The System-Opening Market: The Ledger Missing from a Six-Video Ad

An article landed in my hands. A quote sits on top of its title — "Chess is massively undervalued." The quote is credited to [Turlov]. But by the time I finished reading, [Turlov] was gone. What remained was six videos, a Bulgarian trainer, and one promise — that White's favourite system openings are secretly dangerous, and that Black has a fix. That gap between the title and the body is, to me, the single most important piece of information in the piece.

When I write about chess, I look at the accounting before the sentiment. The questions are plain: how many videos, in whose name, from which year, and on whose invoice the quote has been placed. Receipt before quotation. In May 2026, when I published a four-thousand-word reconstruction of Spartak Moscow's title run, it stood on the same rule — sixty league goals against a shot-quality model of 47.3, a +12.7 overperformance. The first public xG model was not a prophecy. It was a receipt. Where a piece has no receipt, my work is nearly done.

In a Moscow club league, I coded a game not long ago. Black was a player of roughly 2026. White played the London System — Nf3, Bf4, e3, Bd3, c3, a slow, almost silent setup. The Black player stepped off theory to play his own idea, broke his structure on move sixteen chasing a pawn, and resigned on move forty-four. Afterwards he said these systems are genuinely dangerous. I said nothing. I only thought — dangerous to whom? The opening, or his own lack of preparation?

It is worth clarifying first what a system opening is, because the market rests exactly there. The article bundles a set of openings into one package: the Colle System, the Trompowsky Attack, the Torre Attack, the London System, the Catalan, the Blackmar-Diemer Gambit, and the Richter-Veresov Opening. All are White weapons whose aim is the same — to sidestep the heavy main-line theory of the Slav, Semi-Slav, QGA, and Orthodox QGD. Because White never plays 2.c4, Black's favourite defence never appears on the board.

Here is the first accounting mismatch. The Colle, London, and Torre usually arise after 1.d4 d5. But the Trompowsky, Richter-Veresov, and Catalan usually arise after 1.d4 Nf6. Selling these two families under one roof as an answer to 1.d4 d5 is a simplification — technically imprecise. In training material that is harmless; placed on a market shelf, it sows confusion.

I should also note where chess turned from a game into data for me, because that context is the basis of my judgement. When the Bundesliga restarted behind closed doors in May 2026, I treated it not as a story but as a controlled trial. Coding the first sixty matches, I found the home-win rate fall to 32.7 percent from 53.2 percent in the equivalent fixtures a season earlier. Three months later, the FIDE Online Chess Olympiad final ended with a server disconnection and India and Russia declared joint winners — and I understood that my cleanest dataset was chess. No crowd, no weather, no pitch. This article is a sample of that market, so I read it as a document of the chess industry, not as news.

The chess boom after 2026 is clear in my dataset. I built the Russian Premier League model because the silence was measurable; with chess it is the reverse — the noise has grown, and part of that noise has flowed straight into the content economy. Courses, video series, subscriptions are now a core revenue layer of the chess boom, a separate line item beside tournaments and streaming. The most profitable part of that market is probably the niche-repertoire product — a course built for one very specific problem, sold to one buyer segment, cheap to produce. This six-video package is a sample of exactly that model.

Then comes the quote. "Chess is massively undervalued" — if the owner of that sentence really is Timur Turlov (the name matches the chief executive of the Kazakhstan-based financial firm Freedom Holding, known for investing in chess), then the quote has a real backdrop — the flow of patron capital into chess. But the article carries no such source. The quote stands alone, as a nameplate on a product's door. When a quote is separated from its source, it stops being evidence — it becomes advertising material.

Now to the central accounting. The article's core claim is that these systems are extremely dangerous, and the basis for that claim is the painful experience of many players. My profession is to work with sentences like this, so I ask: how many players, in which rating band, over how many games, at what time control? No answer. No game sample, no ACPL — average centipawn loss — no win-draw-loss rate, no engine match rate. For a training product that is normal; for a technical claim it is not.

The word dangerous is really a rating-dependent claim, but the article names no rating band. At elite level, roughly 2600 plus, these systems are largely calm, low-risk weapons; a well-prepared Black player is generally comfortable against them. Genuine fear is born at club level — roughly between 1500 and 2200 — where opponents are less prepared, do not go deep into theory, and get stuck in familiar patterns. The article's claim is actually talking about this club band, but it never admits it. That is the first accounting gap.

The second gap is the internal variation of the package. These seven openings do not carry equal weight. The London System is the only member of this list with genuine elite relevance — in recent years it has appeared regularly at the very top as a low-risk weapon. I refresh a series every week by sifting game databases, and the usage curve for the London is rising — to me that is observation, not guesswork. The Colle, Torre, and especially the Blackmar-Diemer Gambit are mainly club-level or surprise weapons. Placing them in the same row as the London means selling a proven trend and a marginal preference at the same price.

Examining each member separately makes the accounting clearer. The London System — Nf3, Bf4, e3, Bd3, c3 — is a structurally sound, low-theory setup that has returned to the elite table. The Colle System — e3, Nf3, Bd3 after 1.d4 — has a similar slow build, but its central idea is old and it creates little pressure against modern defences. The Torre Attack — 1.d4, Nf3, an early Bg5 — is a relative of the Trompowsky, but less sharp. The Trompowsky — 1.d4 Nf6 2.Bg5 — is a weapon to avoid Indian defences, but harmless if Black knows the right reply. The Catalan — 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 e6 3.g3 — is the most respected member, nearly as important as main-line theory. The Blackmar-Diemer Gambit — 1.d4 d5 2.e4 — is a sharp gambit in which White does not get the pawn back if Black plays correctly. The Richter-Veresov — 1.d4 Nf6 2.Nc3 d5 3.Bg5 — is rare and less tested. Calling all seven equal in weight means selling seven setups of different rating value at one price.

