Isolated Pawn: Strong or Weak?
Here is a game from the 2008 World Senior Championship, GM Jansa - GM Westerinen with full annotations and commentary:
This game is a clear example to dismiss the myth that isolated pawns are always weak and should be feared. In this game white willingly entered into a late middlegame with an isolated pawn but it turned out to be a strong passed pawn which posed black problems which resulted in the opponent making some mistakes to have to sacrifice material to stop the isolated passed pawn which eventually resulted in a lost game.
When we are playing out own games we should be more open minded about isolated pawns and not always fear them. Sometimes isolated pawns can be strong rather than weak and can actually pose the opponent some problems as it did in the game above.
