Pawn storms

Hi, I am a beginner to chess, so please don’t judge my play. I was just wondering how to defend against an enemy pawn storm. I always seem to blunder against them.

Thank you so much for your honest response 🙂!

In his defense its one thing to do tactics and its another thing to understand how to get it in those types of positions. As a beginner I'm seeing a different opening with each person I play. I had one guy this morning even use a Kadas opening on me. Not one person I've faced is using the queens gambit. Even though its out preferred opening. There's things I haven't seen beforehand that are pure nightmares.

I'd rather fe a pawnstorm than some of this I've been matched against. For me on pawnstorms most iveseen aren't as random as what was exampled here. If you can predict the pattern knights can get thru also I've been fiancettoing one or both of my bishops for diagonal attacks. I'll sacrifice a pawn to get some goodies off that back line.

Tactics. People know how I feel about the all day everyday gospel of it. In honesty I'm doing them on another site. I actually have 800+ rating on the hard setting. Gained 50 pts in one day. But as I said being in that position and getting there are two different things and I think its where the disconnect is for us low rated players. Maybe with time that gap should narrow. Hopefully. Cuz its sure stings when you lose and you analyze to find you made zero blunders and still lost. I have plenty of inaccuracies cuz I have been using the Pirc defense: small center defense as black and our analyzer hate it. Shes a tough girl though and she loves to get some. Lol... She kicks butt.

I do completely agree that a 2300+ tactics rating is not impressive if it does not reflect on your play. 

What you may consider are the criteria which make a pawn storm correct or playable. For instance, can the pawns be blocked (and submitted to attack), can the pawns be exchanged (and submitted to attack), are the pawns leaving weak squares (or lines) which can be used by the opponent to develop faster threats?

What you should also keep in mind is that advancing several pawns may either seek to restrict the space for the opponent's material, or to open lines for the own pieces (either by sacrificing the own pawns or by exchanging the opponent's pawns which are blocking the lines for the own pieces).

But, generally, it's a double-edge strategy, because the advancing pawns may lose control over critical squares (which can be used by the opponent to develop threats) and, more important, most pawn storms are not tempo-free, meaning the opponent may develop threats of his own using those tempos.

Several pawn storms (aimed to restrict the opponent's mobility, space or just to open lines) are valid because the opponent played passively or lacking a plan, leaving free-hands to develop threats because there's nothing to defend against.