Beating the Hedgehog System

You fight to score against the Hedgehog and find it hard to break through the Black Fortress? This opening manual, which could function as a positional half-game manual, will show you how White can use a space advantage in this opening for maximum results.

The Hedgehog System, a personal favorite of many club players, is important to understand for all white players as the positions are almost universal. They can arise from the English Opening, the Nimzo-Indian and Queen India Defenses and the Sicilian Defence. The Hedgehog is a flexible defense, as Black can undermine your center with ...b6-b5 or ...d6-d5. Black can attack the black squares on the king's flank with a queen and bishop battery or go after the king by throwing the g pawn.

That's why Beating the Hedgehog System focuses on the most airtight variants, removing the sting from black's counterplay and making white's spatial advantage count. You will learn general strategies but also essential features such as:

· how to achieve the ideal formation on the queen's flank against Hedgehog

· how to use x-rays and small tactics to stop the breaking of black ...d6-d5

· how to get black's 'e' pawn to move to e5

· when to push pawn 'a' to the fourth row... and when to restrain it

Fifteen model games and thirty strategy and tactics exercises are included to refine their perception of this opening. This book has been adapted from the MoveTrainer® course and video Chessable with the same name.

Hanna Ivan-Gal she is one of the best players in Hungary, WMF and an experienced coach. She is also the presenter of the Hedgehog video course in Chessable.

Laszlo Hazai is an MI from Hungary, senior FIDE coach, former coach of the Polgar sisters and a distinguished opening theorist who wrote dozens of theoretical articles for the New In Chess Yearbook.