Pawn Storm Principles You Need To Know

what's going on guys in this video we're going to talk about pawn storms we're going to look at things that you want to pay attention to if you are attacking with the pawns and then we're also looking at things that you want to pay attention to if you're defending against a pawn storm as well now if you saw the last video that i posted on the channel i actually showed an example game where somebody was attacking me with pawns i was trying to defend and in that game i actually played the move h5 at one point and somebody asked a really good question you know saying that are you really supposed to play h5 when you're being attacked by a pawn storm and so i figured this would be a good time to just do an in-depth kind of guide on pawn storms what's the idea what are the things that you want to look out for and pay attention to and we'll talk a little bit about that h5 move as well after we kind of go through some of the basics so let's go ahead and get started all right so this position right here is pretty common when we're talking about pawn storms because white has castled on one side and black is castled on the other side so whenever you have these opposite side castlings a lot of times you will see a pawn storm in this case white is already kind of preparing it getting ready to push the pawns and the rooks are behind now the first thing that you want to remember this is the important thing but what's the point of a pawn storm like why are we why would white even want to do a pawn storm in the first place and some people i think are confused because they think well the pawns can be used to attack things and you know maybe you can take some stuff that's not the point okay the point behind a pawn storm is to try to trade off these pawns so for example if white could trade this for this and this for this and if we just made those pawns disappear uh black would be completely losing right the game would be basically over look at these rooks they would just be nothing could stop him the only reason that black is doing fine is because the brooks are blocked off behind the pawns so remember the the goal behind a pawn storm is primarily to trade the pawns and open up the files for the rooks because the rooks are extremely powerful pieces very good at attacking the king when you pair a rook or two rooks with some other pieces it's usually pretty easy to get checkmate so that's why pawn storms are can be dangerous all right the next thing i want to point out is that it's not that easy to just push one pawn by itself and get uh files open so for example let's say white plays here and all black does is shuffle their rook back and forth and white gets to go all the way down here to h6 well now black can simply play g6 and guess what uh we didn't open up any files the rooks are still stuck they can't get through and it's actually going to be really difficult for white to make any progress yes there is a weakness here and maybe at some point in the future if the queen ended up there it could be good for white but that's unlikely and black has a lot of options to actually defend against that right so just pushing one pawn down doesn't really cut it and if somebody does this on you usually the way that you want to respond is just push by right you don't want to leave it and do something else because then white's going to capture and they've opened up their rook now you're in trouble and you don't want to take it because again you open up the file for the rook and now your king is wide open right so if this ever happens simply push by and you're probably going to be just fine now white has to somehow figure out a way to get this pawn involved but that's not that easy because you could take this way and it's probably not going to happen even if this pawn comes up doesn't really matter right you just move your knight somewhere and look at this nothing's happening okay so that's an example of a failed attempt at a pawn storm so since it's not that easy with just one pawn generally speaking you need to use two pawns and you're looking for a very specific setup where you can force upon trade okay so let me give you an example of this let's say white plays h4 black plays h6 not a good move we're going to talk about that in just a second g4 and then black does some random move over here this is the perfect setup for white to break through why is it perfect because there's a fork with this pawn it's attacking first of all the piece so if black doesn't want to lose a piece they need to move it somewhere but after that happens there's another attack for the pawn and this way you can force the file open and now your rook is involved in blacks losing the game right but even if black said you know what i'm not i'm not going to do that i'm going to trade well again you can either take this way and open up the g file or you could take this way and open up the h file but regardless it's really good for white and black again is in trouble so there's no way for black to stop this from happening even if you push by again the file is open right and it has to do with the fact that it's a fork the pawn is attacking two things at the same time now it's a bonus that it's hitting the piece but even if that wasn't the case this idea would still work so for an example let's say instead of this um black move the knight and we'll just waste a move for white here and black played f6 okay again the pawn can push forward and it's a fork and again this is important because if black now tries to push one of the pawns forward you can always take the other one right this way and again it's open there's no way to stop it and if you take take take that's even worse now both files are open and again black is in big trouble right so going back here we saw why h6 actually wasn't a great move for black because it allowed uh white the ability to create that fork and this is something i believe the term is called a hook when you push one of these pawns forward it's a hook that allows white to attack it and makes it easier for them to trade off their pawns so if we kind of look at the same example let's say h4 and black just waste some