Francois-Andre Danican Philidor, the 18th century French chess player, once said that "Pawns are the soul of chess". Here's one of my recent games where I took his advice to heart in the endgame. Nothing seals a victory like an inexorably advancing wall of pawns!

Please feel free to comment on the game, all comments welcome!

wonderful game, checkmate after 55 moves ...

nicely done bro, beautiful checkm8

good game, cheers!

Is it just me or is the use of this chess set - modern? - really irritating. I can't even bear to play through the game. It would be great if the viewer could choose which chess set to have games displayed in.

Good job!

good job on working pawns

You say in the game that due to the loss of your opponents black squared bishop it was ideal for your pawns to be on white squares. i would disagree with this and so would GM Vinay Bhat who says chess theory states that pawns should be placed on the same coloured squares as your opponents remaining bishop to reduce the area the bishop can move over the board. That however is not to say these pawns should be placed in the firing line of an opponents bishop if it were unprotected.

Also you played a poor oppening followed by an average middle game and you won due to your opponents poor end game.

Oh wow! It took you a whole 2 days to come on here and impart your invaluable wisdom Luke!

You are aware this was one of our games, right?

Also, just between the 2 of us, what is up with your new picture?!

So Luke just admit to having a lousy endgame? =)

Black could resign on move 34... really. Just a matter of technique for whites easy win. GM Fine has a list of endgame rules which are interestng.

Well-done! By the way, you missed 14.Nxe4!, winning material.

Luke_Staden> Also you played a poor oppening followed by an average middle game and you won due to your opponents poor end game.

His opponent played a poor middlegame (dropped material) and endgame (dropped material and didn't know R+6P vs 3P is completely lost). He didn't seem to look at CHECKS and CAPTURES on every move. The one phase his opponent did very well at was the opening, but that tends to be less important at the 1400-level as long as both players know to develop and control the center, which in this case they did.

A note on the opening: In d-pawn openings, playing Nc3 before moving the c-pawn is usually a mistake and this is no exception. If you don't feel comfortable playing c4 right away, one alternative is to play d4, Nf3, e3, and only then c4.

If you both played the same moves this would lead to:

1. d4 d5 2. Nf3 Nf6 3. e3 c5 4. dxc5 Nc6 5. Bb5 e6

Note, Black couldn't play 5...e5. Also, you have two good plans: (a) b4/c3 secures your extra pawn and (b) Ne5 Bd7 Nxd7 wins the bishop pair.

Your bishop wasn't a bad bishop because it had a fine diagonal available to it.

Thanks likesforests, very helpful analysis! To be honest, I never would have spotted 14.Nxe4 but thanks for pointing it out, I guess eventually I'll learn to pick up on these things.

Of course, Phillidor was also wrong.

1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 d6?!

Shame it fell out of favour, really. I still meet it fairly often.

You won becouse of the critical mistakes made by your opponent, not becouse of your brilliant pawn coordination, sorry..

Just to point out, the terms "good" and "bad" on bishops are pretty worthless. I prefer to label bishops as "active" or "inactive". I have ran across many situations where the bad bishop has been strong and the good bishop is pathetic.

alright, if this was one of our games, which i doubt it is, i take full responsibility and accept i played like a bitch. Anyway, whats wrong with my picture?

@Luke_Staden: http://www.chess.com/echess/game.html?id=16475324 says you are wrong to doubt this is one of your games.