Author: David Hanley
Date: 13:47:56 04/30/02
Go up one level in this thread
On April 30, 2002 at 12:47:49, Russell Reagan wrote: >An isolated pawn cannot be defended by your other pawns, so you must defend it >with your pieces. So if you have to put your pieces to work defending that pawn, >then your pieces aren't free to attack or defend other places on the board, and >often your pieces get in each other's way, and you end up having to give up a >piece or lose your isolated pawn. Once you lose the isolated pawn, not only are >you down a pawn, but your pieces are out in the open because there are three >open files now, and the enemy can attack that quite nicely. Isolated pawns >aren't always bad though. I've seen master games where one player set a trap for >his opponent by allowing himself to get an isolated pawn, and then the opponent >followed the typical plan of piling up attackers on the isolated pawn, and it >ended up being a trap for his opponent. I don't recall exactly how it worked, >but the point is that isolated pawns are usually weak, but not always. Well, you may get compensation for the isolated pawn, in that the pawn may confer extra space or mobility when you get it. The most well known example of this is the tarrasch defense to the queen's gambit: 1 d4 d5 2 c4 e6 3 nc3 c5 4 cd cd 5 nf3 nc6 6 dc Bxc5 bb5 Now black has an isolated pawn on d5, but he can also try to attack white with his greater mobility. I think that's the "trap" you're referring to. > >Then you have doubled pawns. Doubled pawns aren't always bad either, but they >are usually harder to guard and they usually get in the way of your pieces. Wellllll.... It's not so much that they are hard to guard and block pieces. The main issue is that they don't control as many squares, and they are weak in the endagme. Again an example: 1 e4 e4 2 nf3 nc6 3 bb5 a6 4 Bxc6 dc 5 d4 Now if black captures ed, white gets a 4:3 pawn majority on the kingside which may/will give him a passed pawn in the endgame. Black has a 4:3 majority on the other wing, but all white has to is play b3 abd c4, and black won't get passed pawn without capturing one of the white pawns. I don't agree in general that doubled pawns uncoordinate pieces. I often in the french get people who play bb5xc6 which is great, because i than have 2 pawns on the c-file with which to hammer the center, an open b-file, and i can even play ba6 after that. >Then we have backward pawns. Backwards pawns are just pawns that have fallen our >of the pawn chain. Well, they are unprotectable pawns that cannot advance without being captured, so they are artificially isolated, in a sense. >So basically there is a kind of pattern here. You have a pawn that for some >reason needs the pieces to protect it instead of having other pawns protect it, >and your pieces don't have a lot of options if they are tied down to guarding a >pawn on a single square. This is a REALLY good point, though! dave
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