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Isolated Pawn. Strength or weakness?

Isolated Pawn. Strength or weakness?

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One of the most typical of all pawn structures is the isolated pawn. This is the pawn that has got no friendly pawns on the sides. It can appear after a lot of openings f.e. The Tarrasch Defense, Queens Gambit Accepted or Caro-Kann Panov's Attack.

Usually, it is considered as a weakness because it cannot be defended by another pawn. But is that always true? Does it give any possibility to attack?

The pawn at the d5-square is the isolated pawn.

There are a couple of principles that you have to remember when it comes to that pawn structure when you play:

with an isolated pawn

  • push it forward
  • create the attack with your minor pieces

against the isolated pawn

  • exchange pieces (especially minor pieces)
  • block that pawn from moving forward

I made a Webinar on my Twitch channel about that topic, you can watch it here:

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