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?
Chameleonic/Hedgehoggy pawn structures
-
- Posts: 194
- Joined: Wed Jun 29, 2011 1:14 am
- Location: Carlisle, Cumbria
Re: Chameleonic/Hedgehoggy pawn structures
This is how Carlsen played as white against the Hedgehog at Tata Steel. He makes it look very easy!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1U5IcZE77jo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1U5IcZE77jo