International Grandmaster plays CivII like a hedgehog!

[stormerne]

The following is taken from "The Independent" dated Monday 19th March 2001. (The Independent is one of the top four British quality newspapers.) It is the start of the daily chess column by Jon Speelman (English IGM, June 2000 Elo rating 2564, world rank 83).

Recently, I've spent rather more time than is good for me playing Civilization II, an excellent strategical computer game. While this has no direct connection with chess, it has afforded me an opportunity to reassess my "natural game-playing style", a quality that I hope to be obscured when playing chess by my having sufficient understanding to play more or less the right moves, whatever my personal feelings about them.

In any case, when playing "Civ" it seems I'm very much a "Hedgehog" player, happy to accept a cramped but sound opening in the hope of breaking out later. In chess, the "Hedgehog" refers to a system of development in which Black (and occasionally White "with colours reversed"), facing a line in which White plays c4 and later d4, exchanges …c5xd4 and then sets up the characteristic pawn structure a6, b6, d6, e6, f7, g7, h7 - the "Hedgehog's" quills. ... ...

Maybe I'll drop him a line and see if he would like to contribute to this forum.

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[stormerne]

For those interested in the "Hedgehog", in the same column Jon Speelman goes on to review Mihai Suba's book "The Hedgehog" and gives a sample game (Larsen v. Suba 1982).

Suba's book - ISBN 0713486961 - seems to be currently available from Amazon (.com $18.36, .co.uk £11.99).

 

[Smash]

Speelman got bit by the civ bug?Oh well,his best chess days were probably behind him anyway.

 

[anand]

Cool! It's nice to hear that a profound GM like Speelman considers CivII to be an "excellent" game.

Speelman may not be able to compete on the very highest levels anymore, but I'm still a great fan of his play. His handling of unorthodox openings is very classy; and I know of no one else who regularly beats strong GM's on the black side of the Caro-Kann

 

[stormerne]

I agree with you Anand. I'm a fan too. I read his column in The Independent every weekday. And I used to play the Caro Kann once upon a time, and he was an inspiration.

He may be getting on now (he's just 4 years younger than me) and not playing at the very top, but he's still active in the German Bundesliga where they import strong players for special occasions! And I saw the reports of his recent middle eastern venture too.

I hope he continues his chess and Civ careers for a long time to come.

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