The Theory Tax: Amateur Chess Players, a Trust Gap, and a Six-Video Course

On a Saturday evening at a chess café off National Highway 13, a man in his forties holds a piece for a long time and then places 2.Bf4 on the board. He does not hesitate because he fails to know that 2.c4 is stronger. He hesitates because he knows exactly where it leads — and he knows he does not have six months to walk the whole road. Across from him, his opponent gives a small nod, as if the two have just quietly signed a treaty.

I have spent many years at tables like that one, from amateur tournaments in Thu Dau Mot to the VTC commentary booth during two years of calling chess. There I learned something no rating list ever teaches: most chess players do not lose for lack of talent, but for lack of time. A chessboard holds more than pieces; it holds the calluses of a life.

In chess circles, this phenomenon has an almost economic name: the theory tax. When a club player opens with 1.d4 and decides on 2.c4, he steps into the territory of four defensive systems polished over two decades: the Slav with 2...c6, the Semi-Slav, the Queen's Gambit Accepted, and the Orthodox Queen's Gambit Declined. Every move there has a name, a birth date, an author. The price of entry is hundreds of hours of memorization; the reward is only the right to stand as an equal.

Faced with that bill, a large share of players takes the detour. They build the London, the Colle, the Torre, the Trompowsky, the Catalan, the Blackmar-Diemer Gambit, the Richter-Veresov Opening. To the professional eye these are non-critical systems — they do not force the opponent to be exact to the move, they do not create positions where a single small error costs the whole game. But precisely for that reason they become the home of the majority.

Look closely and each system on that list has a very specific move order, and that specificity shapes the problem. The Trompowsky is 1.d4 Nf6 2.Bg5. The Torre is 1.d4 Nf6, then Nf3 and Bg5. The Catalan is 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 e6 3.g3. The Richter-Veresov is 1.d4 Nf6 2.Nc3 d5 3.Bg5. The Blackmar-Diemer Gambit is 1.d4 d5 2.e4 dxe4 3.Nc3. The Colle is 1.d4 d5 2.Nf3 Nf6 3.e3. The London is 1.d4 with an early Bf4. Read through that list and one thing is obvious: they do not spring from a single root.

That is fertile ground for a very particular product — a Black repertoire against exactly those systems. If system players dodge the theory tax, then the Black player facing them also needs a plan, a prepared path, so as not to be drawn into a position the opponent already knows by heart.

That gap has just been filled by a course: six videos, taught by the Bulgarian International Master Valeri Lilov, promoted as offering a relevant plan for Black against each opening. The target audience is not elite players but club players sitting across from someone using the London or the Trompowsky and unsure where to begin.

Technically, the promise has a real basis. The London, Colle, Torre and Trompowsky are dangerous not because they are sharp, but because they force Black to think — and most amateurs have never been trained to think inside an opening. A Black player who knows the Semi-Slav can play the first fifteen moves without thinking. But against 1.d4 Nf6 2.Bg5, or against a Colle with e3, Bd3, c3, he must choose a pawn structure — and that choice usually happens with three minutes left on the clock.

The most notable technical point lies in the structure of the course itself. Six videos for eight or more openings means each topic receives a compact treatment, a single plan, rather than a treasury of variations. For a course sold to amateurs, the trade-off is reasonable: people need a compass, not a geological map. But it also sets an inherent limit — breadth bought with depth, each opening wrapped in a few minutes of footage.

Here a caution about the opening taxonomy appears. The description sets the scene after 1.d4 d5, yet two of the named systems never pass through 1...d5: the Trompowsky and the Torre both arise from 1...Nf6. The Catalan contains 2.c4 — that is, it sits inside the very body of theory system players are trying to avoid. In other words, the document's logical frame is looser than its surface suggests, a sign that the opening catalogue here is organized for marketing rather than for strict theory.

I did not need to read much more to recognize familiar ground. During two years of chess commentary for VTC, I sat over games where the winner was not stronger — only better prepared in the first ten moves. For an International Master with coaching credentials, providing a compass for Black is legitimate and useful work. But it must be said plainly: an International Master is a trustworthy teacher at club level, not at the level of preparation for a national championship qualifier. The document offers no figures on rating, results or coaching record beyond the title itself. A good fit between teacher and student deserves respect, so long as neither side inflates itself.

More telling is how the document positions system players. It calls them not very ambitious. Reading that, I find it both right and wrong. Right, if ambition is measured by conquering orthodox theory. Wrong, if we understand that amateur players are managing their scarcest resource: time. Calling a rational time-management choice a lack of ambition is a way of inadvertently pushing the target customer away.

But what made me write about this story is not the board. It is the headline.

The document circulates with a headline naming a figure — Timur Turlov — while the entire content inside discusses Valeri Lilov's course. The figure in the headline appears on no line of the body. The teacher in the body appears nowhere in the headline. One is a name linked to finance and chess sponsorship activity; the other is an educational product by an independent coach. The two sit side by side without touching.

That gap is small, but it is a crack. In a content industry where credibility is built on names, a name that appears in the headline while absent from the body is a signal about editorial quality, not a harmless detail. If the opening catalogue is already loose, how loose is the attribution? And if two pieces can drift apart within a single document, what is a reader to trust about the rest?

On top of that, nearly every evaluative claim in the document is unsourced. There is no rating, no sample game, no win rate, no engine data. Every assertion about how dangerous these systems are comes from one of two sides: the writer or the seller. When the seller both prices the product and supplies the evidence, the reader is reading advertising, not analysis. Saying this does not mean the course is worthless — it may well be useful. It only means: there is nothing in hand to confirm that it works.

Based on my experience following games, amateur players rarely fail for lack of a course. They fail because they have no way to tell a good course from a well-packaged one. That is the trust gap, and it cannot be filled with another video.

Broadly, the theory-tax phenomenon is real and structural. It is no passing trend but the inevitable consequence of an opening-theory archive swelling while amateur time shrinks. System players are a real, durable, large customer group. And precisely because they are large, they become ground to be mined. Competitive value in this market is shifting — from analytical quality toward the ability to categorize, package and market. That is the logic of every mature content market, and chess is no exception.

The duality shows clearly here. Valeri Lilov's course may be helping a forty-year-old player in Binh Duong face the Trompowsky with confidence without memorizing two hundred variations. And at the same time, it may be selling him that feeling with evidence that does not exist. Both things can be true at once. With no audience, chess returns to the sound of its own breathing — and in that breathing, we hear plainly what is theory and what is an invitation to buy.

Back at the board off National Highway 13, the man had played 2.Bf4. The game unfolded; at times he was careless, at times uncannily accurate. At the end, he won. On the way home I thought about the distance between a move that dodges theory and a move prepared for him by someone else. Both leave the main road. Only one comes with a map.

The game ended, but the click of the pieces still echoes in my memory. Age does not extinguish love for the board, only changes its color — from the desire to conquer to the need to understand where one is going. And the question remains: when time becomes the scarcest resource on the amateur board, who will draw the map — and are we clear-headed enough to check it before we follow?