Pawn Pushing and Breaks

I've been playing chess for about two years and have a 1460 uscf rating and I play openings that usually lead to open games, but I have found that I struggle with closed positions. I have trouble knowing when to push pawns and how to break tension when there is some. Any tips?

If you imagine a chess game where capturing pawns is illegal, you'll probably quickly realize that it's a boring draw because to break into the opponent's position you'd have to sacrifice pieces.

A pawn break is (more or less) a move that forces an eventual pawn trade. So the primary function of pawn breaks is to open lines (files, diagonals, even ranks) for your other pieces to use... but of course the opponent can use them too. So as a rule of thumb, you open lines only in an area (queenside, center, or kingside) where you're ahead (or at least not behind!) in space, pieces, or both.

As an easy example, the french advance variation

Often in such a structure white seeks play on the kingside because he has a space advantage there and black seeks play in the center or queenside.

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That's the basics. It's hard to talk about what you're having trouble with without an example game or position.

Read "Pawn Power in Chess" by Kmoch.

One reason to wait on releasing the tension (or playing a pawn break or otherwise changing the structure) is that your improvement moves or maybe we could call them building moves (my terms) are better than the opponent's.

As an easy example lets say you're black and behind in development, but you have an extremely solid structure, something like this 

Black wants to play either c5 or e5, but if white is fully developed, and you're still 2 or 3 moves away, then of course you're going to wait, because your next 3 moves do more for your position than their next 3 moves will do for theirs. You're improving or building faster than them, so you should wait to start any action.

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This was a simple example. In other cases it's much harder to judge the timing of strategic moves, but this is sort of the basic question you're always asking yourself, other than, you know, are there any winning tactics

I know what pawn breaks are, but in this OTB game I played a few days ago against a lower rated opponent the analysis showed that there were many different pawn pushes and takes that would have given me an advantage in the middlegame instead of have a bad position.

I'm sorry for the confusion, but I was black.

Oh, you said there were many pushes and breaks that give you an advantage, and since black only really had 1 (16...cxd) and it was based on tactics (you lure the bishop to d4 then play dxc to win a pawn thanks to the discovered attack) I didn't think you were black.

But again, since the c and d files are likely to open in such structures (and since financhettoed bishops tend to dislike knights blocking them on c3/f3/c6/f6) the move 10...Nc6 was strange and bad.

And before you say this isn't about piece placement, you want to know about pawn breaks, that's the whole point. Pawn breaks activate pieces. If white opens the c and d files against awkwardly placed pieces on the queenside, then he'll be better.

Anyway, if there were other "pushes and pawn captures" besides move 16 that you were curious about let me know, that's all that really comes to mind for me for black.

Stockfish says that 5... c5 is -.5 for black instead of my move (Bb4), which is +.2 for white. Also, on move 15. there were multiple ways to gain the advantage (cxb4, cxd4, and dxc4 is about even), but I missed all of those and played the move that led to a disadvantage.

Oh, yeah, 5...c5 is nice. White's 4th move cut off protection of the d pawn.

But if white takes on c5 his knight looks dumb and would much rather be on c3 because it's blocking the d file. Yeah, c5 makes sense.

For example.

Study tactics more. Great Book of Chess Combination by Jozef Pinter