c4 Pawn and Knight relationship in D Pawn openings

Hi everyone, I am new here and a beginner. I've been looking into openings as well as chess lessons in chess.com and with Levi and arbitrary YouTube videos. I've constantly heard that one should not have the c4 Pawn behind the knight during d4 openings. I've tried looking for any articles or blogs on the relationship between the knight and the c4 pawn but can't find anything. What is the relationship? Does white/black lose something if the knight is played in front of the pawn? Or maybe white/black is at disadvantage? I would like to know the reasoning, strategy, and tactics behind. I would also ask the same thing when you have an e4 opening and have he f4 pawn and knight, though as I have read and seen that pawn and knight relationship is not super critical as much as the c4 pawn and the knight in d4 openings. Thanks!

From what I understand it’s more about the principle than it is about a disadvantage.
Moving your c-pawn before the knight in d4 or d5 openings simply allows you to grab space without causing a lot of weakness. It can also be used to take away white/blacks center pawn in exchange for your flank pawn. Moving the knight after the c-pawn allows for more center control on top of that

If you were to play Nc3 before playing pawn-c4 you wouldn’t have the same control and it changes the dynamics of your position. It’s nothing that is going to sink the ship

London system and queens gambit tend to use these ideas of c3 or c4 first prior to the Knight moving. Look those up to find theory behind it if you really want to know more about d4 openings/systems.

Just my 2 cents 🙂

 

There are a couple of reasons not to play Nc3 without c4 in QP openings:

 

1) The fight for d5.  The move 1.e4 already grabs some control of d5.  The move 1.d4 already controls e5.  1.e4 often leads to a fight for e5 and 1.d4 often leads to a fight for d5.  The pawn on c4 and the Knight on c3 both fight for control of d5.  With the Knight on c3 and no c4, only the Knight fights for control of it.  With the fact that you likely cannot play e4 (i.e. 1.d4 Nf6 2.Nc3 d5) makes the fight for d5 impossible.

 

2) Ability to develop your pieces.  In an opening like the French or Caro-Kann, White plays e4 and d4, opening up lines for his pieces.  With 1.d4, the move e4 won't happen any time soon.  So White needs some other way to open up to get his pieces out.  By move c4, opening up c2, the Queen can come out via the a4-d1 diagonal.

 

Hope this helps.

usually in queen pawn openings (That dont allow white to get the 3 pawn center right away), the e4 square is the one location of real estate white struggles to get control of without making concessions. Most black defenses that dont allow the pawn trio will try to get superior control of this square.

if white plays early nc3 , the game shifts to white directly trying to control e4, this is completely fine and gives the game a very different flavor compared to the d4-c4 duo early on but to do so white must make concessions ; usually he has to play a move like f3 which take away a good square for the knight and is kind of slow or play qd3 , and because the c pawn is blocked if black is to play c5, white cant keep the pawn duo. This isnt always bad though, and early nc3 queen pawn openings are known for being more dynamic than the more positional main lines.

In 1 d4 openings black can usually hinder white to play e4, so white has to settle for the more modest e3. Then d4-e3 is a modest center, so it is usually appropriate to complement it with c4 to contest central square d5 with c4 ans well as Nc3.

Thanks everyone for helping me out. Your comments helped a ton!