Generally I try to create a "classic" center with my two middle pawns and then move my pieces behind/around them. I rarely move any of the pawns on my kingside castle area, which leaves only a few pawns to maneuver. However, I have no idea what to do with them.

Early in the game I only focus on getting my pieces developed, and I've noticed that towards the middle of the game my pawns are pretty much rendered obsolete. I feel like this is holding me back against average opponents (I'd say I'm below average online...but I crush my friends...) who create some pretty annoying pawn structures that really reduce my mobility (especially when I'm black).

So I'm curious about what you guys try to use pawns to accomplish (and at what point in the game you concentrate on this). They seem to be extremely effective at limiting your opponens' ease of moving throughout the board; but I have no idea what I'm doing.

Maybe you could post a sample game where you find that your pawns are useless? It is hard to give general ideas.

For example, you might use pawns as sacrifices to open files if you play very open games. Or if the pawn structure is blocked, you might do slow pawn advances. It's really difficult to say.

Make sure you're aware of what the "normal" pawn weaknesses are. e.g. isolated pawns, doubled pawns, and so on.

Look, the pawns man, in the game, they get capped quick, they be out the game early.

Ya I'm aware of these weaknesses, which is part of the reason I'm posting this. Generally I just have 3 pawns sitting there on the side not doing much until the very end of the game where I might use them to "upgrade." So Even if one becomes isolated, it means nothing to me since I pretty much don't end up using it.

But I've noticed that people who integrate their pawns into their defense are extremely annoying to play against.

Game example? Chess is best learned by examples, imo. It's why I post my serious games, because it's great to have more experienced people pointing things out.

This could be your problem. You should generally view your pawns as an offensive force. Pawns must be used aggressively. They're the most effective means of opening lines, squares, diagonals, etc for you to bring in the big support.

I think a decent idea here would be to just watch a bunch of very strong players play blitz. Just pay attention to how they use their pawns. It's far from defensively!

What timeframe is considered "blitz"?

It feels like my opponents use pawns defensively because they make it very difficult to move any of my pieces onto their half of the board without lots of casualties. In other words, they make it really difficult to find/create holes in their defense.

I was thinking of 5 0, or even 3 0. Just go on ICC if you have an account there (free trial if you don't) and type "follow *f" - that will automatically keep observing the highest rated ongoing 5-minute game. I think using pawns defensively has an analogy in poker. In poker, at the very beginning everybody just wants to try to 'play defensively' and just try to make a hand and show it down. It's when you begin to improve that you find what pays is to take advantage of this tendency and start getting more aggressive. And the exact same is true of chess.

I was going to post a thread about this too, same problem for me. I'll look through some games later and post one where it applies. The problem is explained pretty well in general, basically we develop our pieces after moving 2 pawns out of the way and then start attacking, etc, and end up with all of our pawns on the original rank in end games.

Look at my pawns in the middle of this game, for instance. I probably lost this due to blunders (I suck) but what are my pawns doing? Should I have moved them at some point?

[Event "Let's play chess"]
[Site "http://gameknot.com/chess.pl?bd=11575527"]
[Date "2009.05.07"]
[Round "-"]
[White "vixticator"]
[Black "breaknrun"]
[Result "1-0"]
[WhiteElo "1163"]
[BlackElo "1191"]
[TimeControl "1/259200"]
[Mode "ICS"]
[Termination "normal"]

1. e4 c5 2. Nf3 d6 3. d4 cxd4 4. Nxd4 Qa5+ 5. Bd2 Qb6
6. Nb3 Nf6 7. Nc3 g6 8. Qf3 Bg7 9. Bb5+ Bd7 10. Be3 Qc7
11. Bxd7+ Nbxd7 12. O-O O-O 13. Qe2 a6 14. Bg5 b5 15. Bxf6 Bxf6
16. Nd5 Qc4 17. Nxf6+ Nxf6 18. Qd3 Qxd3 19. cxd3 e6 20. Rac1 Nd7
21. Nd2 Ne5 22. d4 Nd3 23. Rc6 Rfd8 24. b3 Nb4 25. Rc7 Nxa2
26. f4 Nb4 27. f5 exf5 28. exf5 Nd5 29. Rcc1 g5 30. f6 Nf4
31. Nf3 Ne2+ 32. Kh1 Nxc1 33. Nxg5 Nxb3 34. Rf4 a5 35. Rh4 Rde8
36. h3 Re1+ 37. Kh2 Rd1 38. Rxh7 Rxd4 39. Rg7+ Kf8 40. Ne6+ Ke8
41. Nc7+ Kd7 42. Rxf7+ Kc6 43. Nxa8 Rf4 44. Rc7+ Kd5 45. Nb6+ Ke6
46. Re7+ Kxf6 47. Nd5+ Kf5 48. Nxf4 Kxf4 49. h4 Kg4 50. g3 a4
51. Re4+ Kh5 52. Kh3 a3 53. g4+ Kh6 54. g5+ Kh5 55. Re6
1-0

One thing I saw was that at move 20, you have a golden opportunity to move 20. d4. That way, your pawns are being damn useful instead of being a potential weakness. The pawns on d4 and e4 control a load of squares, which means that his knight will have difficulty finding places to go. By not controlling squares, you basically let his knight do whatever he wants.

... or maybe 20. Rc6 would win a pawn, meh

Anyway, the theme is that you want your pawns to control a lot of squares, but to be well defended at the same time.

Your 26. f4 and 27. f5 is a good example of using pawns at clearance (I haven't looked to see whether it works tactically or not). If instead of 29. Rcc1 you did Rb7, you could either provoke pawn weaknesses (...g4) or have an attackable target at f7. Remember that the goal of your f5 move is to create attackable weaknesses.

Also remember that having a rook on the seventh rank is good and don't retreat it voluntarily

After 29...g5, you can immediately put pressure on his weak pawns by doing Ne4 and then Rc6. That attacks the weak g5 and d6 pawns. When pawns are isolated and attackable, they are weaknesses.

Were you white or black here? Obv there were many, many serious problems with both players' moves that had nothing to do with pawns. However, in general pawns act as fences and tiny bombers. The space behind a healthy pawn chain is normally a pretty safe area for your pieces to be. Ditto for your opponent. As long as the fence is healthy, it's hard to break through and attack. In order to break through your opponent's fence and **** **** up, you need to create holes or weaknesses. That's when we send our little suicide bombers out to create access for the big pieces. Let's take this position from your game as an example.



You may or may not know this, but black wants to attack white's queenside. His dark squared bishop on g7 is perfectly aimed that way, he has the half open c-file to funnel his major pieces in and his knights can get into the action via squares like c5. White's pawns are acting like a good little fence making it difficult for black to berzerker that side. So black correctly starts advancing his queenside pawns to create weaknesses and holes. So moves like a6, b5, b4, a5, a4 etc come to push back the white knights and undermine the defense of e4, b2, c2, etc.

Okay, so that was black's plan. White's plan is to attack the center/kingside. Right now that area is well protected by black's pawn chain (fence). In order to create weaknesses there, we need to use white's bombers. f4 followed by e5 (most likely) or f5 allows white to create weaknesses in black's camp and opens files and diagonals for our pieces to access these weaknesses.

There are other uses for pawns, but if you can start to think of them as fences and fence bombers, that will help you start to understand.

cool analogy