Chameleonic/Hedgehoggy pawn structures

Technical questions regarding Openings, Middlegames, Endings etc.
Dan O'Dowd
Posts: 194
Joined: Wed Jun 29, 2011 1:14 am
Location: Carlisle, Cumbria

Chameleonic/Hedgehoggy pawn structures

Post by Dan O'Dowd » Tue Apr 09, 2013 2:54 pm

A couple of examples of what I mean first:





Laying my weakness bare here, I have noticed that I really struggle with these sorts of pawn structures. I think I would say the same applies to anything with the Hedgehog setup in Sicilians as well. This is probably because as a player I've not gotten strong yet, and have lacked the ability to maintain tension during games, for psychological and empirical reasons. It could also be simply a facet of my true style that I haven't uncovered yet. The main issue comes for me in that in the positions I mention, Black seems to always have 2+ possible valid ways to change the pawn structure. Accordingly, unless I'm in total form, thinking fluently and calculating the same, which is unfortunately rare; I end up calculating 3 times as much and sometimes have trouble about being dogmatic/objective in the ensuing evaluations of these variations. After playing a few moves (though I'm sure I should if strong be able to do this before moving at all) I can confidently decide for myself which break if any, suits Black's position. I also therefore wonder if some of the problem is human anxiety: "he might play the move that I know should be positionally wrong, will I be able to show this?"

Asides from getting as many games as possible in these structures under my belt, to help drive the fluency of thought and compound my understanding, does anyone have any tips or advice on how best to deal with such things?

Clive Blackburn

Re: Chameleonic/Hedgehoggy pawn structures

Post by Clive Blackburn » Tue Apr 09, 2013 3:04 pm

This is how Carlsen played as white against the Hedgehog at Tata Steel. He makes it look very easy! :D

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1U5IcZE77jo