Illegal positions cannot be analyzed
In 1749 André Philidor announced that pawns were the “soul of chess”. Nobody really understood what he was talking about at the time, but 160 years later Emanuel Lasker explained Philidor’s comment this way:
The pawn being much more stationary than the pieces, is an element of the structure, the way the array of pawns is placed determines the character of a position and hence also the plan appropriate to it.
Lasker was pointing out something that every master is now well aware of: that the placement of the pawns is one of the most important factors to take into consideration when choosing a strategy. Philidor called pawns the soul of chess because their state determines the plan you will follow. In this chapter, we examine the different types of pawn structures and the strategies that are typically followed because of them.
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