Ivan Sokolov: Understanding Middlegame Strategies Vol. 3 - The Hedgehog

Throughout my playing career I have found the Hedgehog (with both colours) one of the most difficult type of positions to master. With White (the side with more space) there is always a danger to overextend oneself (or miss your opponent’s pawn break). While playing Black (the side with less space) there is always a danger to mistime your pawn break, or simply to not get counterplay and be overrun.

The complexity of those positions is best illustrated in a Kasparov-Kramnik game – with both players allowing seemingly “obvious” mistakes. Charbonneau-Anand is another good example – a player of Anand’s stature landing in a terrible position, then missing his good attacking prospects. The game result was one of the biggest upsets of 2006 Chess Olympiad. There are different types of Hedgehog positions - many of them coming from the English opening where the White bishop is fianchettoed. In this video course I consider the “basic Hedgehog” pawn structure; like the one coming from the Kan Sicilian for example.

Choosing the right plan at the right time is the key here - the ensuing positions are full of dynamic possibilities. I endeavour to show the most common (and a few less common!) plans for both sides and try to pinpoint typical mistakes and motifs. The basic aim of this video is to improve understanding of these complex positions and to help tournament players score better! For those who haven’t recently done any calculation training, there is the Calculation Training Booster. After all, every chess brain needs regular stimulation, as you don’t want to become a lazy player - avoiding calculating critical variations or simply failing to calculate properly.

In this video course, twenty-nine examples with multiple questions are presented in the interactive format, which is ideal for a range of playing strengths. Step by step you will be taken through the complex positions, in which you will have to get the most out of it for both sides. Calculation is not only about finding the right move, but also anticipating your opponent’s ideas. Therefore, several times you will be challenged to find the best defensive resource, and also to refute your own wrong answers. The type of exercises are comparative to earlier video courses in the Calculation Training series, just with all the examples taken from more recent games. So, there’s plenty of new training material to challenge yourself with!

• Video running time: more than 5 hours (English)

• With interactive training including video feedback