1… b6 Against Everything by IM Lawrence Trent

Tired of playing to White’s tune? Want a way to take your opponent so far off the trodden path they’ll wish they knew bushcraft survival skills? Meet 1…b6! – the surprise weapon that nobody is expecting and that works against almost everything.

It doesn’t matter if White plays a King’s Pawn, Queen’s Pawn, or an English opening — English International Master, prolific high-level chess commentator, and Fabiano Caruana’s former manager Lawrence Trent is here to guide you through a wide variety of different lines guaranteed to flummox Queen’s Gambits, King’s Indian Attacks, Catalan setups, London Systems and more.

Make White Commit, then Make them Pay!

With 1…b6, it seems like you’re doomed to cede the center but, in true hyper-modern style, you’re really just biding your time. After White greedily extends themselves, Trent shows you how to punch back with interest, learning to use the flexibility of your position to combine your trademark fianchettoed queenside bishop with your pieces and pawns to hack White’s center to pieces!

Take a look at this natural continuation after 1.e4 b6. White’s textbook center will be short-lived after Black’s 4…Bb4, pinning the c3 knight, ramping up the pressure on the e4 square and leaving 5…d5 looming. And, if White decides to kick your dark-squared bishop with a3, Bxc3 is available to inflict doubled pawns and give White a long-term headache.

A Flexible, Offbeat, and Universal Opening

With some 240 trainable variations and 21 model games, this is a quick-to-learn repertoire that covers a serious amount of ground in record time; in fewer than 250 trainable lines you really can play 1…b6 against almost anything your opponent can come up with!

But best of all, it’s simple for you and confusing for your opponent.

As a commentator of some of the biggest chess tournaments in the world, Trent has won acclaim for taking complex concepts and making them accessible and enjoyable for chess audiences of all levels. And that quality shines through in this course. It doesn’t rely on knockout lines to be learned by rote for every opening under the sun. Instead, Trent shows you how to assess White’s approach and logically apply a dependable and interchangeable set of thematic ideas to meet each scenario in style. In this way, this course is not just giving you a surprise weapon, but also an excellent resource to better your positional chess understanding!

Whatever White plays, you’re going to fianchetto your queenside bishop, and while White struggles to find a way to punish your supposedly ‘dubious’ opening, you’ll be prepared with simple ideas that give you the keys to immediately create dynamic counterplay, dismantle your opponent’s center, and saddle them with structural weaknesses across the board.

With Trent as your dependable and well-informed instructor, you’ll learn how to: 

💥 Waltz to equality by cracking White’s center after 1.e4
💥 Counter the London System with a hyper-flexible Hedgehog
💥 Generate activity and maneuver tricky central breaks against 1.d4 
💥 Meet 1.c4 and 1.Nf3 systems with a rock-solid setup  
💥 Neutralize and attack the Catalan! 

And if that’s not enough, like any good surprise 1…b6 has a trump card. The genius of this opening is based on the misguided sense that it is dubious. But it’s not true! In fact, it’s been played at the very highest level, with none other than Magnus Carlsen using it to take down Super GM Pavel Eljanov (as shown in the course’s excellent and instructive Model Games chapter).