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Pros for playing with isolated pawn
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Pros for playing with isolated pawn

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CM SharankovG
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I am a club chessplayer , with +/- 2200 FIDE rating . I have been playing chess for nearly 26 years, but I am not so old ( now 34) and still have big chess ambitions!

Nevertheless when I try to analyze what stopped me to become a better chess player in the past, I can find two main answers:

1. Lack of knowledge

2. Lack of practice

When two years ago I started my chess preparation revision, I found that during all the time - I was playing the same positions from game to game, from tournament to tournament. My repertoire was stable, but very narrow . It was not too bad of course. Playing the same openings on regular basis gave me a feeling of comfort and soundness. I couldn't been trapped into the Opening surprise, and very often even got pleasant middlegames versus stronger opponents.

But on the other hand, I was witnessing how other chessplayers successfully play different types of positions, I even had never tried in my life. And only to satisfy my natural interest I decided to try to play something new. When I say new type of position, I don't mean only "NEW OPENING". Yeah I played a lot of them, but they were quite similar with each other. 

And again collective work with my pupils inspired me , why not to try to play with ISOLATED PAWN?

Isolated pawn is not a very easy idea to understand in 5 seconds. But what I think is very important, that when we are young players, most of chess coaches say that "isolated pawn is a weakness" or " try not to organise isolated pawns during the middlegame, or opening stage", and so on. These words can so deeply ingrain in our memory, that we will try to escape isolanies till the end of our chess life.

Literally, it was and my case too. After investigating some theory with my older pupils I decided to start a new page of my chess story. I played blitz online, tried in real rapid tournaments, but the very first game with classical chess control earned me a wonderful win.

Why it happened so, that black could organize such attack in the early opening stage?
It was all possible due to the main BONUS while playing with isolated pawn -ACTIVITY OF PIECES!
Usually there is hardly a piece, that can not find an active place in this type of positions.

For those who got interested, I must say that there are many opening variations, that lead to isolated pawn structure. But I want to focus attention on positions similar with my game.

The last game I want to share with you has the same trap. But I want to show it because of two reasons. The first, that it is reached after the French Defence move order (my favourite black opening), so if you don't know what to play by white, you can analyse Exchange variation. And the second is, that the player who played the black pieces is my teammate and a good friend,  by that time very talented estonian youngster -Kirill Chukavin (currently FM,2348).

He had beaten my French Defence for many times in real tournaments, so I can't miss the opportunity to avenge myself meh.png

These games don't fully represent the idea of playing with isolated pawn, but what was very important for my, is that I had discovered a new destination in my chess improvement. And I no longer afraid of playing with isolated pawns.

And what about you? Hope for your comments.

Till next article.

Grigoriy Sharankov