People often criticise it because they think the HH was conceived to be used in practical games, but it is not (or it can only be used if you internalise the HH after often using it in Daily gsmes or analysis).
There is in the forum a good article about it. If you work a lot with the HH he will get used to check all forcing moves first, even the stupid looking ones. I am playing a Daily game where this check saved me material, as I could see a tactical trick due to my exposed king.
A lot of critical positions and basically / plans in chess are related to pawn breaks, often connected to pawn sacrifices (to improve your position, or to make it difficult to the opponent to find the right continuation, or to allow queen or rooks to penetrate the position, or to allow a pawn to promote,etc ).
I have been studying Silman's books (Reassess 4/e, and Endgames) recently and most of the doubts have been resolved along with reading.
However, an important unanswered query is here: According to the book, key/critical position is relative, meaning that, a position, with many ideas and plans can be critical for me, but may be simple for my opponent. My question is, at once I reach a key position, I workout my plans/ideas and make a move, and my opponent replies, and this happens several times, until I reach another point where I feel my position is critical/key. Between these two/subsequent critical/key positions, am I supposed to: 1. evaluate every position after each move made,
2. continue with my plan, or react to opponent's ideas, or
3. view the position resulted by a move, or view the position as a whole (not considering what opponent did, taking into account 'what is on the board NOW, regardless of what opponent did.')
4. any or combination of the above or something else that I need to know.
I was hopefully understanding my third point as Statics v/s Dynamics, but it is not. Should the game should be seen as a movie/story extending from opening to a favorable endgame or it is just to play in the position irrespective of previous moves?
Thank you everyone for reading and answering.