Surya Shekhar Ganguly - Chessable Lifetime Repertoires: Nimzo ⁄ Semi-Tarrasch - Part 1

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{ @@HeaderStart@@ Introduction@@HeaderEnd@@ A very warm welcome to all the readers of my first-ever course on chessable. In fact, it is my first chess course ever : Naturally, I did this with a lot of passion and wanted to be flawless. First of all, a big thank you to the Chessable team, who were kind enough to extend the deadline multiple times, understanding that I was not buying time to sleep over the lines but actually was going very deep into it. At some point, we realized that making two parts of this course would make justice to the notes. The first part would cover Nimzo Indian and most of the other major sidelines like Trompowsky, Veresov, London System, etc. In the second part of the course, QGD Semi Tarrasch, Catalan, and some more sidelines like Colle System will be covered. }

{ @@HeaderStart@@Why his course and some introduction about the author:@@HeaderEnd@@ The first question I had was why should I make an opening course and why would people be interested in buying it? A brief introduction of mine before I go deep into this: I am Surya Ganguly, a Grandmaster from India. My rating hovers somewhere between 2640-2675. Some of my recent major achievements could be pointed out as Winning the Hunan International Open in 2019 ahead of many 2700+ players; getting an Individual Gold medal in World Team 2019. You can always find more about me on Wikipedia or Google, so let us skip giving my entire biodata here. What could be relevant information about myself for the course is that I have been working with Viswanathan Anand since 2007. I was his second for all the world championship matches that he won (against Kramnik, Topalov, and Gelfand) . I was also part of the Magnus match training team, but I was not present during the match. Having worked for these world championship matches as close as possible, I know how to prepare openings at the highest level and, most importantly, how to find novelties and how to create your own theory. So I thought if I write a course on opening it should draw some attention. Why did I do this? Just like many other players, during the lockdown, I also started various ventures. First, I started with my own channel on YouTube and then opened an online training platform called Pro Chess Training. Finally, I stumbled into chessable and fell in love with their high-quality materials. It was at this point that I felt it would be an excellent idea to build a lifetime repertoire. }

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{ @@HeaderStart@@World Championship Match preparation@@HeaderEnd@@I have been a Nimzo player for a long time, and during these World Championship matches, we had overwhelming work on these lines. In a match, at best, about 12 novelties get played, and hundreds or thousands of novelties remain buried and get used only much later. In this course, you will see many such World Championship match preparation novelties. You will find some novelties that had to wait 9 years to get played. Working with Anand and many top players in Anands team for decades, I realized that it is of utmost importance to understand the lines and find your own way rather than following theory or memorizing many computer lines without understanding a thing about it. In this course, you will see that we break the traditional path in most cases. We challenge the existing theory, and we find our own way. Not just finding some computer suggested new moves, but finding an entirely new system that has never been tried before. In todays world, everyone has access to good engines, and everyone works hard. To say that I found a novelty in a position which is Stockfish NNUE or LC0 suggestion that can be found in cloud and assuming that others would not know about it is foolishness. The credit comes only when one can find something that is not the computers top choice. That is how most of the World Championship matches novelties were found. Here you are going to see a lot of such novelties. It is also backed up with the best of the engines, engine games, and correspondence games. Once again, having constantly helped top players with the opening, I am perfectly aware of which engine to use and what kind of engines to be used. So no worries on that part. }

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{ @@HeaderStart@@Should we memorize all the lines given in the notes?@@HeaderEnd@@For me, memorization without understanding is a sin. You are bound to forget everything that you dont understand. First and foremost, one must understand the logic behind the moves before trying to gobble it up and vomit it on the board. I have explained every move methodically to make sure you get the reasoning behind every move. Let us not fool ourselves. I am not trying to sell you here something by saying, if you buy this course, you are all set, and you wont face any novelties over the board. If you want such a course and buy it, I can assure you got conned there. Novelties we have to face. No matter how deep we go. Despite having lifetime work and a huge army of seconds, and access to the greatest engines, Anand had to face so many novelties over the board. What is of utmost importance is that if we know the ideas, strategy, and reasoning behind the moves, then even if we face a novelty, it wont matter much, and we can handle it over the board. Then what am I giving in guarantee if you might have to face novelties over the board? The guarantee is that there is no chance any of these lines will be refuted entirely. Novelties might come as some new move, but there wont be a flaw that big where the evaluation will change drastically. @@HeaderStart@@Memory jog technique:@@HeaderEnd@@I will also provide you with more than 100 puzzles from this course, mixed with combination/strategy/positional moves, etc. This will help you enhance your chess skills and help you remember the critical positions. Often I keep photos on mobile or take a print screen of such critical positions from the openings and see it from time to time. Sometimes even in flights. During matches, we used to do this to Anand, constantly bombard him with challenging positions from his repertoire. This is an excellent technique to stay sharp and at the same time get some revision done on the opening. }

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{ @@HeaderStart@@Historical aspect@@HeaderEnd@@I am generally in love with the historical aspect of any lines and love to research those. For instance, It always fascinated me that as per Mega Database, the first game on Nimzo Indian Defense was played in my own city Kolkata (back then known as Calcutta) in 1851 by John Cochrane vs. Mohishunder Bonnerjee. In every line, you will see such historical information. Why in the Nimzo-Indian Opening, a particular variation is called the Karpov system when Portisch started this? You will also see some unanswered questions like this, which I will be more than happy to have a chat with you guys if you can enlighten me there. @@HeaderStart@@What games are covered in the course as a reference? @@HeaderEnd@@As a professional player and being in part of the highest level of opening training, I am aware of the importance that one needs to know about all sorts of games played in various formats. Not to know them and blindly follow them, but more importantly to know the trend and to create our own trend as and when needed. You will see that I have taken references from Old Classics, Modern Games, TCEC computer games, Correspondence games, Online blitz games, including Titled Tuesdays and Banter Blitz. Everything related to our repertoire is taken into consideration.