Countering players who use pawns to shut down activity?

Hi everyone.

I have realized that if someone is very aggressive with my pawns (ei. lots of pawn moves in the opening), it just completely shuts my game down. It's extremely frustrating, especially when the computer says the moves that are making it so difficult for me to play are usually mistakes.

I feel like a sitting duck playing against these guys. A lot of the time, it feels like I am restricted to moving my pieces around the first three ranks while my opponent has tons of space to maneuver their pieces, poke holes in my defense, or just whatever they want to do really.

I've put some games at the end of this post which illustrate what I am talking about. I try developing, but ultimately they advance their pawns and I just have nowhere else to move my pieces. They just circle me with their pieces until I make a mistake or I make some unsound sacrifice for activity that just doesn't work.

I know I didn't play very well in any of these games (for example, I blundered a won game). However, my point is that my play was uncharacteristically poor. I felt completely paralyzed by my opponent's pawns. Any advice would be very appreciated.

I'm also curious. What play-styles do you hate playing against? Are there certain types of positions where you feel extremely uncomfortable? And lastly, do you seek these games out (would you rematch over and over as I did above)?

Lol pawn storms are very scary when you start off playing. You try pawn storming against the computer and watch it tear you apart. Just learn a good opening and follow the line until they blunder (which they will if they keep moving just pawns) and then pick them off from there. For example I play stonewall and when the lower level guys would pawn storm me I would be able to get a check in with the white Bishop that forces the King to move, from there I can fork with the knight and dominate.

I do know a few openings (kind of) for both white and black, but it's useless when they are playing like this. In the first game, my opponent had only made TWO non-pawn moves by move twelve. What theory can I possibly learn that is going to help against that?

I think the most important thing to remember is that you probably suck.  Once you accept that, get a haircut and brush your teeth.  Learning how to cook in any capacity will also help you retain the energy needed to get any decent at chess.

@av1e if only 2 of the first 12 are non pawn moves, your opponent has blundered, hence you should be capitalising on it. This is why they're scary to new players, you don't realise you're winning the game at that point.

In that first game you was crushing your opponent until move 19. For some reason you hung your black bishop.

At a lower level you should learn to counter the inherently weak openings... Pawn storms, Danish, Knight Sac, Early Queen... Learn a strong opening, and learn why its stronger than those I've listed. Then you can easily defeat them and progress your play.

Develop your pieces and then play a pawn break. When you open lines with a pawn break it will favor the side with better development.

Yes, for example in the game you give away your knight on move 14.

Giving away knights is a much bigger mistake than moving a lot of pawns in the opening.

Maybe you were trying to rush things because you felt like you should be able to win material right away. Even really bad openings don't usually let you win big amount of material very early. Instead of doing that try to stay calm and just keep improving your pieces and trying to open lines.

I don't like positions where it feels like the advantage can be gained or lost due to calculation skills. Calculation is really boring to me. I'd rather be winning because my position is fundamentally better. Static advantages like pawn structure.

Would I rematch an opponent to get more experience in these sorts of games? I guess it depends on my mood. But I'd definitely spend a while analyzing the game afterwards to try and understand which positions I misunderstood and why.

Always try to remember that every time someone pushes a pawn they are creating weaknesses on their side of the board. Outposts for your knights and so forth. If your fully developed and they have mostly only moved pawns you should be able to spot some good tactics or maybe even mating ideas. So yeah...just keep that in mind and try to capitalize on the weaknesses they are creating. 

I'm doing this so I get an achievement

You cannot meet pawn expansion, even unsound expansion, with only simple development. His advancing pawns with push your pieces aside. You need to play pawn breaks--particularly with your center (c-f) pawns. Often is is right to even sacrifice a pawn or two to tear the center open and get at his king. If your opponent is pushing his flank pawns forward, when the center opens up his king will be terribly exposed.

This seems to be the "motif" I have been missing. I am bad at not only recognizing when a pawn break is needed, but also setting them up and executing them. Thank you so much for your advice everyone! If anyone knows of any master games where pawn breaks were used to great effect feel free to share.

Pawn breaks are important, and happen in every game.

As a simple example, in a French advance structure (below)

It's very important for black to play the pawn break c5. Black sometimes also plays f6.

Pawn breaks open lines. "Open" means removing pawns and "lines" mean files ranks and diagonals. So a pawn break is a move that will force pawns to come off the board.

If we imagine a chess game where it was against the rules for pawns to capture each other, it's easy to imagine that most games would end in a draw, because you couldn't really attack your opponent without sacrificing something.

So by making a pawn capture unavoidable (either white will capture black's c5 pawn, or black will capture white's d4 pawn soon) black opens lines.

As a rule of thumb, you want to open lines where you have more space or active pieces. Notice how black's central pawn chain "points" to the queenside, so that's where black will play his pawn break.

In games where your opponent is shoving a lot of pawns forward early you can do the opposite to good effect... you can open lines on your "opponent's" side (so to speak) because he has no development there.

Here's a game of mind I posted in a different forum. I'm white. In the game white is the one who has an attack on the kingside. Black's pawn moves there are meaningless. So on moves 9 and 12 I'm gesturing to open lines there.

Thank you very much for your in-depth post. This makes me realize I already do consciously use pawn breaks in my games, and I know if I have a lead in development I should go for a pawn break since it will likely grant my (developed) pieces more activity than my opponent's (undeveloped) pieces. I guess the thing I truly lack is the patience to just develop my pieces and go for a pawn break when the time is ripe.

Looking back at the games from my original post, it's pretty embarrassing how clear the lack of patience is. I didn't even castle in two of the games even though I had plenty of time (and in the last game I waited so long to castle that by the time I did my king was better off in the center). In the moment, I knew my opponent's pawn moves were good for me, so I figured I should be able to just instantly win material. Very immature...

Thanks again everyone.

I know it's not helpful to come up with a bizarre exception, but here we have a reasonable opening where black has made only two non-pawn moves in first thirteen moves,  It's been played between 2500+ players, and the engine even thinks black is slightly beter.

I take solace in the fact that others have offered actaully useful advice (especially "Develop your pieces and then play a pawn break. When you open lines with a pawn break it will favor the side with better development.").

Also, the piece sacrifices in the first couple of games you posted suggest you're getting frustrated.  Slow down and don't try to force things.  Especially if you're better developed, you have time to prepare a useful pawn break.  That will work vastly better than trying to hack your way through their pawns with pieces.

Study Pawn Structure Chess by Andrew Soltis

The general rule to counter flank attack is break the centre.

The move you played in opening are not impressive. At move 3, best counter should be 3. ...c5. 3.....e6 is acceptable but there could be better move like e5 straight by doing 

3......c5

4.......Nc6

5......e5( e5 is not usually considered  when white played d4 and  Nf3 , but your opponent ignore the centre, so you have chance to control centre with e5)

Move 6.......Nc6?? was a bad move that block your own "c" pawn to c5.

Do you need to scare with g4?. Not at all, if he push further with g5, there is Nh5, g6 etc.