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.

The Sicilian Defence is the most popular reply to 1 e4. With 1...c5 Black comes out fighting, immediately challenging any sense of a “natural white advantage”. Sicilian Defence players are often very well prepared theoretically and the tremendous dynamism of the Sicilian can often disturb their opponents. In this book, German FIDE master Jonas Hacker provides a complete repertoire for White when facing the Sicilian. The recommended systems are based on solid strategic considerations. The backbone of the repertoire is the line 1 e4 c5 2 Nf3 d6 3 d4 cxd4 4 Nxd4 Nf6 5 f3!? This is a perfect line to throw Najdorf and Dragon players off their stride. White will (usually) follow up with c2-c4 and establish a useful space advantage. Many of the other recommended lines are also based around the space-gaining c2-c4 advance providing cohesion across the whole repertoire. In Opening Repertoire: Beating the Sicilian, Jonas Hacker guides the reader through the complexities of the Sicilian and carves out a repertoire for White. He examines all aspects of this highly complex opening and provides the reader with well-researched, fresh, and innovative analysis. Each annotated game has valuable lessons on how to play the opening and contains instructive commentary on typical middlegame plans. * A complete repertoire for White against the Sicilian. * A question and answer approach provides an excellent study method.

In his prime, in the 1970-s and 80-s, legendary Swedish chess grandmaster Ulf Andersson was a Top 10 player with a distinct, immediately recognizable style. He almost never lost a game and kept scoring wins from quiet positions. Quiet positons? Acclaimed chess author Cyrus Lakdawala has played Andersson’s lines for decades and explains that those positions only LOOK quiet. Ulf Andersson, who understood the subtleties of strategic chess better than almost anyone else, always detected and exploited hidden opportunities. As Andersson’s openings tend to glide into the middlegame and often into the endgame, How Ulf Beats Black is much more than just a chess opening manual. Lakdawala’s lucid explanations offer a practical guide to positional technique that will improve your endgame skills as well. On top of that it is also a games collection of a great but often misunderstood chess player. This repertoire is not based on forcing variations but on understanding the underlying principles and techniques. As a result your opponent will not be able to surprise you because you forgot to check recent novelties. The final chapter ‘What did Ulf play?’ presents exercises to test your understanding.

Sonic The Hedgehog was created to give Sega's Mega Drive a fighting chance against the market-dominating Nintendo. With Sega consoles now a distant memory, he's still running. But what gives the blue blur his staying power? Speedrun traces Sonic's entire history, from an artist's idle sketch to a multi-million pound videogame phenomenon. This book relives the highs; the hysteria of Sonic 2's-day and the dawn of the Dreamcast, and the lows; cancelled projects and Sega's near-bankruptcy. It also looks at the creative influences behind the hedgehog, and how a handful of minds have steered and directed his progress through the years. Whether your first adventure with Sonic was in the Green Hill Zone or on a smartphone, Speedrun is the definitive guide to gaming's fastest hero.

John Johnston's background combines expertise in modern literature, poststructuralist philosophy, and high technology's production. Like Kittler, he draws on historic fact, anecdote, and literature. From this vantage point he explicates the theoretical and practical consequences of Friedrich Kittler's insights into the social and psychological effects of the processes by which metaphor in one medium is made real by another.

Ionic and covalent bonds are a piece of cake for MJ. But human bonds are a little harder ... There are only two things MJ wants in her final year of high school: 1) Glowing grades and ... 2) to convince uber-smart, chiselled-jaw Jason they'd be a winning team outside the science lab as well as in. Tutoring deadbeat drummer, Luke, isn't part of the plan. After all, he has average intelligence, takes disorganised notes and looks like a partied-out zombie at their study sessions Not even his taut biceps will win MJ over. But MJ learns that she could be tutored in a few life lessons too: That sometimes there's good reason to skip chemistry tutorials. That intelligence is so much more than a grade average. And that sometimes you can't beat the chemistry.

In his final book, Gould offers a surprising and nuanced study of the complex relationship between our two great ways of knowing: science and the humanities, twin realms of knowledge that have been divided against each other for far too long.