Six Videos, One Quote, an Empty Hall: What 'Chess Is Undervalued' Really Means

Last Tuesday, in my Khulna flat, the router dropped twice. On the screen of a 2026 laptop, the first of six videos was loading — a lesson on how to break down White's 'system' openings. Beside it lay an open notebook where, for years, I have recorded honorariums, leave, and federation grants. The same afternoon, an email arrived with a headline: 'Chess is massively undervalued.' The quote was attributed to Turlov. The article was not. The article was an advertisement for six videos by the Bulgarian trainer IM Valeri Lilov — the Colle System, the Trompowsky, the Torre Attack, the London System, the Catalan, the Blackmar-Diemer Gambit, the Richter-Veresov. That gap between headline and body is, to me, the real story.

The steel cupboard still holds the echo of a crowd that never came. In 2026, at the federation hall in Purana Paltan, I spent four days and found Niaz Murshed's 2026 norm sheet — a dried coffee ring across the black queen's square. Under that story, a twenty-one-year-old reader left three words: 'Who is Niaz?' Now, in 2026, as a video course offers to teach me how to break White's system openings, I turn the question on myself: in this market of 'undervaluation,' where is Niaz?

After 2026, chess leapt forward, visible in the explosion of active platform users. The pandemic's locked-in months, then a television series, then a flood of streamers — together they gave chess an audience that no longer chews silence beside a board but chats in front of a screen. The game became fast, sellable, second-screen-friendly. The lowest layer of this new demand is the education market: courses, subscriptions, video series. One teaches openings, another tactics, another endgames. Each course makes a small promise: you will play better, because you will know more.

In July 2026, while Tokyo held an Olympics to empty seats, Bangladesh's team played the FIDE online Olympiad from bedrooms and office desks — Rani Hamid, nearing seventy-seven, still winning games for the women's side. The summer stayed home, so the game learned to whisper through screens. No stadium, no kit, no crowd — a national team held together by an internet cable and habit.

The language of this market is predictable. Turlov's quote is a sample. 'Chess is massively undervalued' may be true, but it is not evidence. Undervalued by how much, to whom, in which currency, in which year's accounting? No number, no comparison, no source. Watching the game for twenty years, I have learned that where a sentence carries no figures, words do the work of drawing attention. The quote is not information; it is framing, and framing stands beside a product.

Lilov's six videos are the goods inside that frame. The package is for Black: preparation against the 'system' White plays to dodge main-line theory. As its source, the article appeals to the trainer's experience — 'the painful experience of many chess players.' Pain here is not proof; pain here is marketing. Six videos, one opening each, one plan each, and at the centre a claim: these systems are 'extremely dangerous.'

My first objection is technical. What is called system openings is not one family. The Colle, the London, the Torre usually arise after 1.d4 d5, when White avoids 2.c4. The Trompowsky, the Richter-Veresov, the Catalan arise in the world of 1.d4 Nf6. Bundling these two families into one package serves the seller, not the theory. A Colle player does not usually play the Catalan; a Trompowsky player does not usually play the Blackmar-Diemer. That looseness of classification tells you the product is a compilation, not research.

Why do system openings exist? Because main-line theory is expensive. The Slav, the Semi-Slav, the Queen's Gambit Accepted, the Orthodox QGD — their theory runs so deep and shifts so fast that a club player, between a job and a household, can hardly master it. So White strikes a bargain: I will not fight inside your theory; I will press slowly from outside. That bargain is the system. A system opening is a labour-saving resistance to theory — and that is exactly its market.

The true character of a system opening is load management; these are not substitutes for theory but ways to avoid its cost. In one sentence, the whole philosophy of the product appears. What Lilov sells to Black is the counter-labour to White's labour-saving: White dodged theory, so Black will memorise the road of the dodge.

Each system has its own aim. The Colle builds White a slow, safe structure — e4, Nf3, e3, Bd3, then a gradual central press. The Torre is a cousin in spirit, with 1.d4, Nf3, and an early Bg5. The Trompowsky (1.d4 Nf6 2.Bg5) is a sharper White bet, sidestepping main-line Indian defences. The Richter-Veresov (1.d4 Nf6 2.Nc3 d5 3.Bg5) is another offbeat path. The Blackmar-Diemer Gambit (1.d4 d5 2.e4) is the opposite — a pawn sacrificed for rapid development, pure gambling. The Catalan (1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 e6 3.g3) is the most respectable member, part of main-line theory, with a fianchettoed bishop and a central bind.

Now test the word 'dangerous.' At elite level, system openings are not dangerous, because Black is prepared. Among 2700+ players, no one sweats at the sight of a Colle; he pulls his pieces to their squares, takes space, and steers toward an endgame. The real danger lies at club level, roughly 1500 to 2200. There the opponent is unprepared, knows neither the theory nor the antidote; there the London or the Colle suddenly turns fearsome. The article's 'extremely dangerous' is therefore not wholly false, but less than wholly true — it sells fear without naming the audience's level.

One member of the set deserves an honest, separate mention: the London System. In recent years it has genuinely appeared at elite level, a low-risk weapon — White gets a structure and hands Black the problems. The others differ in kind. The Colle and Torre are club weapons. The Blackmar-Diemer is a sharp gamble. The Richter-Veresov and the Trompowsky are roads around main-line theory. So the package ties together one elite-relevant item, several club items, and one gamble. Markets like such mixtures, because mixtures make long sales pages.

My second objection is the absence of evidence. The article contains no games, no average centipawn loss, no win-draw-loss ratio, no sample. The trainer testifies to his experience, and experience is a valid credential — but experience is not data. Watching for forty-nine years, I have learned that where numbers are absent, reassurance is abundant. The clearest way to judge a course is sample games: what Black played against these systems, what percentage he won, where he erred. Without that, everything else is marketing language.

