Deliberately doubling your pawns

Whenever we think of maintaining a good pawn structure, we often believe that it should be connected, at least 2 pawn islands, but no "weaknesses":

Maybe an open file or something like that, but above is what we often think of when we hear "Good" pawn structures. But at almost no point do we consider doubled pawns to be part of these "Good" pawn structures. "Well, but these pawns cannot support each other, so they cannot possibly be good." Well, below you will often see very strong players (in the ruy lopez) committing the pawn structure below. And in fact, the doubled pawns are the whole point of why this pawn structure is so strong:

Here, if the pawns were not doubled and white still had a d pawn, black could easily strike at the centre. However, with doubled pawns, a R on the d file makes it very hard to strike a pawn break in the centre. Of course, there often is also a N on c3 as well as the R on the d file to stop the pawn break, but it still just shows how doubled pawns can actually improve your pawn structure! So, I have shown a rather solid pawn structure, but doubled pawns cannot exactly attack other pawns, as they are not connected to support each other, right? Wrong! Doubled pawns can still be used as an offensive weapon as shown below:

Well, but in that position, black was forced into having doubled pawns, but it wasn't actually bad for black at all. Deliberately doubling pawns, though may feel weird, can actually help more than not as in the game below:

So as you can see, the most common way that doubled pawns are truly a complete weakness is when they are unconnected to neighbouring pawns. As they are unconnected, it means that they both are unprotected and therefore weak. However when connected to a neighbour, at least one is defended and therefore the other may be useful for keeping a pawn cover, initiating a pawn break, etc.

So as you can see, doubled pawns are not as bad at all as you think. So you may keep them in your list of "Good" pawn structures now

btw, my opp's youtube channel (it is in Russian) in the game at the end:

https://www.youtube.com/@citychessuz/featured

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xPGErvCXmlg

His game had 5 brilliant moves (but looks a little bit suspicious with 98% accuracy)

For those wanting to watch the Russian videos, turn on subtitles auto-generated in English, thanks I found it very useful!

those aren't mine. they are my opp's

sometimes you may even take with pawn to have more control over some squares and to open e-file for your R! However, if you are not going to double pawns, I will say take with N if the N cannot reach any good squares. If it can reach good squares, take with B to keep diagonal under pressure. If another B is on the same diagonal directly staring at your B (if not for piece you are about to capture being in the way), take with N

oh. Ye, if you want to restrict any counter play from opponent and activate R along e file, take with pawn. If you want to hold pressure on a diagonal (and only when a pawn is not blocking the diagonal), taking with B

looks interesting