hi everybody and welcome back to another chess tips video this one has been requested by hundreds
of people at this point pawn play uh pawns are like the fence of a chest position uh they are
the barrier between both players more pawns there are on the board the position is closed and has a
different nature than if pawns are traded and the position is open not to mention that every
time a pawn moves or is traded the position changes and that is something that hopefully
you will begin to develop over the course of this video as a skill i have seven examples
for you i will name the concepts throughout you can check the uh time stamps uh to review what
i said in case you miss it let's jump into it okay first things first this position uh
which was played between jan nipponichi and peter svidler and the legends of chess all of
our examples will be from that tournament in this one pawns are going to be used uh
as a spatial barrier okay and we are introducing the concept of pawn trades in the center of the
board obviously right now already you can pick up the fact that we're in a rue lopez there's eight
pawns per side so the position is more closed here a central pawn trade is beneficial to white
because if everything is traded off then white simply has a knight in the center of the board
but let's quickly analyze what happens from this position to the position with the knight on d4
the c file is open the e file is open and also certain diagonals have now opened up white used
to have a pawn on this square now this is more open so this bishop has a bit more of a long range
this diagonal could be something and so on and so forth in the game the second trade did not
occur and instead peters fiddler returned back to knight c6 so now should you take in the center
or push spatial barrier attacking the knight because it's only way forward is to go to b4
and the bishop simply retreats and actually this knight is in danger of getting trapped
pawn play this pawn is suppressing so here how is black going to create a getaway square for
this night anticipating that this move is coming very good a5 using pawn play
opening up the square on a6 however a3 still played knight a6 and now a spatial barrier
prevent this knight from coming to b4 nice little tactical trick he plays excuse me to c5 he plays
b4 himself the idea being that if this trade occurs which it did in a few moves the knight
cannot recapture due to the pin on the rook now if the position was such that the bishop was on b7
then b4 would simply be impossible however based on the situation of the a file this is possible
if the bishop was on b7 then black white would need to create a move like b4 with the defense
with something like bishop to d2 what happens in the game is we get a position as if that occurred
and so the pawns here are spatial barriers you are controlling space in your opponent's position and
this pawn blocked in by this pawn could be a target in the future and it will be uh i'm not
going to go through the full game but what i will say is that pawns are very good at restricting
pieces of the opponent and actually we do see that it is a silly close position given that six pawns
are uh per side but certain places are open like the c file the a file and so on uh and so forth
now the next one that we're going to look at is this position between jan nepanchi and anishigiri
in this position one pawn has already been traded the c pawn for black and the d-pawn for white what
else do you notice with pawn play you should not push so many pawns in the beginning of the game
uh and notice also that black is castled and white is not and if you're playing with the black pieces
here and your opponent is at least a few moves away from getting castled you should look for
breaking open the center and that's actually exactly what an east geary does he takes on f4
which you can argue helps white develop but he simply trades this pawn off and then pushes this
pawn into the center and you say well levy what's so good about that i just take right but remember
what i said about pawns affecting the position when they move right so which file is closed
now the d file which file is open now the e file so rookie 8 and it's sort of becoming difficult
to defend this king uh in the game nepal played e5 and after knight d7 this pawn is still hanging but
right and then the game got complicated for the most part if your opponent is overly aggressive
in the opening with their pawns you really should look and you're castled already you really should
look for center shattering moves like d5 because with the king stuck in the center at least two
moves away from getting castled bad things will await the player who has not moved their king
okay we are going to look now at this position between peter lecko and peter swidler matchup of
peters now again white has a big central presence this position is more closed why seven pawns each
so when there's seven pawns that's one away from eight which means the fences are almost fully
built white to move this particular position is something i like to call the door and it's
like a clearance move you essentially move upon and then use the square that pawn used to stand on
as a transfer mode for your pieces a transfer zone for your pieces if you will and with
your pawn move you secure a enemy square okay so without any without you know any any further delay
d5 is a fantastic move in this position and why so that pawn now secures the c6 square and it opens
the d4 square for the knight to transfer this is an advanced move d5 a lot of you probably see that
if you look at this position and if you don't well takes takes the queen is hanging in the knight
is hanging because that's a more tactical more confrontational move but e5 i don't have to take
you it's not checkers i'll just put my knight on d5 and well you're not going to make progress in
the position but d5 is a more positional approach and actually watch as the game progresses how this
square is used multiple times throughout the game uh so knight e5 he transfers this way and bishop
d4 he uses this move to transfer his knight excuse me to f5 and then put the bishop and have pressure
on peter svidler's entire position and peter lico went on to win a very very convincing game
using this thing called the door the clearance as well as um you know pawn move to secure space in
the enemy territory the next one is a little bit more barbaric shall we say uh and it is this one
it is a position where black is castled white has not but there's not a lot of you know action
right now uh it is something i like to call the caveman h-file attack and this really does come
from an opening uh but in this game boris galvin played h4 h5 and normally this works when there
is no knight covering basically you need uh only the pawn to be covering and you need the rook to
be on this file there are certain openings where this kind of crazy h-file attack actually works
uh and can give you a very good advantage even if your king is in the center it's obviously
more difficult if the king is castled because the rook won't be here if the king is on the opposite
side once again h4 is possible now even openings where the knight is on f6 and by the way this is
kind of how you you know then operate you try to get something on the h-file in this game boris