Now to the place where I am most at ease — the money board. The economics of the education market are simple. A video series is made once and sold endlessly. Marginal cost is near zero, marginal profit huge. 'Niche-repertoire productisation' is the name for building narrow, high-intent solutions for a specific buyer: anti-London, anti-Trompowsky, anti-Torre. Low risk, high margin, a clear buyer. Turlov's 'undervalued' quote is the confident language of capital standing behind this model — if chess is truly undervalued, anyone entering will profit; and the easiest entrant is the one who sells courses.

The first profit of undervaluation is often the content seller, not the federation — because a course's risk is near zero, while a federation's risk is the future of a child standing at a board. This difference is the centre of chess economics today. A platform counts clicks; a federation counts youth. A course can raise a fortune in a month; a home norm tournament spends that fortune in a week. Yet no game survives without youth, and no click-based platform survives without clicks. The question is which accounting endures.

This layer of the education market must be recognised separately. Platforms build the structure, streamers bring the audience, and content creators convert that audience into buyers. Standing between these three layers, trainers now act as a kind of new agent — not players, yet selling the language of the game. In my own experience, the hidden cost of sports economics is always these intermediaries; the words they create distort the whole market's signal. In chess, course advertising does that work. Every new package manufactures a new anxiety — your opponent plays this system, you are falling behind. That anxiety is not information; it is a selling machine.

My own notebook has answered this question year after year. The Bangladesh Chess Federation's annual grant is a figure that embarrassingly competes with the monthly sales of a single course package. Since 2026, this country has produced no new grandmaster — seventeen years. Niaz Murshed became South Asia's first grandmaster in 2026, a year before Viswanathan Anand; that FIDE title record still stands, yet the tradition has yielded only four more grandmasters. This is not a drought of talent but a drought of sponsorship. Through the 2010s, home norm tournaments nearly ceased, the Standard Chartered school pipeline died, and the playing field for the post-Niaz generation was never built.

In Purana Paltan, even the rust learned to keep a clean sheet. The steel cupboard, the broken chairs, the closed tables — an institution whose annual ledger is smaller than the income of a single course. Inside this emptiness, the game survives only on rooms and screens. In March 2026, when the stadiums emptied, my beat was the only one still playing. From my Khulna flat, on a 2026 laptop and a router that dropped every forty minutes, I covered Leonine Chess Club's Saturday-night online rapid: 128 players, a nine-year-old from Chattogram beating an IM in 31 moves, no arbiter, no handshake. After that piece I did not sleep for three nights and stopped answering the phone. Solitude stopped being a symptom and became a method.

And at the centre of that emptiness, the people. In 2026, at fourteen, Manon Reja Neer became national champion, undefeated. I had already written his arc in my notebook — in December 2026, in a Dhaka junior hall, in a 78-move rook endgame, he refused a draw and played on for two more hours, and lost, and I stayed until the lights went off. Some draws are not stalemates; they are vows the boy kept to himself. In 2026, Niaz Murshed, at fifty-nine, became national champion again — the same cupboard, the same city, a different decade. And Rani Hamid still sits at an Olympiad board. These names are no federation project and no course module; they are the solitary fruit of an empty hall.

When a country is buying system-opening courses while having no home norm of its own, the market has arrived there but the pipeline has not. A familiar inversion. Its most painful proof is 2026 — the death of Ziaur Rahman, at the board, mid-game. The game that booms worldwide on courses and subscriptions could not keep one grandmaster alive in its own country.

But here I must stand against my own argument, because easy grief pulls me toward a cheap conclusion. The cheap conclusion is: system openings are bad because they dodge theory. That is wrong. System openings are not bad; dependence on systems is bad. The difference is subtle and vital. A player who plays the London and understands what is happening on the board is a good player. A player who merely memorises the London's moves and goes blind when the opponent takes a different path will lose even after buying the course. The danger is not in the opening; it is in the habit. Memorising a system is not the same as learning theory; it is the official permission to avoid theory.

And here my second long-held view applies. In sports economics I have long seen that player agents are the game's hidden cost — the words they create distort the whole market's signal. In chess's education market, content sellers are taking exactly that role. One package breeds another, because anxiety never ends. And tellingly, the title-body mismatch in Lilov's piece is the proof: a quote lifted from elsewhere and placed atop a product, only to add weight. An agent's words distort the market's signal; so they do here.

That mismatch is no small matter. Turlov in the headline, Lilov in the body — no bridge between them. A compiler took a quote from a sponsorship interview and set it over a course advertisement, because the quote carries a big name and big names pull a crowd. In journalism's language, this is aggregation, not analysis. Writing on the game for twenty years, I know this kind of compilation eats the reader's trust in the long run. Caught once, the reader verifies sources next time. If chess journalism cannot be separated from course advertising, the word 'undervalued' will one day be nothing but advertising's language.

So the honest reading of 'chess is undervalued' is this: chess may indeed be commercially undervalued, but the benefit of that undervaluation has so far gone to platforms, course makers, and streamers — not to federations, not to schools, not to the grandmaster pipeline. To learn who profits, you need not examine every chess investment; you need only ask who is selling and who is playing. A market that profits from courses but invests nothing in the pipeline will, in time, lose its own buyer — because the buyer is made in the pipeline.

The question is now simple, and the answer is not in my hands. Will chess's new education market survive by selling fear alone, or will it draw a real pipeline out of that fear — a path where a course's profit returns to schools, where a child who watches a video later gets a board in a tournament? The day a country buys a video on breaking system openings instead of staging its first home norm, the word 'undervalued' will be true for the first time. Until that day: forty squares, no crowd — the board remembers what the terraces forgot.