Modern Chess Courses Review

Modern Chess courses are well documented and hard to return: the course pages state price, video length, chapter counts and dates, and the terms say all sales are final once you have access. That makes the free preview your only real check. If you are considering a series, add up every part you would need before buying Part 1, because Part 1 is usually a minority of the material.

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Test depth: Public information only. Nobody at ChessCourseFinder has taken this course or used this paid plan. This review is based on published documentation, pricing and reports: Modern Chess's homepage, terms, Academy page and course pages, read on 8 November 2026. It is a judgment about documentation and value on paper, not a report on the teaching. How we review explains the limits.

This review has no star score. Fit, price and limits are set out instead, and how reviews are made is public.

What Modern Chess sells

Modern Chess sells digital chess training in euros, through five main routes. Its opening listing claimed 896 opening courses when read, which makes choosing the real difficulty.

Course pages also carry "Premium" and "Platinum" labels, and we did not find an explanation of what those mean.

Two course pages in detail

Both pages below are Dreev and Basso courses, so this is a sample of one author team, not the whole catalogue. Prices are euros as displayed on 8 November 2026; we do not convert.

The per-hour figures are calculated from the listed price and video length. They compare listed video only and say nothing about how long it takes to study the material or what the test positions add. Both course lines above are audited on our pages for the Classical London System and Caro-Kann According to Dreev.

What a complete repertoire actually costs

Price a whole opening, not a part. The routes below are all from Modern Chess's own pages, as of 8 November 2026, and the totals are calculated from listed figures before any discount.

The 5% series discount would take the London pair to 188.10 EUR and the trilogy to 225.15 EUR. The table also shows why cost per hour can mislead here. Express is the most expensive per hour and the cheapest of these routes to what its page calls a complete repertoire. If you are an improver with limited hours, a smaller total you can finish may be worth more than a larger total you cannot.

Is the Academy better value than buying courses?

The Academy is a different product: a monthly training programme rather than a repertoire you pick. Its page, read on 8 November 2026, lists:

• 12 live lectures a month, plus recordings and PGN files of each.
• Each month's four Academy courses, with videos and PGNs, unlocked for members.
• Six monthly programmes: Strategy Wednesday, Tactical Thursday, Repertoire Builder, Guided Practice, Opening Radar and Inside Your Games, where a GM analyses 15 members' games.
• For six-month members only, a mentor, with a 30-minute kickoff meeting and 30-minute monthly check-ins. You start by sending a questionnaire and 20 recent games.

Prices are shown against a higher list price: 79.00 EUR for November 2026 (list 150.00 EUR) and 349.00 EUR for six months (list 750.00 EUR). Calculated from those figures, six months costs about 58.17 EUR a month and saves 125.00 EUR against six single months at 79.00 EUR, though earlier months in the Academy list showed 99.00 EUR. One month costs the same as one Dreev part.

The page has a conflict you should know about. Its FAQ says "One month is 1.00 EUR" while the buy button beside it shows 79.00 EUR, so trust the checkout total. It also does not say whether access to a month's recordings and courses continues after membership ends, whether the subscription renews automatically, or what rating level it is aimed at. The terms list memberships among their digital products, so assume the final-sale rule below applies here too. The Academy page shows member testimonials with rating claims; we do not repeat them.

List prices are not always what people pay

Check for a promotion before paying list price, since you will not be able to undo the purchase. The Special Offers page listed four promo-code collections on 8 November 2026, three of them marked 70% off, and the dated expiries we could read had already passed (shown as 11.01.2025 and 1 March 2026). The site also showed an "Ends in" countdown banner without saying what it was for.

If a 70% code covered a course, 79.00 EUR would become 23.70 EUR and the 237.00 EUR trilogy would become 71.10 EUR (calculated). We cannot say that a code will recur, whether it would cover the course you want, or how it interacts with the series discount.

Refunds: all sales are final once you have access

Modern Chess does not offer refunds on digital content once access is granted. Its Terms and Conditions, last updated 29 December 2025, say that "all sales are final and non-refundable once access to digital content has been provided", and they list "lack of use, change of mind, perceived difficulty level, or dissatisfaction after access" among the reasons a refund will not be granted. They cite EU Directive 2011/83/EU, Article 16(m) as the reason the statutory right of withdrawal does not apply, and by completing a purchase you acknowledge that access starts immediately and that the content can be downloaded.

