Pawn Storms: Everything You Need to Know

there's so much to learn in chess but every time you learn a new chess concept or tactic you improve your chances to win a game of chess today's chess concept is a pawn storm sounds scary but let me walk you through it so let's start with the question what is a pawn storm it's when you push connected pawns forward multiple times in a row this creates a cascading or storming effect and usually the primary goal of a pawn storm is to open lines of attack to your enemy's King in this case your kings have castled on opposite sides and your Rooks are looking for open lines to attack the anime King you can imagine that if White's G and H pawns were traded off for black student H pawns then you'd be completely crushing if you're playing with the white pieces and even if you were able to sacrifice a pawn or a piece to get that a position where the king is completely wide open then it'd be worth it some other ways you can use Pawn storms are to gain space to win material or to create a past Pawn which will lead to a decisive advantage to get a better feel deal for when Pond storms can help you let's take a look at these three examples let's start with this game where I played the Vienna and my opponent castles my opponent's actually another streamer lipo Steve and here we are playing a one minute game I am the world's slowest chess player I'm okay at rapid chess but in bullet chess I'm terrible but with the idea of a pawn storm it actually allows me to play faster and have a clear plan and meanwhile black is the one that has to have very resourceful Moves In this case as soon as they Castle I realize hey I have a pawn chain that I can go and complete I win Connect Four and because I have a nice Pawn chain when you look at the pawn structure if you have a pawn train that is facing your opponent's king you can go ahead and pawn storm towards that King this is called attacking on the flank side which is the direction that the pawn chain faces my opponent goes for A6 and they're clearly going for B5 so I make some room for my bishop and when they play B5 I back up my Bishop now after Rook B8 now I have time to go ahead and start my plan H3 I'm going to store my pawns down and go from there the computer actually wanted me to play G4 just saying you can go ahead and sacrifice the pawn because that's the whole point of the pawn storm is to get an open line of attack and you've accomplished that I didn't see that I did play a little bit faster I played H3 with the idea to play G4 which still works G4 and they try to stop it but I say nope G5 anyway so H3 G4 G5 and my whole plan is to open up some of these lines to the King after H takes I take with the Knight and I simply play Queen to H5 now because my Knight has moved forward there's an open line of attack everything is going my way and yes you might be asking my opponent didn't have to play Knight to D7 but it's not so easy to find the correct moves here they had to find Knight to D4 but I still play Rook G1 and uh the only plan here is to break open the center they need to create counter play and this is also a good lesson if your opponent is creating a pawn storm at you then you need to play in the center the reason being well if I'm trying to open up lines of to attack you then you should open up lines to attack my king which is out in the open right now but like I said my opponent didn't find this so we do end up getting Queen H5 on the board to prevent Checkmate they take my knight I simply take back and now they play Knight F6 after Knight F6 I just take the Knight the queen takes a castle and I'm getting ready to bring my roach to the open file that's exactly what happens and after G6 this is not the proper defense because they're forgetting that my Bishop on A2 is a sniper and I simply take with a rook takes takes and uh this is game over King moose and I give one check on H6 they move back and Rook G1 checkmate that's example one of the pawn storm you can see how useful it was to bring both my Rooks into the attack and Checkmate my opponent as we've learned so far a lot of Pawn storms end in attacking The King and I want you to get comfortable with the idea of calculating potential peace sacrifices to complete the end of a pawn storm so once your pawns have reached their destination sometimes it requires a peace sacrifice in order to finish opening up lines of attack and that's exactly what happens here my opponent castles long and now that uh they cast along it's actually not a good move because again if you look at the pawn structure you can see that I can win Connect Four and my Pawn chain is heading towards the King which screams Pawn storm Pawn storm Pawn storm and a lot of times your opponent will try to counter-attack with a pawn storm of their own on the other side of the board but then it becomes a question of who is faster in this case it is 100 black I play B5 and B4 so I've played C4 B5 B4 my pawns are going the Knight moves to A4 I jump in with my knight to have Tempo on the Queen the queen moves out of the way and here the best move by far and away is Queen A5 because this Knight is trapped basically they have to go here but now you can just simply um there's a couple of different lines so first off you can just go ahead and remove the Knight or there's even a Savage idea here Knight C3 check and again the emphasis is opening lines of attack on your opponent's king and after it takes and takes it looks a little dicey because the threat is uh any sort of Queen check and then mates on B2 and you know at the very least they would have to uh you know sacrifice the Knight on B3 and then uh it just looks very depressing you're obviously going to crash through and win but I did not play for Queen A5 because I missed it at first instead I played B3 and my opponent misses the chance to equalize so once they take I actually don't have any open lines and you have to be careful because here it looks so good but there's no actual way to completely open up the king fortunately my opponent plays C3 so Queen A5 first would have been the most ideal way to complete it but in this case now I play Queen A5 and I'm telling you even with imperfect play it is so difficult to