Do you struggle to score against the Hedgehog and find it difficult to break the Black fortress? This opening manual, which could double as a positional middlegame manual, will show you how White can use a space advantage in this chess opening with maximum results. The Hedgehog System, a personal favourite of many club players, is important to understand for all White players as the positions are near-universal. They can arise from the English Opening, the Nimzo-Indian and Queen’s Indian Defences and the Sicilian Opening. The Hedgehog is a flexible defence as Black can undermine your centre with …b6-b5 or …d6-d5. Black can attack your kingside dark squares with a queen-and-bishop battery or go after your king by launching the g-pawn. That’s why Beating The Hedgehog System focuses on the most airtight variations, taking the sting out of Black’s counterplay and making White’s space advantage count. You will learn the general strategies but also essential features such as: · how to get the ideal queenside formation versus the Hedgehog · how to use x-rays and little tactics to stop Black’s …d6-d5 break · how to provoke Black’s e-pawn to move to e5 · when to push your a-pawn to the fourth rank… and when to hold it back Included are fifteen model games and thirty strategy and tactics exercises to fine-tune your feel for this Opening. This book has been adapted from the MoveTrainer® and video Chessable course with the same name.

Excellent Ennui! Chess, so the theory goes, takes 10,000 hours of practice to master. Clearly not all of those hours will be enjoyable and studying 80 endgames featuring a specific isolated pawn is definitely not in the fun category. This is where The World’s Most Boring Chess Book comes in. What The World’s Most Boring Chess Book lacks in entertainment, it makes up in examples explaining how to push for a win in an endgame where one side is saddled with an isolated pawn, and how to defend against such efforts. The commentary which accompanies the deep analysis, makes the subject accessible but never easy: even the endgames with just kings and pawns are surprisingly challenging. Isolated pawns are one major type of technical position. One can find oneself in such a position from many different openings, or at the end of a middlegame or endgame battle. Hundreds of fascinating games have been played with an isolated pawn and Rogers and Hazai deeply analyse 80 of them in this book... [A] reader will learn which pieces it is better to exchange, when one can wait patiently, and when one needs to look for active counterplay... If you are not shy about working diligently and want to improve your technique, then this book is for you! – From the Foreword by Boris Gelfand Many chessplayers are uncomfortable in positions which have an isolated d-pawn. With the help of the authors, you will come to embrace these positions, whether on offence or defence. What excellent ennui!

Excellent Ennui! Chess, so the theory goes, takes 10,000 hours of practice to master. Clearly not all of those hours will be enjoyable and studying 80 endgames featuring a specific isolated pawn is definitely not in the fun category. This is where The World's Most Boring Chess Book comes in. What The World's Most Boring Chess Book lacks in entertainment, it makes up in examples explaining how to push for a win in an endgame where one side is saddled with an isolated pawn, and how to defend against such efforts. The commentary which accompanies the deep analysis, makes the subject accessible but never easy: even the endgames with just kings and pawns are surprisingly challenging. Isolated pawns are one major type of technical position. One can find oneself in such a position from many different openings, or at the end of a middlegame or endgame battle. Hundreds of fascinating games have been played with an isolated pawn and Rogers and Hazai deeply analyse 80 of them in this book... [A] reader will learn which pieces it is better to exchange, when one can wait patiently, and when one needs to look for active counterplay... If you are not shy about working diligently and want to improve your technique, then this book is for you! - From the Foreword by Boris Gelfand Many chessplayers are uncomfortable in positions which have an isolated d-pawn. With the help of the authors, you will come to embrace these positions, whether on offence or defence. What excellent ennui!