Against the English, I have tried the Hedgehog, the nimzo-english, and even the dutch recently. One problem I kept running into with the Hedgehog was the weakness of my d6 pawn. I would often have to contort my pieces into odd positions in order to hold it. Obviously, this is not a fault of the opening but rather my lack of understanding. However, the Symmetrical English, Double Fianchetto Defense offers a lot of the same solidity of the Hedgehog, but without presenting white with this weakness to attack. In the 1980′s, Kasparov used this solid defense to great effect in a world championship match, and his contributions to its theory are nicely detailed by Marin in New In Chess, Yearbook #75. However, what I like about this defense is how easy it is to manage without a great deal of theoretical knowledge.
Tag: Andras Adorjan
Recently I picked up a copy of Adorjan’s second book on his theory that “Black is OK” from Fred Wilson’s chess book store, and I have to say I was immediately sucked in by the hyperbolic claims in the introduction. The basic idea of his first book “Black is OK!,” is that the commonly held belief that white is entitled to an opening advantage is a fiction. Adorjan tells us “The tale of White’s advantage is a delusion, belief in it is based on mass psychosis.” He goes on to claim that the prevailing philosophy of winning with white and drawing with black is a self-fulfilling prophecy, and that many players could push for full points with black but quickly resign themselves to a draw, even against weaker players, because of their entrenched beliefs in the relative value of white’s claim to advantage.