Aggressive Pawn Push – risk and opportunities

#ViennaGame 

Moving pawns forward to take space is an important strategic consideration in chess. However, for every step a pawn moves forward, something is left behind. Simply, pawns cannot attack the squares to its rear so it is possible that the defense has been weakened. This gives rise to the concept that pawns can be “overextended” – too far in the opponent’s terrority for the position to retain its cohesion. It also gives rise to the notion of pieces “infiltrating” behind the line of pawns. In this fun game I played today, both my opponent and I engaged in some relatively aggressive pawn pushes and we can see this concept of the risks and opportunities in action.

There are a number of important insights from this game. The first is the risk with bringing out the queen early. In this game, my opponent’s queen on f6 blocked the natural development square of their knight, and later, Ne7, blocked an escape route for the queen. This meant that the queen was almost trapped and became a target, eventually forced to retreat and stuck on the edge of the board. The second, like the video from yesterday, is the risk from keeping the king in the centre. The effectiveness of my infiltration behind my opponent’s line of pawns was in part due to the limited defense of the king – checks allowed me to gain tempo. And thirdly, don’t forget en passant when making an aggressive pawn push!

I hope you found this game interesting, and thanks for watching!

Game on chess.com: https://www.chess.com/game/live/40090796645 

Originally published: https://adventuresofachessnoob.com/2022/03/11/aggressive-pawn-push-risk-and-opportunities/