Six Videos and One Quote: Auditing the ‘Undervalued’ Pitch of the Chess-Education Market

It is ten past two in the morning. On a Penang balcony, a laptop screen lights up with a course page — six videos, and across the top a large quotation: “Chess is massively undervalued.” Right then a message arrives from a club player in Purana Paltan. He has played 1.d4 and drifted into the London System, and the opponent sitting as Black still cannot tell where this quiet procession will stop. Two cities, two kinds of unease, and the answer to both demands the same ledger.

What the page is selling is clear. The Bulgarian trainer IM Valeri Lilov has assembled an antidote package for Black across six instructional videos — the Colle System, the Trompowsky Attack, the Torre Attack, the London System, the Catalan, the Blackmar-Diemer Gambit and the Richter-Veresov Opening. One plan per opening. Hanging over the headline is a quotation attributed to someone named Turlov, with no direct link to the videos.

The first discomfort lives here. The headline speaks of chess’s value; the body speaks of a product advertisement. The first lesson of journalism — a headline shaking hands with its body — is exactly where the gap opens. And my job is to read that gap, because the gap is the real news.

Context first. A silent migration has taken place in opening theory. If White does not play 2.c4 after 1.d4, White never has to enter the vast theory-ocean of the Slav, the Semi-Slav, the Queen’s Gambit Accepted or the Orthodox QGD. White chooses quiet, low-theory setups — London, Colle, Torre. This choice does not come from laziness; in an age of information overload it is entirely rational. Black then sits as a guest in an unfamiliar house. Demand forms, and anti-system courses arrive to meet it.

The claim is bigger still: these setups are hidden traps, known from “the painful experience of many chess players.” Painful experience is an unsourced generalization. That is not evidence; it is an invitation — the old tactic of manufacturing fear and then selling the remedy.

Technically the list is untidy. The Colle, London and Torre usually arise after 1.d4 d5; the Trompowsky, Richter-Veresov and Catalan arise after 1.d4 Nf6. Bundling two separate families into one package is a simplification. It does the buyer no harm, but it proves the material is a compilation, not theoretical research.

Each member also has a different character. The London System is resilient, safe, slowly building pressure. The Colle is the softer cousin of that family. The Blackmar-Diemer and Richter-Veresov are the opposite — sharp, risky, dependent on surprise. Put them in the same box and the taxonomy collapses.

One technical distinction is worth holding onto. A novelty and a system are not the same thing. A novelty is a move never played before, typically engine-verified. A system is a familiar, stable setup White plays again and again. Lilov’s material is the second kind; there is no new theory here, only a tidy answer to a familiar problem.

The phrase “extremely dangerous” on the video’s promotion is not technical truth; it is marketing. At elite level, well-prepared Black players sit comfortably against these setups. The genuine danger lies at club level — where opponents are less prepared, ratings roughly 1500 to 2200.

The one member of this list with genuine elite relevance is the London System. In recent years it has returned again and again at the top level as a low-risk weapon. The others — Colle, Torre, Blackmar-Diemer — are essentially club-level or surprise weapons. So the product’s value lies in practical coverage, not in novelty.

Now the question I ask before every column — who paid for this board? The Bangladesh Chess Federation’s annual government grant is roughly Tk 11 lakh — less than a single franchise cricketer’s bat deal. Yet a niche-opening course can cost more than a junior’s monthly coaching fee. In a country with only five grandmasters, the question becomes one of access.

That arithmetic is not abstract. On 5 July 2026, standing outside a hall in Purana Paltan, I wrote about the death of the country’s most decorated player, Ziaur Rahman — a heart attack mid-game, a fifteen-time national champion. Five months later, in December, fourteen-year-old Manon Reja Neer became national champion undefeated. I wrote the two stories as one, because pipeline and grief are two sides of the same ledger.

The education market works like this. Narrow, high-intent problems — anti-London, anti-Trompowsky — packaged and sold: low risk, high margin. On Chessable and similar platforms such niche-repertoire courses are now routine. This is evergreen business, not news. There is no event, so there is no prize fund or field depth to weigh; there is only a product page.

No player is named anywhere in the competitive landscape — not a throne-holder, not a challenger. Yet one signal is clear: the popularity of low-theory openings is rising not only at club level but at the top. This is a demand signal, not a strength signal. And the education market is converting that demand into cash.

The business map is already drawn. Upstream sits youth training and talent supply; midstream sit events, players and platforms; downstream sits the consumer market — courses, subscriptions, affiliates. This product touches the middle and lower layers and never reaches the upstream training pipeline. Its impact is small, but enduring.

The market I know is harsher. In Dhaka’s Premier Division Chess League, the Police, Navy, Biman and bank teams hire Indian grandmasters as guest boards — I was first to report a Kolkata-based GM’s signing at a reported Tk 1.5 lakh. There, chess runs on favours and identity, not contracts.

Players like Rani Hamid keep playing the Olympiad without retiring, while parents rationally steer their children toward engineering. Against that reality, a six-video course is no crime; the crime is presenting it as the solution.

This is where the real context shifts away. In 2026 Niaz Murshed became South Asia’s first grandmaster — a year before Anand. Today India counts more than eighty grandmasters; Bangladesh still counts five. That gap was not created by an anti-London course. The gap opened when the Standard Chartered school-chess pipeline died in 2026, and six videos cannot fill it.

“Chess is massively undervalued” is true, but it is not this page’s evidence. Since 2026 a chess surge has swept the world; audiences, online servers and streaming all rose. But the quotation’s source is unconfirmed, and Turlov’s identity is not clear in this material. It was likely lifted from a separate interview and smeared onto a product — a familiar tactic of borrowing prestige.

Now the reverse angle. My fear is not about opening systems. It is about pedagogy — if these courses teach pattern-memorization instead of principles, an improving player’s understanding freezes. The board’s biggest trap is treating the opening as the ceiling. A player’s ceiling is set by endgame patience and calculation clarity, not by memorizing the first ten moves.

One more red flag cannot be skipped. There is no bridge between the headline quotation and the body’s product — and such a gap often reveals that the piece is not editorial but an attached or affiliate placement. Source reliability itself is the question. The risk of such an article is mainly the buyer’s: promotional language dressed as technical truth.

The governance question matters too. This chess-education market sits outside FIDE’s remit; here the rules are not of the game but of consumer protection. Even without fraud there is accountability — showing evidence for what is claimed.

In my “Pipeline Watch” notebook I log regularly which junior crosses 2200 and who stalls. Course sales are not a line in that ledger at all. Yet the education market and the pipeline do not know each other, which is why the gap stays so wide.

So what should a reader in Dhaka or Penang do? If you buy the videos, use them as a supplement, not a substitute. Verify Lilov’s credentials and sample games. Treat claims like “extremely dangerous” with suspicion — because there is no engine match rate, no ACPL, no game sample.

I return to my own board. The whistle blew, and my knee learned a language no box score could translate. I watched from the sideline until the game became a sentence I could finally edit. After nearly a decade covering chess I learned this — the best columns are built like a rehab plan: small steps, honest pain, no shortcuts. This course page is the same — one small step, if you know where it stands.

What should you watch going forward? Whether London System use rises at the top level; whether the steady flow of anti-system courses continues; and when the true source of the Turlov quotation surfaces. Those three signals together will tell us whether this is the dust of an evergreen business or a genuine turn in the chess economy.

One last image freezes in place. That club player in Purana Paltan sits as Black, the clock ticking, and the opponent calmly plays the third move. Six videos are in his pocket. But at the board, he stands alone.