Pawn Formation Highlight: The Grip

"The Grip" is a powerful way to arrange your central pawns to lock down your opponent's central breaks, and gain a spatial advantage there. It suits a "control" playstyle well. All it is is getting two pawns to clamp down on one central square:

The most well-known example is the infamous Maroczy bind, in which white prepares a long positional grind, rather than a more traditional Sicilian attack.

In the position above, black has his pieces in a hedgehog formation, a typical response to the Maroczy. We see that white's whole strategy revolves around preventing black's liberating d5 break for long enough to crash through on the queenside. If black can't play d5, then white will be able to maintain domination of the center, and thus have access to more advanced squares for his pieces, like d4. Here, black has the opportunity to break out because his pawn on e6 is also fighting for the d5 squares. However, when the opposing player doesn't have a pawn available to cover the square, then the pawn break will become ruled out forever.

In my game against GM Sevillano, I used this strategy in a Ruy Lopez line to prevent white's typical d4 break.

This theme shows up across many unrelated openings, which I will quickly showcase:

King's Gambit Declined

Torre Attack

Caro-Kann Fantasy

If you want to gain control of the game and suffocate your opponent, the grip might just be the way to do it. Check out some of the openings above, where you may be able to utilize this idea in your own games.