Taking the pawns in front of your castled king into question

Hey Everyone. As far as I know, your only suppose to move the pawns in front of your castled king when you MUST. Are there any exceptions to this rule? I'm sure many of us here are familar with a bishop going across the board to attack a knight and some people usually move either the "a" file pawn up one square OR do likewise with the "h" file, whichever side this situation is arising from. Now, if you have a castled king on such a side, should you still do this with that pawn.......or? When can you or should you move the pawns in front of your castled king? What if you get rid of your "h" pawn or "a" pawn? Then there's a weakness isn't there? Say for such as like doubled rooks or doubled bishops/queen-bishop going for the checkmate?!

It would be so nice if I could get some advice for this. These pawns in front of a castled king have really been bothering me lol ;) And please - if there's anything else that anybody here thinks that one should consider about these pawns here that I'm talking about, I'd be grateful if someone could include that information too. Thank you so much.

Cheers ;)

Try GM Shankland's course on "Same Side Pawn Storms" on the Chess Mentor.  It's his farewell gift to us as he heads off to the tournament circuit full time.  I've done 60% of it and it's quite good.  Of course you can't do a pawn storm just because you're in the mood for it, but I think it represents a breakthrough in thinking for most players.  Most of us hit a plateau where waiting for your opponent to blunder so you can take advantage of it really isn't enough of a plan anymore.  It works great against players who are clueless but they become rarer as your rating rises.  

I think the general form of the though is that because pawns can't "unmove" where all other pieces can, each time you make a step, you create a weakness that can't be undone.  

It's right to move pawns in front of the king if you are in danger of a back-rank mate.   It's right to move pawns in front of the king if it will force your opponent to do something that will hurt him.  

It's wrong to move them just for something to do, it's certainly wrong to move them into a position where an enemy piece can profitably sac or simply exist in the "holes".  

Best game to show this is Reti vs Znosko-Borovski, 1922:

Eugene Znosko-Borovski should have known better than to open up the kingside for a freak like Reti.  And while the kingside wipe-out is fun, it's the open files on the queenside that make the win, as usual.   I think this game is in Chernev's book... I must have remembered it from somewhere.  

Another thing to consider is the centre. If it's closed and likely to stay closed, there's less danger when moving the pawns in front of your king.

Scottrf, can you give me an example of predicting when the position is likely to "stay" closed? How can you be sure that the position will most likely stay closed? I actually agree with your input! So is this something that can be summarized, or do I just have to become a better chess player through experiance? What do you think of that?.......

To open it up, you need pawns to come into conflict. If the pawns are locked like this diagram then it wont open easily.

With locked pawns like such it's less likely to open than when the situation is fluid.

In chess there really isn't much that is true in any position. Any general advice needs to be adapted to the specific position with concrete analysis.

The key is that "weaknesses" are only important if they can be taken advantage of. So the significance of a weakness needs to be assessed in relation to how easily the opponent might be able to take advantage of it -- generally this means piece activity, or potential to get piece activity (for example by a pawn break in the center).

A pawn duo on, for example, f4 and g4 have possible good and bad points. They control more advanced squares than they would on f2 and g2, and so they can take away outpost squares away from the enemy. Although they weaken squares like e3, f3, etc, it may be possible that the enemy pieces are too cramped to realistically expect to get so deeply into white's territory. In that case white would get the best of both worlds: squares like g5, h5, f5 would be totally under control, and the squares behind are safe too because black has no influence over them.

The only problem with this otherwise strong reasoning is that weaknesses are long term -- they don't have to be exploited right away. Even if black can't exploit the squares behind right away, he can do just as well if he can exploit them 15 or 20 moves later -- there is no rush. So you also have to look a bit into the future -- ask yourself if realistically black could eventually find a way to penetrate -- maybe after some exchanges, when it's harder for white to cover his holes -- maybe if black can do that black's queen might find room to penetrate and menace white's king. Or, maybe white will be able to maintain the initiative so well that black may never have such an opportunity. It's not always easy to tell what the long term consequences will be, but it gets easier with experience.

Be careful though -- sometimes it may look as if the enemy is cramped, but often there are ways for him to sacrifice material to get them active, such as sacrificing pawns to open files and diagonals -- if your king is really really exposed, he may not mind giving away some material if it allows him to penetrate.

Generally I look at this as risk vs reward. If pushing pawns in front of my king doesn't seem to make any particularly dangerous threats, then I would probably decide that it's not worth the risk. If on the other hand I need a little bit more space to take the initiative, even if it involes kingside pawn pushing, maybe it would be worth it as long as I could keep control of the game and keep putting pressure on my opponent before he ever gets time to exploit the long term weaknesses.

That's great news. Thanks to you all! :) I think I've really gotten some insights. 

Thanks again :)