The Everything Chess Basics Book (25 page)

Black’s move should be 1. ... c5!, striking at d4, the base of White’s pawn chain.

Doubled Pawn

A doubled pawn is a group of two friendly pawns on the same file. They can be strong along the adjacent files, since enemy pieces will find the squares there to be unsafe. But they are almost useless as attackers. The square directly in front of the doubled pawns is vulnerable, and they cannot form phalanxes unless allowed to capture something.

White’s c-pawns are doubled.

One byproduct of doubled pawns is the open file produced when making the capture that formed them in the first place. This is a great place for your rooks to get involved from.

Isolated Pawn

An isolated pawn is a group of one. An isolani (another way of referring to the isolated pawn) is a pawn with no friendly neighbors. Thus it can count on no pawn support. That makes it weak.

If the isolated pawn is in the center or deep in enemy territory, however, then it may be strong because of the disruptive influence it can have on the enemy. When a central isolated pawn springs up, it is often the focus of both player’s plans.

White’s d3-pawn is isolated.

The side with the isolani wants to push the pawn forward, further disrupting the enemy forces, while the side fighting against it wants to stop it from moving.

A great way to fight against a central isolated pawn is to blockade it. That means place a piece in front of it so it cannot move. The best piece for such a blockade is generally considered to be the knight.

Black’s d5-pawn is isolated. Note that White has blockaded it on d4 with a knight.

While the isolated pawn is thus blockaded, you can build up an attack against it, forcing the opponent to use pieces as defenders. Pieces that defend pawns aren’t doing a lot of attacking.

Passed Pawn

A passed pawn is one that is free from any enemy pawn interference. As it marches up the board, the passed pawn will encounter no enemy pawns, either on its own file or on either adjacent file.

White’s d5-pawn is passed.

The tremendous strength of a passed pawn is that it is a candidate to promote. The further it has advanced up the board, the more menacing it becomes. Therefore, a passed pawn is said to have a lust to expand. Besides capturing such a pawn, the next best way of dealing with it is to blockade, just like with an isolated pawn.

A pawn majority is a case of two pawns against one pawn or three pawns against two pawns, etc., on one side of the board. The object of a pawn majority is to produce a strong passed pawn.

The strength of a passed pawn is not necessarily that it will march up the board and promote. Rather, it can often be strong because enemy pieces are tied up stopping it. Thus, those pieces are not available for other duties.

White has a pawn majority on the queenside.

One way to break up such a majority is to attack the stronger party with the weaker party. This is the minority attack. The object of a minority attack is to produce a weak isolated pawn to play against.

White is poised for the minority attack with 1. b5!

Whenever Possible, Operate with Threats

This is so important that it gets its own chapter. There are many chess books written on this topic, and paying attention to threats may be the biggest difference between strong and weak players.

Very simply, if you don’t notice that your queen is in danger when you make your move, you might lose her. If you don’t notice that you can checkmate you opponent’s king in two moves, you may not go on to win the game. If you don’t notice that your king is about to come under attack, you may not be able to find a good defense.

If this sounds like you have to pay close attention to possible threats on every move of every game, that’s because it is the only way to become a strong player. Sherlock Holmes, with his excellent eye for minute detail and his awareness of clues that everyone could see but few could interpret, would have made a strong chess player.

Chapter 8
Threats

Everything up to here has been nothing more than necessary preparation for good chess play. In order to take it up a notch and dramatically improve your technique, you need to know how to look ahead a few moves to predict what might happen.

Forcing Moves

Since there are on average about forty or more possible moves in most chess positions, looking ahead even one move becomes very difficult if done randomly. Trying to look two or three moves ahead in this fashion is virtually impossible: to each of my forty possible moves my opponent has forty possible replies. That comes out to 1,600 possible moves. And that is looking exactly one move ahead.

This is fine for a brute force computer, but impossible for a human brain. Fortunately, this sort of number crunching is not necessary or even desirable in the pursuit of good chess play.

In order to drastically cut down on the number of moves we need to look at in predicting the near future of a game, we need to find a device that limits our opponent’s possible replies. That device is the use of forcing moves.

A forcing move is a move that forces our opponent to respond. An example of a forcing move that you already know about is check. When the enemy is in check, his possible replies are limited to the available ways to get out of check.