Destroying Staggered Pawn Walls-- with Inspo from a Chess Variant

Table of Contents

Analyzing the Pawn Wall

How to Dismantle the Pawn Wall

How Horde Reflects these Ideas

Closing Notes and a Puzzle

Analyzing the Pawn Wall

Before we venture off into figuring out how to defeat it, let's flip the board around and see what our opponent sees- obviously their playing it for a reason.

So we'll start off with a diagram of what it looks like from the other side. Note that while this shows all of the pawns on the dark squares, all of the pawns could very well be on the light squares.

Take a good look at that diagram. We first need to come up with some strengths and weaknesses of this pawn wall.

Starting with what it does for our opponent, we can see it has some space benefits, but not really anything else. As for the downsides, the dark-squared bishop is blocked, as well as the kingside knight. Also since all of the pawns are moved forward, the king won't be particularly safe no matter where it goes.

Now we can look at what it allows for us. We can tell that the light squares are extremely vulnerable, especially the "pockets" formed by the advance of two pawns past their adjacent pawns. See the diagram:

Notice how the weak squares, "holes", are easily reachable in two moves by our knight. They also would provide brilliant outposts because the pawns that could attack them have advanced too far to do so.

There are some difficulties we face, though. Pawn breaks/storms are slowed down and have to be thought of carefully, and some will just open lines for our opponent to improve their development. Our dark squared bishop becomes basically useless, as it can't reach any of the backward pawns without a sacrifice. 

Now that we have these listed out it'd be helpful to list these in a table:

Now take a look at that list. Is there any reason for us to be struggling? No! When looking at it under a microscope, they're just giving us the win!

So why are we losing? Is it a physiological problem? It horrifies me so much I freak out and get crushed? Like against the Bongcloud? Maybe. But it also could be that you just have no idea what to do against it. Like the Bongcloud.

Speaking of, we can figure out what to do against it. With our table laying out the weaknesses we need to utilize to our advantage, it becomes clear how we defeat it! On to the next section!

 How to Dismantle the Pawn Wall

So, as stated before, our table pretty much gives us our checklist of how to dismantle the pawn wall. First, we should start with removing our opponent's threats. After we do that, they don't have much to do with all of their pieces being blocked in. 

We can't do much about their space problem except to advance our own pawns. However, we'd waste tempi and give ourselves the same problems as our opponent-- not the goal here. The problem of the pawn storm defense doesn't mean anything either- only if we later plan to pawn storm would that achieve anything. And it's more of the same with the blockage of our dark-squared bishop. Every pawn is blocking it, so there isn't much we can do.

But shockingly, this just leaves time for us to get right into the good stuff-- taking advantage of their weaknesses. This is simple enough to do. We want our knights to get into those juicy holes, our bishops to take over the free diagonals, and to finish it off, why don't we bring our queen out early?

Bringing the queen out isn't a bad idea for several reasons. Sure, as a newbie they tell you not to, but that's because it's easily attacked and its attacks are easily defended. However, this situation is different. They have a lot of weak pawns and an open king, and because of their pawns blocking their piece development, it's hard for them to kick our queen. So, why not bring it out?

Now that you've read a lot, let's simplify it into a diagram. Something like this:

How Horde Reflects these Ideas

Now, please welcome the most esteemed variant...

HORDE!!!

Ok, jokes aside, I'm sure you've at least played a game of horde before, right? If you haven't, it's perfectly fine. Horde is a fairly uncommon variant, but you can play it here if you'd like to try it out first, or get a refresher on how it works.

Basically, one player has a bunch of pawns, and the other has a normal set up. Here's a look:

As you might've guessed, it's called horde because white has a horde of pawns.

Now this isn't a lecture about Horde, rather a tale of how this variant relates to what we've been discussing. "But this doesn't look anything like what we've been discussing!!!" Yes, I know. But take a closer look.

White tries to checkmate black, usually by promoting their pawns. Black has to get rid of all of white's pieces & pawns. If we pretend that black is us, and white is the opponent with the pawn wall, there is one common goal for us to achieve: take advantage of the weaknesses the pawns can make.

If the white player makes too many weaknesses with their pawns, black just has to use its forces to attack the pawn. The more and more pawns that fall, the weaker the white army gets because of its one strength: numbers. If the pawns are no longer protecting each other, than black gets an easy win.

Correlating it to the pawn wall, our opponent has already created weaknesses. The diagram that showed an ideal set up showed how easy it is to apply pressure to weak (and backward) pawns. And it reveals the king's cover, a double whammy!

See the point? I hope so. Maybe a few games of Horde will help, because spotting all of the ways to weaken the opponent's pawn army will definitely translate over to classic chess.

Closing Notes and a Puzzle

Thanks for taking the time to read this blog! I hope you got something out of it!

I know you might not face these kinds of situations every day-- but who knows? Don't forget that it can apply to several different situations, even just a simple pawn chain can fall to similar techniques in the endgame.

Just to review, let's get in one quick puzzle: