Push past equality. Press forward to victory.Play The Power Pirc
Play The Power Pirc distills over 70 years of hypermodern counterattacking chess into a compact and club-player-friendly repertoire against 1.e4.It’s based on the system popularized in the 1950s by 5-time Yugoslavian champion — and one of the fathers of hypermodern chess —
Vasja Pirc.
The plan is simple:
You’ll answer
1.e4 with
1…d6. Fianchetto the dark-squared bishop, and mobilize the entire kingside before move 5. Then lure White into building a massive center — so you can rip it apart from the flanks!
The Pirc already in position to
dismantle White’s center
This fighting defense brought grandmasters
Yasser Seirawan (4-time US champion),
Volodymyr Onyshcuk (peak 2669 FIDE), and
Jan Timman (1993 FIDE World Championship challenger) many outstanding wins against top-level competition.
But
Play The Power Pirc comes with a club-player-friendly twist.
In creating the repertoire, community author
EnjoyableChess prioritized robust lines to neutralize White’s sharpest and trickiest tries. So that with danger out of the way, you can…
Go Full Steam Ahead With
The Pirc’s Trademark Counterattack
Here’s how the repertoire disarms the most dangerous variations:
🎯 You’ll bring the Austrian Attack (4.f4) to a screeching halt — and activate your pieces with tempo — through well-timed discovered attacks, pawn breaks, and pins.
Taking the “attack” out of
the Austrian Attack
🎯 Against f3-systems, you’ll delay castling to deny White of a clear target. Then kickstart your queenside pawn storm.
🎯 You’ll be shown how to challenge White’s pieces in the Byrne Variation (4.Bg5). So that they never get the time to break through the center.
🎯 You’ll meet the 150 Attack (4.Be3) with prophylactic space-grabbing — then exchange key pieces to exhaust the first player’s potential for aggression.
🎯 Plus the 2 key moves to beat the Chinese Spike (5.g4) to the punch, and secure a long-term structural advantage.
White’s quieter and more positional approaches have been given enough attention, too.
And thanks to the detailed side notes, you’ll
get a complete picture of the alternative moves and strategies for both sides. So you can extend the repertoire, and diversify your play to keep opponents guessing.
But even with the comprehensive coverage, EnjoyableChess managed to keep the theory down to
just 196 MoveTrainer® variations.
Not only did he pick lines with consistent and
repeatable ideas to flatten your learning curve…
The generous visual aids also give you an
easy-to-remember snapshot of the correct middlegame plan — while keeping the variations at just the right depth.
Enjoy the full-blooded game this opening leads to.
