Play online chess!

From	Message
baddeeds 15-Dec-13, 14:22	Passed Pawns I always thought that passed pawns weren't really anything to worry about and can only become dangerous, if it becomes unstoppable and is about to promote. That's not the case. What I recently learned from Jack Stockel is that all passed pawns are dangerous, and if you let your opponent get one of those, it can mean disaster. Even if it doesn't promote, in order to prevent that from happening, you'd have to give up material and would fall far behind. So, basically one way or another, you're talking about, "ruinous loss of material." Having said that, whether behind or not, I recently learned that a couple of GM's defeated their opponents with just one passed pawn, and they gave away material like a R or B, to achieve this. So, the moral is, when you see that your opponent is about to get a passed pawn, try to stop that before it happens.
tipsyjourneyman 17-Dec-13, 05:18	ha ha ha ha ha oh jkarp I was just discussing this with Ruben! This from the game we are currently playing: "rmannstaedt: The whole purpose, the overriding "will" and urge of a pawn, it's simple and single and singular raison d'etre, is to advance to the 8th rank and transform itself (usually to a queen, sometimes though rarely to a knight). Which means that your pawn on d4 is "straining at the bit", so to say, urging you with every faint whisper of its breath, to allow it to advance just one step further. It is just 3, simple steps away from fulfilling its purpose in life! ... or, stated less dramatically: every step closer to the 8th rank makes your pawn worth more and forces me to consider it as a progressively more serious threat. I wouldn't dream of (in general) sacrificing a piece to kill a pawn on the 5th rank; while I would often and (un)happily sacrifice a whole rook to kill a pawn on the 7th! me: Oh I agree about the worthiness of pawns wholeheartedly. My "walk the walk" game against freddy......made me realise that, against high rankers, I was allowing too many passed pawn situations to develop and they were haunting me. I also learned the power of the passed pawn. This game against Steve proves my point, usually my mates come via a major and minor combining often utilising opponents pieces, this is a situation where my weight of material is 5 pawns....all passed! Lesson learned!   " Of course in that game Steve missed the mate threat and it was game over, I was expecting an exchange of rooks to release the mate threat and that would've leaved Steve staring at 5 passed pawns with only a king to protect the back rank! Bit of an extreme example but even that mate developed out of the threat of the passed pawn on b5. So, agree whole-heartedly with you jkarp, avoid those passed pawns and take em out if they develop as swift as you can! Probably the only exception is when generating double or even triple ups those can be less useful to your opponent. Cheers and merry x-mas! TJ

GameKnot: play chess online, Internet chess league, chess clubs, monthly chess tournaments, chess teams, online chess puzzles, free online chess games database and more.