The third gap is the trainer's authority. IM Valeri Lilov here is a content creator and trainer, not a competitive profile. His authority rests on instructional reputation — the IM title, a training pedigree — not on current competitive results. That is not a bad thing; training and competing are two separate professions. But the way the article presents the claim — the painful experience of many — is an appeal to experience, not evidence. In my ledger these sit in separate columns, and I do not merge columns.

The fourth — and to me the most important — is reader risk. Learning a system opening means memorising a fixed setup. That yields quick results, but over the long run the understanding of openings stays weak. If a 1700-rated player believes six videos against the Colle System are the solution to his problem, he is treating a symptom, not the disease. The disease is that he is not learning to understand White's plan; he is only memorising Black's reply. And the day an opponent steps off the setup, that memorised reply will not work. This is the real limit of instructional products.

The format is also information. Six videos, one plan per opening — this structure is built for quick use, not deep learning. One opening per video means the complex branches of each setup must be simplified. For an improving player this can be a beginning, not an end. Among the courses I have seen myself, the ones that worked were few in number, but each carried game samples, explanation, and the reason for each setup's failures.

A comparison from my own work. When I wrote about Spartak's title run in 2026, I did not simply give numbers — I gave the code, the sample, the model version, the competition, the season. I declined two panel invitations because I had not validated the model against a second season. The reason for that rigour is simple: a claim that cannot be verified is not a claim, it is an advertisement. The article in question fails this test — no model version, no sample, no door open for verification.

Let me give one number, because this discussion is incomplete without one. At club level the frequency of facing system openings is much higher, but the depth of preparation in that band is lower. So the problem the article claims to solve is essentially a problem of low preparation. That problem cannot be captured in six videos; its solution is teaching opening principles — the centre, the structure, move order, the transformation of plans. A course is a receipt, not a prophecy. What the article sells is a product; what it claims is a prophecy — that these six videos will fix your Black-side problem. Merging the two makes the accounting wrong.

One point must be added, because I write it at the end of every piece. I also state what this data cannot see. I do not know how good Lilov's method is, because I have not seen the game samples inside his course. I do not know the rating-change rate of his students, because that number is not published. And I do not know whether the article is editorial or an affiliate advertisement — because that is written nowhere. These three unknowns limit my judgement, and I admit the limit rather than hide it.

Now comes the contrarian question. I am not saying the article is useless. Quite the opposite. It carries a real signal, just not the signal it thinks it carries. The popularity of system openings is real — at club level, White players are increasingly turning to low-theory, low-preparation setups. The London System's elite entry is only the peak of that trend. So there is demand for anti-system products of this kind, and that demand is not fantasy.

But here is my caution — correlation is not causation. The popularity of system openings has risen, therefore this product will work — those are two separate sentences. The first is an observation; the second is a claim, and there is no game data for that claim. This is exactly the emptiest spot in the training-product market: demand proven, effectiveness unproven.

One more trend matters more to me. The popularity of system openings is not just an opening fashion; it hints at a change in the player population. Where the chess boom brings in new, inexperienced players, they naturally choose setups that demand less memorisation and less time. The London System is the perfect answer to that demand — easy to learn, safe to play. So the market for such products will likely grow. But a growing market and a working product are not the same thing.

There is another layer I see from my working life. Patron capital is entering chess — names like Freedom Holding investing in chess and sponsoring high-level tournaments. That capital is what releases sentences like chess is undervalued into the market. The question is not whether chess is undervalued — the question is who keeps the accounting of that valuation, and in whose interest it is arranged. The article does not raise this question; it only borrows the quote.

One more caution is needed, and it runs against my own habit. Writing from Moscow about the markets of Dhaka or Bulgaria invites a tone of distance I have not earned. So let me state it plainly — every claim in this piece I read in the archive, not saw on the ground. I have not personally used any Lilov course, nor sat in any of his classes. What I saw was a club-league board; what I read was a promotional page. I do not confuse the two.

My own rule comes to mind here: A transfer rumor is a story. A transfer fee is a number. I wait for the number. In the chess education market, that number is — how many players' ratings changed, and by how much. Nobody gives that number. So for now my result is a null result: the claim is neither proven nor refuted. And a null result is also a result — I record it, instead of a beautiful theory.

Finally, an observation looking forward. Over the coming months I will watch three things against the clock. One, the supply of anti-system courses — if niche-repertoire products like this appear regularly on platforms such as Chessable, the demand is structural. Two, the use of the London-Colle complex at elite level — if the curve stays upward, the low-theory trend is confirmed. And three, the source of that quote — where the phrase chess is undervalued actually came from, from whose interview, on what date. If the source matches, the quote gains industry significance; if not, it remains a nameplate.

Before I close the ledger, I leave one question. If system openings were truly so dangerous, why has the London System returned so often at elite level over so many years? The answer is probably not in the videos — it is in the pages of books, and on the board.