The irreversible decisions of the chess board - pawns cannot go backwards!

Hi all

It may seem like a simple observation to make but it is an important one -

Pawns do not go backward.

With a knight move, you can reroute, and go back as many times as you want to depend on the position of course. But in theory, a knight can do all sorts of reversing and probing maneuvers.

Pawns are less flexible. It was a major emphasis of British GM David Norwood when he gave a club lecture to emphasise this fact of pawns being the irreversible decisions of the chessboard, rather than showing some flashy tactics.

Here is an interesting Tal game where Sveshnikov played a rather risky looking g5 move:

The interesting thing about pawns, in general, is that if they lose the support of their fellow pawns, then additional pressures and responsibilities are put onto pieces. Pieces, in general, want to do active fun stuff and not just have to be responsible for protecting key squares or pawns.

There is a famous quotation about the Isolated Queen's pawn:

“The isolated Pawn casts gloom over the entire chessboard.” - Nimzovich

Tarrasch who seemed to be a bitter rival of Nimzovich kind of countered this with:

"He who fears an isolated Queen's Pawn should give up Chess" - Tarrasch

As an aside, having a bitter rival like Nimzovich/Tarrasch or Karpov/Kasparov or Korchnoi/Petrosian may be a good motivation to maximise one's chess in order to ensure one's quotations trump one's rivals through one's results etc. Just don't kick each other under the table when you play each other!

Anatoly Karpov (a more positionally motivated player than tactical player) noted the importance of pawns with a famous quotation:

“Pawns not only create the sketch for the whole painting, they are also the soil, the foundation, of any position.” - Anatoly Karpov

In a general sense, if pieces have to work hard to protect weak pawns and weak squares, then things can get very passive and very tricky, and more difficult to play. It can become increasingly difficult for the pieces to do the defensive requirements needed. And the entire position can become overloaded or even worse be heading for some kind of zugzwang or losing material or the King getting checkmated.

Tal was quite quick to punish Sveshnikov for a further inaccuracy made and pounced with a classic Bxe6 sacrifice:

Now with the threat of Qg6+ Black quickly collapsed.

Of course pawns around one's king are especially sensitive for potentially losing the game instantly due to being checkmated. But even if the King wasn't around, when you do committal pawn moves, they do require consideration if you could have been more resourceful and uses pieces rather than pawns. It is almost akin to "hard-coding" in programming terms something which is difficult to change later.

When we think about projects in general in other domains there is the principle of the "Last responsible moment" for making certain key decisions. When we think about pawns and in particular "pawn breaks", there is often scope for preparing such breaks at the "best moment" so you will not regret your decision. Preparation of liberational pawn breaks is an art within the art of chess. I remember fondly Michael Adams slowly preparing pawn breaks against more tactical British opponents, who just could not possibly defend after those breaks were made. For example, slowly preparing f5 just like Leela would against a French Defence structure. In my view, Leela Chess and now Stockfish NN are also masters of pawn breaks and how they can be effectively-prepared.

Liberational Pawn Breaks - not "Li-Chess" but "Li-Pieces"!

Pawn moves even attractive ones which seem to liberate pieces, can often be more and more prepared so their effectiveness is maximised.

Often the Neural Network Leela was seemingly played 20 or more moves to prepare a strategic pawn break. Sometimes it can be quicker though such as the following example of an e5 pawn break:

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

The Benoni, in particular, seems to be prone to a thematic e5 pawn break, and even the likes of Mikhail Tal has suffered shock defeats when such an e5 pawn break has been well prepared and implemented e.g. in the game Penrose vs Tal:

Reversibility is not an option

So pawn moves, once committed cannot be reversed. It is one of those types of moves that a good annotator in my view, would add extra commentary to explain why such a committal move needed to be played if it did indeed weaken squares or other pawns.

Pawns are the "irreversible decisions of the chessboard". Now if you are a Paul Morphy type and play the King's gambit then maybe you just like to sacrifice pawns and destroy the opponent's King as a general rule. Pawns can be seen as a more constraining feature of the position. Pawns may be seen as just getting in the way. This is a more "Romantic era" view of pawns, where certain key gambits were used quite frequently like the King's Gambit or the Evans Gambit.

As Stean indicates:

"The primary constraint on a piece's activity is the Pawn structure." - Stean

But to a positional player who is more like to use more closed "positional" openings, then the pawns act as a kind of storage unit for accumulating small advantages. And every pawn move could be potentially weakening fatally a key square in the strategic battle that ensues out of such openings.

Can one player be on both sides of the pawn philosophy fence?

One such player who was on both sides of the fence here was the first World champion Wilhelm Steinitz. Earlier in his career, he was a romantic dashing player who saw pawns more as a constraint of the pieces. Later on, he developed the "Accumulation of advantages" principles, and to demonstrate those principles often played more quiet positional openings. Being a magazine writer he could also show off his new principles and the quite often one-way battles against Romantic-era players not having much counterplay and not realising they were losing the "accumulation of advantages" war that the pawn structure acted as the "storage container" for. Steinitz basically created the "chess periodic table" of elements that could be accumulated. Things such as:

• The bishop pair
• Better pawn structure
• Weak squares or pawns
• Piece activity
• King safety
• etc

Some of these elements are more "accumulative" than others and the pawns help store such advantages in a longer-term sense.

In general, though, be careful with your pawn moves - especially pawns around your King!

The final position of Tal vs Sveshnikov:

Of course, when playing against me, feel free to experiment with pawn moves around your King. I need the tournament points :)

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Key takeaway points

• Be careful with pawn moves
• Be even more careful with pawn moves near your King
• Pawn moves are like the irreversible decisions of the chessboard
• Even lucrative pawn breaks can often be better prepared to make them more effective
• More dynamic tactical players may see pawns more as "Getting in the way of pieces"

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Hope you enjoyed this blog :). Any likes and follows are really appreciated. Also, I also have some interesting chess courses at https://kingscrusher.tv/chesscourses to check out.

Cheers, K