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The search continues for a refutation of the Volga Gambit, and White is quite happy if he can achieve a slight advantage. According to the Icelandic grandmaster Henrik Danielsen, to get this White should accept the gambit and go on to fianchetto his king's bishop. The key move is 10.Rb1 - meaning that at any point White is prepared to play b3. And the key game is Kramnik-Topalov from Wijk 2003 - since then the Bulgarian has never again played the Volga Gambit. With his video series the author provides a complete repertoire for White against this gambit which still remains very popular with club players.

This DVD by Lubomir Ftacnik is an ambitious project, presenting a comprehensive set of ideas and structures in chess openings, arising after the first move 1.d4. In 34 videos (plus intro and conclusion) the author covers all 1.d4 openings - classical ones, like all Queen’s Gambit lines and the Indian defences, but also many interesting gambits, like the Benko, Blumenfeld and Budapest. The suggested choices are approved and active, but also safe for the first player. Many hours of explanations and suggestions will significantly shorten the time needed for building up a complete and workable set of opening weapons, usually called a repertoire.

Opening a game with 1.g3 appears rather quiet and unpretentious yet many of the greatest players in history have chosen to play this way. Bent Larsen, Victor Korchnoi, Leonid Stein and Pal Benko have all wielded this move with considerable success whilst in more recent times Mikhail Gurevich has been using it highly effectively. The idea behind this opening is to leave White with the greatest possible flexibility for his pieces and pawns and indeed the game can transpose into openings as diverse as the Closed Sicilian, the King’s Indian Defence and the Catalan Opening. Yet White can also choose to tread new ground by adopting formations such as a reversed Leningrad Dutch, reversed Alekhine’s Defence or even a reversed Pirc or Modern Defence. All of these formations contain far more poison with White’s extra tempo. On this DVD Davies explains key concepts and ideas behind these unique approaches, whilst also showing how White can transpose into more regular openings if he show chooses. This can provide many opportunities for throwing the opponent on his own resources as well as wrong footing him into something he does not know. Video runnig time: 4 hours