5/14/2025 – In this episode of Svitlana’s Smart Moves, Svitlana Demchenko introduces the Hedgehog pawn structure, a strategic setup common in the Sicilian Defense, featuring black pawns on a6, b6, d6, and e6. She emphasizes the educational value of understanding pawn structures for overall middle-game improvement, using a Kasparov–Kramnik game as a case study. Svitlana explains typical plans for both sides: white often uses space advantage and looks for a queenside breakthrough with moves like b4 and c5, while black prepares central or queenside pawn breaks like d5 or b5, and, much to Arne's delight, may even launch a kingside attack with …g5. But it might be better to stick to the queenside pawn advancing!
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Svitlana's Smart Moves - Episode 114
With Svitlana Demchenko and Arne Kaehler
Svitlana Demchenko is a 20-year-old, Canadian WIM and chess coach. Here and now, she will teach us plenty of smart moves on the board, ranging from tactics, strategies, openings, and everything else chess-related. In the process, I'm happy to be available as a student at club player level, and pester the Women's International Master with questions. Anyone who wants to strengthen their chess skills is welcome to watch, and actively replay the positions from the video on our chessboard.
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If you like Svitlana's Smart moves, you will certainly enjoy her video lectures about "Surprising your opponents with the Lazy Sicilian", her first Fritztrainer "Understanding Material Imbalances", and her courses "The Scotch Game", and the "Leningrad Dutch Defence". Her newest Entry is the "King's Indian Attack"!
Besides in-depth theory and exciting tactical exercises in the Scotch Game, this video course also includes a bonus section on the Scotch Gambit (1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Bc4), a lively variation often leading to very dynamic positions.
The Leningrad Dutch Defence is a dynamic and aggressive opening choice for Black, perfect for players who want to add some adventure and spice to their repertoire.
Arne KaehlerArne Kaehler, a creative mind who is passionate about board games in general, was born in Hamburg and learned to play chess at a young age. By teaching chess to youth teams and creating chess-related videos on YouTube, Arne was able to expand this passion and has even created an online course for anyone who wants to learn how to play chess. Arne writes for the English and German news sites, but focuses mainly on content for the ChessBase media channels.
The Queen’s Gambit Declined Exchange Variation with 5.Bf4 has a great balance between positional play and sharp pawn pushes; and will be a surprise for your opponents while being easy to learn for you, as the key patterns are familiar.
After 1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 d6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Qxd4 Nc6 5.Bb5 Bd7 6.Qd3, White sidesteps mainline theory and steers the game into less explored, strategically rich positions.
In this course, you will learn the foundations and key ideas of the Vienna Game and discover a variety of systems that make you extremely difficult to prepare for.
Tata Steel 2026 with analyses by Bluebaum, Giri, L'Ami, Woodward and many more. Opening videos by Kasimdzhanov, Marin and Zwirs. 10 exciting opening articles with new repertoire ideas and much more.
In this course, Dutch Grandmaster Jan Werle presents a modern and practical repertoire in the French Advance Variation, focusing on the critical line 1.e4 e6 2.d4 d5 3.e5 c5 4.c3 Nc6 5.Nf3.
One of the major battlegrounds of the Queen’s Gambit Declined is the Catalan, and against it Zwirs chose an ambitious strategy: accept the pawn and hold onto it with …c6 and …b5, aiming for an unbalanced fight from the very start.
In this course, IM Nico Zwirs presents the Reversed Sicilian as a powerful and practical weapon for White
€39.90
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