Improve Your Chess with Pawns Adventures

Chess is about ideas. Everything else follows. Your moves on the board are just how you express those ideas. At least this is how it is supposed to be. The idea-less chess is like kicking the ball randomly into the air. Another word for idea-less is meaningless.

Chess is a game of ideas, not moves.

In the debate with GM Yasser Seirawan after Yaz publicly showed disgust for Nimzovich's ideas ("they were all rubish.") I cited from the CreativityPost 

Like the highly playful child with a pailful of Legos, [chess Masters] are constantly combining and recombining ideas, images and thoughts into different combinations in their conscious and subconscious minds.

Your chess skill thus critically relies on developing the right mental toolbox of concepts for better thinking. And your improvement decisively depends on how well to expand on and refine the repertoire of these subconscious mental models of thinking that you regularly use for making decisions at the board. At each turn. By contrast, you can study a certain opening and then happen to wait to face it on the board only after hundreds of games played.

What is then more beneficial for your improvement in chess? Working on better thinking patterns, or studying openings?

Last time I have explained the importance of these concepts for how well and how effectively and efficiently the chess player's thought process is working. Once again, here is how a method for developing a better toolbox of ideas might go. You

1) Pick one important chess topic you want to get better at,

2) Use deliberate practice (Ericsson) to grow your knowledge and understanding of the topic with all resources available (to me, the most helpful in this regard are the annotated games by the elite Grandmasters of the pre-engines era for their instructive and illuminating commentary (by Capa's, Alekhine, Keres, Bronstein, etc.), no matter how imperfect they may seem to you; what really matters is their deep conceptual insight expressed in plain English; of course, you may use the commentary of modern Super Grandmasters, too, but it tends to be infested by what engines "think" at the cost of a much more valuable view on how the thinking process of human experts really goes.)

3) Saturate your brain with the topic you have chosen and work on it until the concepts become deeply ingrained, part of your mental "thinking toolbox" that manages your unconscious and intuitive responses to all new experiences.

4) Pick next topic. Repeat ##2-3.

"Movement with no direction is a lost cause."

This graffiti philosophy is right, it is actually ideas that give us direction

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One of key topics that has particular relevance for enhancing your chess thinking skills is, well, ok, I may sound totally subjective here, Pawn Play!

Through studying this exciting topic, there is an opportunity for you, a chess player, to grasp and acquire valuable knowledge of many basic concepts of chess. For example, in the example below you may get an acquaintance with all these concepts, the weak squares, strong piece outpost, weak pawn, backward pawn, pawn lever, line opening, piece activation, small tactics, fixing a weakness, two-weaknesses principle, etc.

It is true, any of the above more basic concepts can be chosen as a topic for improvement on its own. You can safely go that way down the road for improvement, or you can follow the Adventurous Pawns by combining multiple concepts in one package.

Here is an exploration of exemplary pawn practice. Chess infantrymen do their best to score a win for Korchnoi. Watch how a smart pawn play leads the entire army to a victory!

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Viktor KORCHNOI (URS) - Gedeon STAHLBERG (SWE), Bucharest, 1953

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Let's assess the situation on the board. The three black pieces are protecting the weak backward pawn on e6. Yet, there is still balance of forces of attack and defense.

The key strategic weaknesses in the Black's camp are the squares c5 and e5. White is in full control over these critical points. Furthermore, White has the formidable c5-outpost for his Knight that has no real counterpart (the c8-Bishop - Stahlberg was a great expert on the French - is restricted by its own pawns.) Black can do nothing to dispose of the Knight. The only option to get rid of this embarrassing Knight would be to do an exchange sacrifice. 

At the same time, Black has no visible prospects for improving his position whatsoever, or any real hopes for a counterattack.

Now, this is a far-reaching question we all should ask ourselves when we get in a situation like this one where there is a couple of positional advantages, yet it is not clear how to proceed. How to tip the scales? How to upset the current balance in your favor to rip the benefits of the work done so far? 

This is quintessentially a question of highest strategic importance. Typically, the way to proceed for realization of advantage is to change the topography of battlefield in order to regroup and to allow the men to make the full use of their power. On whose shoulders lies this critical responsibility? The Pawns'. As a rule, the favorable change in pawn structure normally does the job well! Remember, without pawns there is no strategy. Strategy is the pawn play by default!

The White's plan consists of making use of the c5-stronghold and weak dark-squared complex to make an intrusion into the enemy territory.

Again, the White's pawns have the key responsibility of achieving this objective. 

41.g5!

Restricts Black even more and prevents 41...h6. In this way, White fixes the h7-pawn creating another weakness in Black's position. The further plan is clear, White wants to advance his h-pawn and open the h-file for his Rooks so they can penetrate Black's rear.

41...Bd7 42.h4 Ke7 43.Kd3 axb4 44.axb4 Ra3

Sadly, the only available intrusion point for Black can't really be of much help. 

45.h5! Kf7 46.Rh2

Korchnoi avoids unnecessary complications arising after the N/B trade.

46...gxh5 47.Rxh5 Kg8

An attempt to get the Bishop to the game along the route Bd7-e8-g6-f5 and impose a blockade on the White's f-pawn comes too late. With his next move White crushes all hopes for Black. It is another mighty pawn move!

48.f5! Rxc5

Desperation. If 48...exf5, then 49.Re7 is decisive.

49.bxc5 b4 50.fxe6 Be8 51.Rh2 bxc3 52.Kd4 Bg6 53.e7 Ra8 54.Kxc3 Be4 55.Rf2!

White threatens to first trade rooks, then give his Re1 for Be4, transposing into a won pawn endgame. 

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The heroic deeds of the f-g-h pawn trio helped White convert his positional advantage into a win. Most operations in chess require careful management of pawn structure. Strategic thinking, piece activation and their best placement, attack and defense, they all are inextricably connected to effective command of chess infantry, the Pawns.   

Thanks for watching the Pawns Adventures! See you next time.

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