played a very funny queen maneuver to get the queen to h4 but there's usually other approaches
like a bishop coming to h6 which is impossible right now uh but there are openings where you
know the job of london for example where you literally push the pawn no matter what and then
sacrifice material you sacrifice for that night get your queen there and then use this open h
file again it's only bad it's only good when the opponent is castled because if they're not
what exactly are you attacking but just in case you want to add this little tool
uh to your you know your uh pawn attack repertoire if you will okay so hopefully that one is helpful
uh for this next one we're going to look at a vladimir kramnik dingley wren game which actually
happened earlier today at the time of recording what's the first thing that you notice about
this position so notice that black is up a pawn right but white has a gigantic central space and
these pawns play into this bishop so this bishop is what we call boys it's like biting on rock
it can't break through that structure at all uh black also does not have a pawn
break in the center a pawn break being a spot in the position where you can trade pawns
advantageously because if black plays e5 who said i'm gonna take you i'm simply gonna go here right
so try to pause the video here for a second actually two moves happen in the game
these uh how does black utilize where his pawns have a majority to create play in
the position and target something in white's position which potentially is the weak spot
a5 fantastic and now using some b4 ideas to maybe also bring the knight back there's also
the lingering threat of this queen coming to a3 and playing on the queen side where you are
stronger and where you have maximum pressure on the base of a pawn chain is the way that you
should operate here this one is more of a pawn expansion more of a pawn break kind of uh of a
lesson in and of itself uh obviously a little bit more nuanced vladimir kramnik it took him about 15
to 20 minutes to make something happen but you need to find where in the position you can play
with your pawns what squares you support and what the best areas of operation are okay this next one
is an example from a game between boris gelfand and anish giri and actually for about the next 10
moves there's a lot of different pawn play i put here space taking space restricting enemy pieces
and pawn breaks once again so in the game we got bishop d6 hitting this you can either move this
this or this in the game we got f4 because that restricts the e pawn push notice that this square
puts a grasp on this uh sorry this push but on this square there was a little bit of a
of a weakening right because the pawn went forward now a6 so with a6 what does anish want he wants to
maybe play b5 how do we restrict that a4 more pawn play rook c8 rook c1 we restrict anything coming
to the b6 square by playing the move a5 and notice clearance knight a4 which you learned in the peter
lecko example uh allows the knight to get to a4 uh and then there is a there is a very nice position
there for the night now again we have a few more moves played some trades occur and in this
position the fantastic move g5 playing against the weakness that gelfin put not necessarily
a weakness but pawn break right an advantageous spot in the position where you can offer a trait
of pawns that can improve your pieces and actually in the game we got exactly that we got this trade
and what does this trade do to the white position let's see how how much you've been focusing i know
it's 10 minutes in if you're still with me what has white weakened the d4 square the d4 square
and that went on to be a problem and by the way another g5 came right because gary had double
pawn so he reinforced there you go okay for this last example we are going to look at a
very closed position this is a game played between vladimir kramnik and jan nipomnichi
and uh well both sides have eight pawns it's it's as maximally chaotic as it can possibly be
pawn breaks are going to be super essential here how many of them does white have
one two this doesn't really count i'm not going to count this because they're i don't
know no one's gonna play h4 one two maybe three maybe four right in the game vlad played f4 and
he tried to transform the position in this way by trading off the bishops uh but as as
as luck would have it after knight g6 there's another already very interesting dynamic here
pawn play once again if the queen takes then the queen comes out and starts to attack but if the
pawn takes you bring the rook using the new pawn trait on the open h file and how do you get your
queen to the h-file if i told you right now black to move get the queen to the h file in two turns
you would try to move the queen but you can't do it that way open the door for the queen
pawn play opening the door for the pieces right now this is the way the game actually went
however in this position vladimir kramnik had a few options number one he had this pawn break b4
this pawn break looks stupid because at the end of the day i mean you know let's say this rook
trade comes in you're just losing a pawn however this pawn break trades off the entire queen side
and actually your queen begins to mobilize and if black desperately tries to hang on with queen
b6 you are first to the queen side with all of your pieces a bit of an advanced concept
however here's the thing about square securing which we talked about earlier you'd like to
play the move knight to c4 but then b5 is going to happen so play a4 when you push a4 you now
start to defend the b5 square and allow knight c4 to happen but you severely weaken what square
the b4 square i mean black controls the square and you won't be playing this move but for the cost of
playing knight to c4 it's probably worth it uh and later in the game you know we saw their dynamics
like in this position b6 bishop a6 a break here by kramnik and this opening of the position
actually proved to be proved to be only worse for uh for vlad because later in the game nepo
played the move rook b6 and used the open b file ultimately culminating six moves later with the
stunning maneuver rook b2 and rook takes h2 check so it's just kind of funny how this little piece
transfer turned out to be so devastating because of how the position opened up but going all the
way back here the way you play closed positions is you secure certain outposts for your pieces
you look for pawn breaks that are advantageous to you and i say levy well can you give me a system
to tell me how that's going to happen that's just from experience how dominant of a piece
do you get how much are you surrendering to your opponent for example a move like e4 definitely
is not good because black goes f4 and now black has a huge king side attack you've closed off
the center for your pieces and black just has a good attack here brewing on your king side
listen this was a 15 minute video i really tried to do my best again everything that i
talked about will be in the description and there will be timestamps let me know if you
have any other questions in the comments below about pawn play i will try to answer as much as
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