Strategies For Using Your Pawn
Most often, when beginners play chess, they carelessly position their chess pieces. However, there’s one particular kind of piece on the board that gets underestimated and always given away. What piece? Sad to say, it’s the pawn. Due to their quantity in the game, which is eight and their seemingly low rank, pawns are often used carelessly in chess games. However, what most beginners do not know is that pawns are extremely vital in their game.
Why So Important?
Pawns are extremely vital because executing your first move, which usually involves moving a pawn, would affect the game; not only the game, but everything within the game, such as the tactics and strategy that you would use. The pawn set up, no matter how many in quantity or small in size they seem to be are important.
There are basically four pawn structure kinds. Knowing what these structures are and how possible it is for you could make the most out of each pawn situation is important and helpful into attaining success in your games.
Pawn Islands
In chess, pawn islands are pawn compilations that are cut off from all other pawns. For instance, if all your file/column have pawns except for d and g, thus, you would have three pawn islands, which are a to c, d to e, and h. In general, when pawn structure is discussed, the lesser pawn islands that you have then the better your game situation is. Nevertheless, gaps on your pawn structure are not totally considered as disadvantage since these are the ones that make rook openings. If situation be it, you would want to position your rooks on the open files/columns to pose as a threat to your opponent and give him/her a little pressure on the side.
Isolated Pawns
These are pawns that have no other pawns on either left or right. Thus, such kind of pawns could not be defended and supported by other pawns. In general, this is yet another chess weakness that you should try to avoid with much effort.
Doubled Pawn
This is a pawn situation in which one pawn is situated behind another pawn on the same column/file. In general, it’s not automatically considered to be a weakness. However, it should be component of a much bigger pawn island for it to be considered an acceptable situation. For it to be in a pawn island there should be another pawn situated on an adjacent column/file. Nonetheless, if your they are isolated, you have a pretty big disadvantage and weakness. This ought to be avoided unless if you’re going to get a big advantage for reparation.
Open Pawn Structure
On situations that a lot of pawn exchanges have already occurred and only a relatively few are remaining on the board then the board is said to be open. On structures like these, you would observe that your chess board would be less cluttered, but has static and slow pieces.
When the board has an open pawn structure environment, it is the best for having and taking advantage of your long-ranged chess pieces like rooks and bishops. The use of your short-ranged knights is usually less effective for this kind of situation, since they couldn’t really optimize extra space on the board.
Thus, you must keep your pawn setup always in mind if you are looking for piece exchanges. If you plan your structure to be open, then you should look into letting go of one knight in exchange for your opponent’s bishop, just as long as you remain to have the best pieces for the set-up.
Closed Pawn Structure
You could have this kind of structure when your board is jam-packed with pawns. It is during this situation that you would have few opportunities to have pawn exchanges. Try to visualize having white pawns in a4, b5 and c4 and consequent black pawns in a5, b6 and c5. These pawns would be blocking each other. Thus, they could not be swapped off.
Knights are pretty useful in this kind of setup, while rooks and bishops are not. So try to target getting your opponents knights to gain advantage.
Strong Central Pawns
One example of this setup would be having pawns in c3, d4, e4, f3. Having this would let you have space so your pieces could advance. You can also have more choices of where you want to place your pieces. Try to take advantage by keeping the position of your opponent to be closed down. Try placing your pieces on aggressive positions.
Weak Central Pawns
On the other hand, if you central pawns are weak, then you should find a central pawn to break free your position.
