Most Common Mistakes: Facing Menacing Passed Pawns

Feb 4, 2015, 11:47 PM |

This is another game analysis report brought to you from the Move by Move Chess Improvement group

About every week I select 1 game from the Group Forum to be analyzed for my blog.

I want to thank sharcashmo for this submission.

First, the game without comments:

Now the game with comments:

This is our first stopping point. Black is playing very weird - how should we punish this reckless play?

White unfortunately missed this chance, falling for one of the most common mistakes a chess player can make: not checking to see if a tactic exists!

We continue on with the game:

After some craziness, White is up a pawn - but Black's d2 pawn looks menacing. What is the easiest way to proceed?

White missed this opportunity to activate the king and what ensued was not so clear:

We saw in this game some missed chances because of some miscalculations, then saw that we should not underestimate the power of passed pawns, especially when they reach the 7th rank. At this position they sometimes can be worth as much as a rook!

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