World class players follow ChessBase author Jan Werle

by Stefan Liebig
4/4/2025 – Fritz trainers can be very helpful: at the top tournament in St. Louis in mid-March, the two American chess superstars Hikaru Nakamura and Fabiano Caruana followed the recommendations of Jan Werle. In his two-volume video course, Werle analyses the Catalan Opening. The players followed his recommendations and were well-prepared. | Fotos: ChessBase/Pascal Simon
Dominate the Open Catalan: Unlock key strategies and dynamic plans for a lifetime repertoire!

A repetition on move 18 doesn't sound that exciting at first... But when you consider that two players who have been among the world's top chess players for many years followed the carefully selected recommendations of Jan Werle, it is quite remarkable. Hikaru Nakamura played against Fabiano Caruana in the third round of the 2025 American Cup. They discussed the 5.Nf3 variation of the Open Catalan:

As you can see, the two top players and Jan Werle agreed – however, it would have been interesting to see what Caruana had planned after Werle's recommendation 8.Nb3.

Here is a free ChessBasebooks sample of Werle's course.

The Dutch grandmaster is well known to ChessBase fans: he had already published courses on the Sicilian and the King's Indian/Benoni before the two Catalan-Fritz trainers followed in November:

Dominate the Open Catalan: Unlock key strategies and dynamic plans for a lifetime repertoire!

Mastering piece setups in various pawn structures and transitioning to a dominant middlegame, this course equips you with the insight and flexibility to outmanoeuvre your opponents in the Closed Catalan.

When White combines the typical ideas of the Queen's Gambit with the fianchetto of the King's Bishop, the result is the Catalan Opening. The video course offers impressively comprehensive material that delves deeply into the intricacies of the Catalan Opening. To this day, Catalan is one of the most popular openings at the highest level – both Vladimir Kramnik (2006 in Elista) and Viswanathan Anand (2010 in Sofia) achieved decisive victories with White in this system in their World Championship duels against Veselin Topalov. Nakamura and Caruana show that the opening has lost none of its appeal.

According to reviewer Hannes Langrock, the highlight of the course is the Dutch grandmaster's idea of rounding off his course with a half-hour summary (free to view) at the end.

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Topics: Jan Werle
Stefan Liebig, born in 1974, is a journalist and co-owner of a marketing agency. He now lives in Barterode near Göttingen. At the age of five, strange pieces on his neighbour’s shelf aroused his curiosity. Since then, the game of chess has cast a spell over him. Flying high in the NRW youth league with his home club SV Bad Laasphe and several appearances in the second division team of Tempo Göttingen were highlights for the former youth South Westphalia champion.
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60m The Two Knights

This entry into the 60 minutes series concentrates on the Modern variation of the Italian game where White opens the centre early : 1 e4 e5 2 Nf3 Nc6 3 Bc4 Nf6 4 d4 exd4 5 e5!. This line can be reached by various move orders, most frequently from the Scotch 3 d4 exd4 4 Bc4. It's a sharp variation and Grandmasters such as Evgeny Sveshnikov have used it frequently,with very good results. It's a perfect line for club players to adopt which is relatively easy to learn and which contains many traps. All the main responses are covered here, including 5...d5, 5...Ng4 and 5...Ne4 and the conclusion is that is is difficult for Black to equalize in a straightforward way. Problems are being posed, which over the board might prove tough to solve.
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