pawn structure and open files

pretty much every game i play flies right out of book immediately. or, if it is in book, then i'm not familiar with it because my study of multilple openings is tiny. but i have 2 questions today:

the first is--how do you decide when to stop moving pawns and work within the structure?

and the second is--everyone raves about the open file and getting a rook on it as quick as possibe and then 'using the open file to attack'... but man, whenever i try those files get all bogged up or i'm forced to swap rooks. how am i supposed to truely take good advantage of half-open and fully open files?

you really shouldn't be making too many pawn moves in the opening. i tend to make three or less pawn moves depending. any more and you could find yourself falling way behind in development.

i'll leave the open files rook question to someone more advanced.

Those are really smart questions -- Asking the right questions usually means you're thinking about the subject in a productive way and postive growth will follow. In short, carry on!

I can't answer your questions specifically, I don't really think there is a specific answer -- what you are asking about is the middlegame (and the transition from opening to middlegame.) The problem is you're painting in black and white right now... you need a full palette to work with. When you have a fuller set of basic middlegame strategies and goals (control of an open file is one such goal) the possibilities and necessities of the whole position become much more comprehensible. It's chess, one constantly strives to improve at this stuff, there's no final answer. You can't really know when to move your pawns or not in a generic way... but in a specific postion you can evaluate when a position is a good one for a minority attack, when you want your pawns on the light squares or the dark squares, when you can provoke a hole in your opponent's pawns for a minor piece to occupy, etc etc. 

What you need is a good middlegame manual like Modern Chess Strategy by Ludek Pachman, or How to Reassess your Chess by Jeremy Silman, and really start assimilating that material. Then study master games (hopefully well annotated... but a computer can help answer a lot of questions) to see how it all gets put together.

Pawn Structure Chess by Andy Soltis would have a lot to say to your pawn structure question.... but I'd save that for after you've really worked with the Pachman and/or Silman stuff for a while.

A good grasp of tactics + a good grasp of middlegame goals and positional strategy equals decent chess IMO.

As an added benefit, openings make a lot more sense and are easier to memorize, and to improvise, when you understand middlegame planning.

good luck.

i'm really stuck at the transition point here. i'm competitve enough that i hate not understanding certain dynamics better, but i'm also not in a position to where i can crunch a lot of study-time into my life. years ago i read, and still have available Yasser's "Winning Chess" series. but it's been ages since i've been able to do more study or buy more reading material.

all i know is that i'm an above average player who is better off tangling up the opening lines with risky complicated attacks. when i try to settle into an opening choice, it's rarely one i manage to find advantage with, and often i've missed the importance of whether or not something is a move-order mistake, a variation i'm supposed to respond to, or just an out-of-book move that i should either be wary of or pounce on with initiative.

i will look for your reference material and see if i can get my hands on something cheap, maybe i can study-up whenever i'm... um... in the john?

EDIT: wait! i'm just saying that's the only time i have! lol, wow poor choice of words!

thank you for the quick response, though!

In order to develop your own pieces, you only need to move a couple pawns, to allow your Bishops access to the playing field.  Usually it makes more sense to move the center pawns, because at the same time you open diagonals for your Bishops, you also stake out the center of the board and give your Queen some squares to stare down.  However, there are times when you'll advance a b- or g-pawn to fianchetto the Bishop.

After those first couple or three clearing pawn moves, additional early pawn moves are usually made only in response to a specific need:  either to prevent an opponent from being able to move to a square where he could really bother you, or to protect one of your own pieces that your opponent is trying to dislodge from a location you want to maintain.  In both of those cases, if you can achieve the same result either by developing another piece or by a pawn move, you're almost always better off developing the additional piece.  You've got to get your weapons onto the battlefield in good positions-- they have much less capability on their starting squares.

--Cystem

oh trust me, Estragon, not really looking to 'shortcut' the learning curve. i have very little time, not "none". all levels of players need a guiding hand, and it still takes time to absorb the study. yes, i post here to get a discussion of ideas quickly, yet that's to save the time of pouring over books of material that might be irrelavent to what i'm looking for. this is the purpose of having a chess community, and JG27Pyth saved me valuable time by suppling me with the tools to solve some of my problems.

Thank you for your answer Fiveofswords. i really like the things you pointed out. I develop quick, castle quick, and try to hem in my opponent. my education falls short when discerning whether a pawn move by myself or an opponent is 'bad' for the long term. i'm always curious how to determine what pawn-structures are best built for utilization as a base of opperations for other tactics, or what pawn-structures might be designed better for marching straight to the enemy and how to back them up. sometimes my analysis is solid and accurate, many times it fails in some small way.

thanks, all of you. :)

Pawn moves: Try understanding the idea behind you opening. The pawn pushes are alot of times defined by the opening you play.

Open files: Something many do not understand is that occupying an open file is useless unless there is a penetration point. If you cover all the entry point of your oppnent on the open file you do not need to contest it with you rooks nessesarily. Same goes the other way around: If you do not have a penetration point for your heavy pieces somewhere along that open file you have contested it is mostly useless. So before you go pushing that rook onto that open file, think if you actually are achieving anything by doing that.