Return to Chess 6---When Your Opponent Has a Passed Pawn

Hey, everyone.  So, today was a tough day for chess.  Unfortunately, I was unable to solve my tactics in the warmup, and that led to 2 training games in which my opponent smoked me, leaving me to ask myself only one question: What are you doing?

Thankfully, I feel as if I was able to extract knowledge from the losses, especially the second one, in which my opponent was able to establish a pawn deep in my territory and win.  Throughout my chess career, I can think of many instances in which I have been burned time and time again by pesky passed pawns, and I believe that these two examples show what I can do differently to improve.

According to Aron Nimzowitsch, the Danish GM and famous author of My System, uses a shrewd metaphor about passed pawns: 

"A passed pawn is a criminal which should be kept under lock and key. Mild measures, such as police surveillance, are not sufficient."

Personally, I feel as if I have been one of those lazy cops that you see in movies that eat donuts all day and don't actually fight crime when it comes to passed pawns.  Firstly, here's an example from my second game against my friend Oliver, in which I had the lead, but slowly lost it due to the timely advance of a passed pawn:

A second example of a game that I should have won by blockading a passed pawn is the most recent one I played:

So, the next time my opponent has a passed pawn, I'll remind myself of these two tough losses and take more caution, blockading it to the fullest extent.

Jack