I thought that taking the pawn , would bring the knight forward, creating some other problems, so I pushed the pawn to c5, but its a blunder. Why? Also , what topic should I look into to better understand why such moves are blunder and make better pawn moves. To me , it doesn't seem that wrong, but apparently its a blunder and I even won the game.
Why is c5 bad in this position? Also, how to know why such moves are bad?
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Oct 25, 2023
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#2
Black has just played the c6 pawn to c5?
You are usually correct about not letting your opponent improve their pieces (like bringing their Knight forward on that recapture). However, there are two key things here.
The first one is that in this case, further calculation would reveal that this actually wins you material and this is probably why the computer considered that move a "blunder"
I didn't use an engine, but the line I calculate is: ...cxb5 Nxb5 ...Nxe4 Bxe7 ...Qxe7 and at least for now black looks to be a pawn up from the beginning of that line (since they won the e4 pawn).
The second thing is that the ...c5 move makes the d6 pawn "backwards" and a potentially weak target. With the advance of ...c5, now the d5 square is a "hole."
I made a video several months ago on the basics behind this. In that video, the pawn weaknesses were in front of a castled King (which makes things worse), but this is similarly weakening for the same reason. Generally speaking, it is better to avoid pawn moves because they can't move back like pieces can; or phrased another way, you must be more sure about the value of advancing pawns because you can "undo" a pawn advance, whereas pieces can always retreat.