moves but there's no pawn on h6 well now when they play g5 you simply move the knight and remember before they could take here and open up the rook now they can't so now again white still has the problem well how do i get my rooks involved right so um that's why you generally speaking and then according to the question that was asked and what john you know recommended was don't push these pawns forward because of that reason right now eventually white is going to be able to get through so h5 and now let's just say again we waste to move here g6 and again we have the same idea right two pawns are being attacked you can push by on one of them but then white's gonna take the other one open up the g file right or if you push by this way same thing this is getting open and again trying to trade is probably going to be even worse because now you have both files open okay so eventually if you're if you have enough time this is what you would shoot for and you would go to g6 with this pawn and of course uh force the files open now one thing i want to point out is i've been wasting moves for black during this example right i've been just shuffling this rook back and forth in a real game you're not going to waste moves right so one two three four five moves is what it's going to take in this example now one of those was with tempo on your knight so let's say it takes four moves before white is going to be able to break open the position if you imagine what could we have done in four four moves i mean we could do a lot of things right i could go here and put my knight there which attacks the queen so that would buy us some time i could maybe uh push this pawn up one two and then get some extra time because i'm attacking the knight i could bring the queen over bring the knight in and start attacking i can do a lot of things with four free moves so one of the the rules that you'll hear is an attack on the side is best dealt with an attack in the center same kind of idea well white is making these four moves you can be doing something like this and busting open the center here to maybe push this pawn get your pieces involved and you know basically try to prevent white from just attacking your king right but having said all that hopefully you can understand how by not moving any of these pawns it gives you some extra time because it takes white so many moves before their pawns can actually trade them off if you had played h6 we saw how that was even faster for white and now i want to talk briefly about g6 so let me just get a new position here all right so here's another position this is a king's indian position and what i want you to pay attention to is what white is doing over here yes there's some other stuff happening here and maybe there's a pawn and we could attack but i want you to focus on the king side okay so when we play g6 and fiance our bishop in the king's indian or the grunfeld or some opening like that this is a hook right remember how we talked about it it gives uh white the ability to trade a pawn off easier right so in this case if we allow white to play h5 they can simply take this pawn and we can't easily push by yes we can push by but we are going to lose that pawn for free and it still kind of opens up our king now it's not quite the same because the rook can't get involved immediately but it's still not really the move we want to play so h5 takes and then the rook is involved that's a risk that we have when we fee in keto our bishop that normally wouldn't be there if the pawn is back on g7 right because if it's back on g7 they have to push they have to push again and then we could play g6 locking everything up but in this case it's already been pushed we have to watch out for this and sometimes in these positions this is why i play well one of the reasons why i was considering h5 in the last game that i showed you guys but h5 first of all it blocks that so you say okay well i can play g4 but in this example um let's just say takes takes takes and yes white can play h5 and yes you could say the rooks are involved but because of the setup we have here we actually have a nice blockade with with all of our pieces and i'm not making the best moves i'm i'm ignoring some things here like this rook and and stuff but notice how it's still not that easy for rooks to get through this is well defended this is uh sorry this is well defended this is pretty well defended it's not that easy right and so this is kind of an exception to the rule you know in in these types of positions where sometimes h5 makes sense this is also you know white has started very early with the pawn push they haven't finished developing they don't have both rooks involved so that kind of changes things um and yeah it just kind of depends sometimes you need to look for the exception and that's one reason why you know h5 might make sense now in the other game um my plan was i believe it was something like takes my opponent pushed then i played g5 and my plan was to allow the pawn and then blockade it with my king and just leave it sit there so that the rook couldn't get through that was what happened in that other game this is a little bit different position um if i would have thought about it i could use the exact same game but i just pulled this up anyway the point is going back to to the beginning here the point is sometimes in these feeding kettle positions h5 actually does make sense but you do have to calculate do you have a good response to g4 for example if this bishop i don't know was somewhere else this knight was somewhere else and we didn't have a good follow-up then maybe it doesn't make sense to do this because then it does allow white to push and trade and open things up easier right you have to think through that it's going to be different in every game all right guys so i hope that made sense and that kind of cleared up some of the confusion if you have more questions feel free to ask them but as always thanks for watching stay sharp play smart [Music] you

Channel: Chess Vibes

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Id: 3omrdCztGnE

Length: 11min 8sec (668 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 24 2022