Your check comes before the purchase. Course pages mark an "Introduction and Free Preview" as free, and the Dreev pages show an introduction, a sample chapter and a sample video. Use that to judge the level and the explanations, then read the chapter titles against the openings you actually meet.

Paying, and who you are buying from

The payment page lists bank transfer, PayPal, card payment through myPOS, and Paysera; with bank transfer, access begins once the payment is received. The site footer gives a Bulgarian registration and VAT number and an address in Petrich. We did not find a statement of whether the EUR prices include VAT, so check the total at checkout.

What the seller's pages do not tell you

• Part 1 is a minority of the listed video. The Caro-Kann page says "three-part series", but Part 1's 6h 26m is about 28% of the 23h 22m across Parts 1-3 and the follow-up "Beat the Advance Variation with 3...c5" (calculated), and the page links a 13-course series.
• That the same authors have returned to a line. The later Dreev Deep material appears to change a recommendation from Part 1; our course page sets out what we could infer from chapter titles.
• A level. Neither Dreev course page states one, so an 800-rated player and a 2000-rated player get no guidance from the listing.
• An update date. Neither page shows one, so the 2024 Caro-Kann course carries no sign of whether it reflects current theory.
• How the discount tiers work. The Caro-Kann page offers 5% for two or more in the series and mentions a quantity discount without giving its size.
• What "Premium" and "Platinum" mean. We could not find a definition.

Overlap with other sellers

Modern Chess sells "My Caro-Kann" Parts 1-4 at 49.00 EUR each. TheChessWorld, a store we could not open, lists a course titled "My Caro-Kann ... with GM Pavel Eljanov" at $99 for Parts 1-2, as shown in search listings on 8 November 2026. These look like the same material under two sellers. We have not confirmed that, or how it is licensed, so compare the title, parts included and currency before paying. See our TheChessWorld review.

What other players say

We found no independent review site covering Modern Chess. A search summary of a Reddit discussion in r/TournamentChess described mixed views: one commenter preferred Modern Chess's courses to Chessable's and valued being able to download videos and PGNs, while others called some courses overpriced or "hit or miss". We could not open that thread, so treat it as unverified and as a very small sample.

Who it suits

It may suit you if you have already chosen an opening, want a grandmaster's repertoire in video with test positions, have used the free preview and have checked the total cost of the parts you need. The Academy may suit a player who already studies regularly and wants a monthly structure with live lectures, though no level band is stated for it.

Who should skip this

• You want the option of a refund. The terms rule it out once you have access.
• You want one subscription that unlocks the course catalogue. The Academy unlocks its own monthly courses, and we saw nothing saying that it includes the ordinary catalogue. A subscription with rating ranges, such as ChessMood, is easier to match to your level, though its ranges are ChessMood's own and name no rating system on the pages we read; see ChessMood vs Modern Chess.
• You have not yet chosen your opening. A multi-part series is a large commitment, and the totals above show how much sits outside Part 1.
• You want spaced-repetition drilling of the same openings. Chessable's London and Caro-Kann courses list size and price on course pages; the sample is in our Chessable review. Our opening pages compare options: best London System courses and best Caro-Kann courses.

The free resources that cover similar ground

Start with the seller's own free material: each course's free preview, plus the opening guides, analysis board and training boosters that its footer lists under Free Resources. Lichess Studies are user-created collections of chess content organised into chapters, free, with no paid tier; see Lichess studies and practice. We have not checked whether any covers the Dreev lines, and a study is not a graded course with test positions.

Downsides

• All sales are final once you have access, so a course that turns out to be the wrong level is your loss.
• No independent assessment of the courses that we could read.
• Series structure makes the true cost hard to see, and the size of the catalogue makes the right choice hard to find.
• The 2024 Caro-Kann course carries no update date.
• The Academy page's price FAQ conflicts with its buy button.

Before you pay

1. Watch the free preview on the actual course, then read the chapter titles against the moves your opponents play.
2. Add the price of every part you need and compare it with a Chessable or ChessBase alternative.
3. Check the Special Offers page and the total at checkout, including any VAT.
4. Check the publication date against how fast the opening changes.
5. Accept that you are buying without a refund. If that is not acceptable, buy elsewhere.