Taking Advantage of Backward Pawns

Recommended Elo: 1000-1800

Backward pawns are a common pawn weakness, created by pushing too many pawns or as a concession in the position. Because of this, it is important to study how to take advantage of such weakness and exploit it to its fullest potential in your games.

Firstly, what is a backwards pawn? A backwards pawn (will be calling it BP from now on) is a pawn with no pawns to defend it, and it is unable to be pushed forward.

In diagram 1 black's d6 pawn is a BP as it has no pawns to defend it and it is unable to push forward because of white's control infront of the pawn (the d5 square). 

In diagram 2 black's d6 pawn is no longer backwards as there is a c7 pawn defending it. Rather white's pawn on d3 is backwards as it has no pawns to defend it (the pawns next to it are pushed passed it) additionally the pawn is unable to push forward as the square is controlled by blacks pawn on e5.

NOTE: backward pawns do not have to be blockaded with a pawn, pieces are equally effective, if not more.

Punishing Backward Pawns

Now that we know what BPs look like and that they are a weakness the logical follow-up question is how to punish such weakness. Firstly, it is important to control the square infront of the BP as this will disable the opponent from pushing it forward and possibly to safety. Secondly, because the BP has no brother pawns to defend it, we should attack the BP to either gain a material advantage or an activity advantage as typically when an opponent defends a BP they become passive (see game 1; black became very passive trying to defend his BP).

Now that we have a general plan on how to punish BP, lets look at a game I played recently that shows how to punish BP. While you go through this game take note how each move followed the general plan of blockading the BP and then attacking the pawn in the later stage of the game.

Game 1

I also put these games into a library so you can use it for future reference.

Recap

Backward pawns are a common pawn weakness and should be studied carefully. You should blockade the square infront of backwards pawns and later attack the backward pawn, of course this is a general plan and you should consider the full position.