Revolution Revisited!

GM Alex Yermolinsky, who recently won the US Senior Open, is one of the best content creators in the chess scene. Alex is always ready to explore new paths, without losing sight of the more traditional theory.
In this series, GM Yermolinsky revisits Kasparov's point of view on some of the most common openings. 
Garry Kasparov's “Revolution in the 70's” was published in 2007 as the first book of “On Modern Chess” series. Soon it was followed by three tomes on his matches with Karpov, and then Garry moved on with his critically acclaimed “My Great Predecessors” suite. 
While all of the above are excellent works, “Revolution” has always been my favorite, because it's light on analysis and big on observations and conceptual thoughts. 
While this book deals with opening theory, it should not be taken as an all-inclusive manual, some sort of “Encyclopedia of Chess Openings According to Garry Kasparov” - should such title exist it would have been a book of 10,000 pages.
Instead, as the title suggests, Garry takes the reader on a journey through the free-thinking days of the 1970's when a new generation of players, born after WWII, set to work to extend the boundaries of existing theory.
The book consists of 23 chapters, each being devoted to a particular opening line that was introduced in the 1970's or whereabouts, when Garry himself was a good Soviet schoolboy, excitable and inspired.
Garry studied them all, and built his opening repertoire on the mix of classical and modern.
Kasparov begins his chapters with introducing a stem game or two, followed by overview of current (circa 2005) developments. This is an essential method one should apply to studying openings: historical perspective before database search of recent games.
In these videos GM Yermolinsky follows through on the directions set by Kasparov, to see how the ideas he mentioned stood the test of time in the ten years that passed since his book came out.

Watch the first Episode here:
 

The Hedgehog System

The Hedgehog is more than a line of the English Opening, it's a concept that can be applied to many openings, from the Sicilian to the King's Indian Defense. Black eschews the traditional central pawn placement in favor of the fire-retarding elastic “small” center of the d6-e6 pawns, complimented by moving his a- and b-pawn one step forward and positioning his pieces on the 7th rank, Nf6 being the only exception.
When introduced by the young players of the 1970's, Ljubojevic, Andersson, Adorjan and many others, it served as the red cloth waved before the eyes of the old lion guard. To their great annoyance, even best of them, the likes of Taimanov, Polugaevsky and Uhlmann, could not bust the Hedgehog, instead, finding their own position in ruin.
Decades later, it is universally believed that White has no real advantage in the Hedgehog middlegame. Therefore, modern efforts are concentrated on acting fast right out of the gate to interfere with Black's setup.

ICC will publish a video - available to its members - from this fantastic series every Sunday, at 6 PM EST, for 26 weeks!

If you can't wait and want the whole series NOW, check ICC's offer HERE