf4, 4.e3, 5.Bd3, 6.c3. The Richter-Veresov Opening is also in this group: 1.d4, 2.Nc3, 3.Bg5. And the Blackmar-Diemer Gambit, with 1.d4 d5 2.e4 dxe4 3.Nc3 Nf6 4.f3, starts from that very move 1...d5.

The second group does not depend on 1...d5 at all. The Trompowsky Attack begins with 1.d4 Nf6 2.Bg5. The Torre Attack usually runs through 1.d4 Nf6 2.Nf3 e6 3.Bg5. Both can appear regardless of what Black chooses on move one.

The third group is the special case, and the largest hole in the promotional frame. The Catalan Opening cannot exist if White declines 2.c4. It is defined by 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 e6 3.g3 d5 4.Bg2 — meaning the very move 2.c4 that the entire premise says the player wants to avoid. Including the Catalan is not wrong chess, but it breaks the "anti-Slav-theory-dodger" logic the product sets for itself. A system that requires 2.c4 cannot be the solution to avoiding 2.c4.

And the Benko Gambit? It appears in the title, and that is a marketing decision rather than a technical one. The Benko Gambit begins with 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 c5 3.d5 b5 — a pawn sacrifice on the queenside in exchange for long-term initiative. It has no structural intersection with the Colle, the London or the Torre. Placing it in the title likely targets search traffic from players interested in the 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 c5 system, then routes them to a broader product.

So what does Black actually need in each group?

Against the Colle System, the classic defensive plan is to strike the centre before White completes the e4 push. Black plays ...c5, ...Nc6, ...b6, ...Bb7, or ...e6 and ...Bd6, seeking exchanges that weaken the d4 square. The crux is tempo: the Colle needs at least five moves to set up the e4 lever, and in those five moves Black has enough time to generate queenside counterplay. If Black plays passively, the Colle looks strong. If Black plays actively, the Colle is revealed as a system short on space.

Against the London System, the central problem is the dark-squared bishop. White places it on f4 believing it is untouchable. The natural resistance is ...Bd6 inviting the trade, with ...c5 and ...Qb6 pressuring d4, and ...Nh5 or ...Ne4 in some lines to force the bishop off the diagonal. When London loses the f4 bishop without trading a comparable light-squared bishop, White's position becomes bare.

Against the Torre Attack, Black often accepts the g5 bishop trade after ...h6 or ...Be7, then exploits White's thin control of the central squares. Against the Trompowsky, Black can choose the confrontational ...Ne4 or simply play ...d5, ...e6, ...c5 and reclaim space. Against the Richter-Veresov, the cleanest plan is ...Nbd7, ...c6, ...e6, ...Be7, ...0-0, and ...h6 to question the bishop.

Those are real plans, learnable, applicable. That is why I do not treat this product as worthless. It fills a real gap.

But what is the price of that gap? Seven systems, six videos. Subtract the introduction and the conclusion, and each system receives roughly twenty to thirty minutes of airtime. In twenty minutes, an instructor can present one general plan and a few sample variations. He cannot present the three main branches of the Colle, four London piece setups, and the transpositions into the Queen's Gambit Declined when White changes his mind. That is arithmetic, not competence.

The Surprise Reversal: The "Extremely Dangerous" Label and the Distance Between Market Positioning and Board Reality

I once trusted feeling, until a number knocked at three in the morning.

When I reread the passage describing the Colle, Trompowsky, Torre and London as "extremely dangerous", I realised I was reading a text written by fear, not by measurement. No win rates are cited. No engine evaluation. No game samples. No data on how often Black actually loses in these structures at club level versus master level. All that exists is an adjective.

That is a familiar marketing pattern in the opening-content market: manufacture fear of missing out by calling a popular system a threat, then sell the solution to that threat. The pain is real — players genuinely struggle against the London and the Colle. But the severity is inflated to justify the purchase.

There is a deeper layer, and this is the part worth discussing. The real danger in these games is not White's opening system. It is the asymmetry of preparation. A London player spends hundreds of games understanding his structure. A Black player spends thirty minutes watching a video about how to counter it. That gap is not closed by a course, but by converting that system into part of one's own chess identity.

This leads to a counter-intuitive conclusion. Courses of this kind can create false confidence. The buyer finishes watching, feels he understands, then walks into a game with a half-formed set of plans. He plays the first three moves of the anti-London plan correctly, then the opponent transposes into a different structure, and he collapses because he has no foundation from which to improvise. What he received is a map with three streets drawn on it, not a city.

It is also worth stating the verification gap plainly. The introduction calls Valeri Lilov a "Bulgarian trainer". There is no rating, no tournament history, no list of successful students, no verifiable results. For a training product, that is a meaningful omission, because the authority of the teacher is part of the product's value. At IM level, average instructional competence usually suits players rated 1,400 to 2,000 — exactly this course's audience. But at higher levels, the gap between content made by an IM and content made by people who have served as seconds to players above 2,700 is enormous, and the introduction gives readers no tool to tell the two apart.

The opening-content market is brutally saturated at IM level. The Colle, London and Torre all have free analysis on online chess platforms, in community studies, and across thousands of videos. The differentiation value of a product like this is not that it reveals something new. It is presentational structure: an ordered, systematic path that can be followed from beginning to end rather than hopping between scattered sources.

That is real value, but it is the value of organisation, not of discovery. And when a product sells organisation in the language of discovery, buyers have the right to demand evidence.

One more detail stands out: the introduction offers no sample content, no trial clip, no user comments, no platform ratings. Prospective buyers must decide on the strength of one descriptive paragraph. In any other market that would be a warning sign. In the chess market it is often accepted because buyers are used to purchasing on the strength of the instructor's reputation. But when that reputation has not been established, the logical circle closes uncomfortably.

There is a simple test anyone can run before spending money. Take one of your own games in which you lost to the London or the Colle. Reset the position, find move twelve or fifteen, and ask: if I had a clear plan here, what would I play? If the answer appears immediately, the course has little value. If the answer does not appear, the course may help. The test is free, and it measures exactly what an instructional video can deliver: a plan at move fifteen.

Signals to Watch

I light candles for data. But I always let the flame of feeling illuminate the question.

Three signals will show which tier of the market this product truly occupies. The first is post-release feedback: if the average rating falls below 3.5 out of 5 and comments centre on content being too shallow for the price, that is a clear signal of the gap between advertising and reality. The second is distribution: if the series appears on major platforms with quality curation processes, that is a positive indicator for the content. The third is competitor response: if other instructors release similar products at lower prices or greater depth, market pressure will quickly expose the true value.

What interests me most is a question no promotional material answers. After finishing these six videos, how will a player measure progress? By wins against the London? By a feeling of confidence? Or by the ability to recognise, at move fifteen, that the position has shifted into a structure entirely different from the map in his head?

There are players who have been forgotten, but data never forgets them. And systems dismissed as ordinary are the same. They are not dangerous. They are simply not yet understood. Whoever understands them first, wins.