Mop up the Morra
I recently published a Chessable course on countering the Smith-Morra gambit. My claim is that Black has the advantage in all variations if he follows my recommendations. With an early novelty and deep analysis, this course is far beyond current theory. This course is rated 5/5 stars by 11 reviewers. There are over 22,000 words of instruction total between the theory and annotated games sections.
Here are some quotes from the reviews.
"Refutes the Morra." - ragchess26
"Refutes the Smith-Morra." - zaeemalam
"Refutes the Smith-Morra gambit." - NM FrenchIsBad
"Refutes the Morra." - FM skkeyan
"This is the only true Morra refutation I have seen in my life." - FM pikachuisdabest
"White will be hard pressed to prove even some compensation for the sacrificed pawn and will likely find himself losing the initiative as well." - FM MikeFeinstein
"Esserman, one of the few players to try to save this opening, likely won’t be too happy to see this. It’s a refutation to his favorite opening system, and indeed, it might force him to stop playing the line entirely." - NM RARAttacker
"In every single line white has to fight for equality, and most of the time has to settle for a worse position with no counterplay. (...) In my opinion, this repertoire more or less closes the book on the Smith-Morra Gambit." - NM 1e410
"My engine at first started claiming that White is better, however after going through logozar's analysis, it changed its mind to support Black's advantage. (...) Black is better in all the lines. Feel free to prove me wrong because I could not find anything for White." - Pawn_Breaker
"As for the positions you get, white is able to win the pawn back with best play but he never gets anything better than a worse endgame and rarely even that. You will never fear the Smith-Morra again." - Stephen_Stanfield
"I'll still whip out the Morra now and then for a casual game at the club or online, until these variations become well enough known that there's no fun left in it. And then, reluctantly, I'll move on." - NM ZukertortsGhost
"Logozar is a well known name for the Chessable users. With his new course he did his usual amazingly-good quality work in discovering a non-obvious flaw in a situation which most of the players would just dismiss. Whoever searches, finds! This is the motto of this young and thorough author! “Mop up the Morra” has thorough analysis and high quality annotations. Although Elijah is not a titled player this fact does nothing to belittle his analysis. In the search of truth he uses some of the best analytical programs out there that confirm his point if view. But this is not everything. Elijah is diligent enough to challenge the views of computers and sometimes get the engine to change its mind after deep analysis! He does not blindly follow the first line of the engines, but does a lot of work on his own. I strongly recommend that you check his new course and draw conclusions on your own!" - GM Dejan Bojkov
This course has also been getting quite a bit of attention on other websites. There have been some attention on twitter (for example post 1, post 2, and post 3). Esserman’s response on twitch can be found here (time stamps: my initial comment was at 15:10, Esserman's response was at 17:49). Note how Esserman didn’t actually respond to my suggested lines. David Milliern made an astute observation about Esserman's response which can be read here. Chess Life, The British Chess Magazine, and New in Chess have all expressed interest in including some coverage of my refutation in their publications. This course is a big deal and is likely going to change the direction of theory in the Smith-Morra, possibly reduce the popularity of the Smith-Morra altogether.
My recommendation involves a novelty on move 7. Here is a sample including the primary TN.
