The Catalan is a sophisticated positional chess opening that gives White a "reversed Grunfeld" position with an extra tempo. White plays 1.d4, 2.c4 - and then fianchettoes the King's Bishop on g2.
On this DVD GM Roman and GM Perelshteyn - plus computer chess champion Rybka - join to bring you improved lines and novelties in this opening repertoire for White.
The Catalan is played on the highest level because of the initiative White gets out of the opening. If you like playing an opening that gives active play and great winning chances, the Catalan chess opening is for you.
Owner Reviews, Ratings, Comments and Criticism
This is quite a strange product. Although it's "Roman's Lab", Roman himself does not prsent much of the theory: this is left to Perelshteyn. He seems relatively competent. The third author is listed as the very strong computer program "Rybka" which ensures that there aren't any big holes in the analysis.
The authors however are not the source of the strangeness. The product is strange because despite being of reasonable quality it manages to be unsuitable for every type of player. Relative newcomers to chess will not only find the Catalan an unsuitable opening for them, but will also find that opponents of their own strength will never play the main lines covered on this DVD. For very strong players the converage will be inadequte: there is simply no way to provide complete coverage of catalan theory, or even a complete repertoire in only 95 minutes. The DVD is not really suitable for average players because not very much time is spent on the recurring tactics and strategies in the Catalan: this is because, in order to make the product "cutting edge" new ideas have been included, which, of course, do not occur in the first few moves but much later on, the consequence being a lot of analysis of long concrete variations. This uses up the space which could have been used for analysis of standard Catalan themes.
Despite all that, I rather liked this DVD. I enjoyed listening to Roman's analysis of the illustrative games, and Perelshteyn does show some nice ideas which may never come up in my games but are nevertheless interesting. The analysis appears to be sound, as it should be having been computer checked, and Roman, as always, does instil in his viewer a belief in the vitality and strength of the opening being examined.
If you can pick up a cheap copy of this, you might find it worth a watch.