defend against Pawn storms sometimes and here my opponent tries for A3 they think that they're just losing a knight and now that they have stopped this Pawn Storm from moving forward that they're safe but that's not the case after Knight E5 I take take and I leave some bait on G7 because in this position there's one way to finish ripping open all lines and that is by taking this bishop and sacrificing it on A3 the idea is that if you take my queen comes forward and I'm going to Checkmate you and by the way if you move any piece to the DS2 Square to protect this second rank then the Knight just captures and maybe my opponent saw this so maybe there idea was to ignore this bishop and simply go after the Rook but this is even worse because actually Bishop takes B2 and my opponent resigns that you realize oh even if you take the Rook then this is just Checkmate in one move and if you are to take the bishop now I give the check with Tempo and this is still mate so if we rewind a couple of moves back just make sure that in the event that you have this massive Pawn chain you are still heading towards the flank side which is the direction that the pawn chain faces you can sacrifice material to complete the attack just make sure that you're monitoring all the squares and that when you sacrifice material you can calculate concretely that it will work in our final example I want to share not an example about attacking your enemies king with a pawn storm but more so using this concept to create an asset in your position and you can tell that in this position right now I completely misplayed the opening and you're gonna see how a pawn storm actually reverses the tide of the game game I start with Knight B8 because this allows all my connected pawns to get ready to pawn storm they are all in a row and they're ready to go but I go ahead and transfer my knight over to the king side and now I start with C6 C6 B5 the queen moves away and now I take a break to play H6 and I centralize my knight now I continue to bring more pieces to get ready for phase two of the pawn storm and that's with C5 after Queen B2 it's a mistake but you might be wondering wait what about just takes with the pawn right like why does white have to allow this to continue well if you take with the pawn then now Rook takes C5 and this C Pawn is very very loose and you have to get out of the way anyway so for that reason white tried for Queen B2 but now I play C4 after the bishop reroutes I play Knight C7 and this was admittedly a moment of temporary blindness my whole point was I wanted to get my knight over to A6 so that I can support B4 not remembering that my knight was already supporting before but bear with me I'm not perfect I'm just sharing my actual game with you so I don't want to you know Skip on the mistakes that I made but let me just explain why and unfortunately my opponent really doesn't do anything to challenge me um this Rook E3 move did nothing and Bishop A4 is actually just a one move trick because they are hoping for takes and then oopsie like the queen is no longer on the board but uh silly rabbit tricks are for kids right and this actually enables me to continue with my plan of B4 uh just completely bypassing this bishop on A4 and after takes and takes we see that I have two pawns that are very close to being a past pawn and that's exactly what happens after A3 I realize hmm okay I was trying to get my past Pawn to promote but actually what about the giant fork C3 the hang of a fork they take take and now I can simply take on A3 defended by my bishop and now I have a past Pawn so not only did I win material using this Pawn storm but I also have a past pawn and bear with me because you're going to want to see the end of this game uh how do you convert once you have this Advantage they try to hit my queen with Tempo I simply slide out of the way they bring their Queen to pin my knight to my Queen and they're going for all these crazy pins but it I'm not concerned because I know that after Rook B6 they're really really trying to pressure this Knight I simply Play Bishop to C4 protecting the Knight one more time and now after rooked to C1 I'm like okay you don't want to protect the A1 Square let me go ahead and push my Pawn after F4 now I try to be in the process of doubling up on the C file and after Rook takes A6 my opponent wants something of this nature where it takes and then all of a sudden uh both pieces attack the The Rook but that's not what happens instead I realized well now that you pushed F4 uh I what changed what changes that the D4 Pawn is hanging with check I take you simply go here but it doesn't matter because I promote a queen there are three queens on the board you can take one that's totally fine I don't even need to take back because uh oh this Rook on C1 is hanging and uh after check King H2 and now I play Queen F4 check I give a couple checks and then at this moment I'm like wait let me go ahead and grab this bishop after I grab the bishop Queen takes C7 hitting my Rook no issues because now Bishop C5 I'm hitting your rook and at the same time it's a double attack not only am I hitting your Rook I'm also threading mate my opponent misses this entirely and they try to attack my Bishop but I deliver Checkmate that flying Every Which Way but all made possible because I was able to get the past Pawn in this position with the pawn storm the pass Pawn was protected and we're good to go and then because of that past Pawn I was able to get this position where there were three queens on the board and I was able to convert to a winning position if you want to learn more chess principles then go check out this video right here happy learning everyone

Channel: KDlearns Chess

Views: 3,428

Keywords: chess, chess game, chess game review, chess game analysis, chess for beginners, chess recap, chess news, chess openings, chess tactics, chess tricks, KDlearns, pawn storm, pawn storm chess, how to use pawn storm, how to pawn storm, intermediate chess lessons, beginner chess lessons, chess concepts, chess principles, chess concepts for beginners, how to improve at chess, improve at chess, win at chess

Id: 3wBy240nmlU

Length: 12min 29sec (749 seconds)

Published: Sun May 28 2023