Finally found a useful DVD

After I posted a while ago about how disappointing most Chess DVD's are I have to say that 'D4 - a classical repertoire for White' by Ljubomir Ftacnik is extremely good. The lines he promotes are for the most part sensible and easy to understand, although he couldn't get away from advising to play the 4.Qc2 line against the Nimzo-Indian which is basically the main line. Sometimes you are kind of left hanging where he reaches the end of a variation when he says 'and White has a small advantage here' and moves on to something else while you are still trying to work out where White's advantage can possibly be. Many variations seem to be += only because White has the two bishops but at least there isn't anything dubious being recommended.

He covers basically everything you are likely to meet in practice but there are only 3 or 4 games given as examples for each variation. The premise of the DVD is only to give you a taste of each opening, the understanding is that you will do the necessary research yourself if you want to take up his ideas. It may seem like I'm not being very positive here but the reason that I am saying this DVD is good for intermediate players is that it actually does what it says, gives you solid advice on what to play with d4 against any Black defence. This is in stark contrast to many other repertoire videos that just recommend 'universal' systems that give you no advantage at all against correct play by your opponent.

Heres a free tip, even if you don't buy the DVD - think about playing the Makogonov variation of the Kings Indian! I'd never considered it before watching Ftacnik's explanation, but if you see how easy the main ideas are to grasp and check out how phenomenally well the line does in Master play its a real eye opener. (White is scoring 62% in the last 5 years in games between 2500+ players, at least in the database search I did)