Understanding Your Pawn Structure
Otherwise known as the Pawn Skeleton, your Pawn Structure is the arrangement or positioning of your Pawns on the chessboard. Among all the chess pieces in your ranks the Pawn is the least mobile. How you position your Pawns on the board is relative to the strength or weakness of your strategy. You should pay attention to this when you play chess to win.
Though moving your Pawns is really very easy and simple, they take their positions on the chessboard is strategically critical. Your Pawn Structure either secures strong positions on the board or becomes your own undoing. Technically there are 16 Pawn formations you'll find when you play standard openings. You can say that if you stay within the parameters of a well-thought opening then your Pawn Structure is secure.
On the contrary, there are Pawn Structures that make up as it were holes in your defense. These you should avoid as much as possible to avoid weaknesses in your game plan. Such weaknesses would include doubled Pawns, holes, and isolated Pawns. Let's look into these weaknesses in our Pawn Skeleton.
What is a doubled Pawn formation? When you have two of your Pawns occupying the same file on the chessboard this is called the double Pawn formation. For example, you have Pawns on b3 and b4, which constitutes a common double Pawn formation. This might have resulted from one Pawn capturing and then overlapping on the other Pawn's file. Another example of doubled Pawns is having one Pawn on d3 and another on d5. These Pawns are not only doubled they are also known to be isolated, another weak Pawn Structure.
In our previous example, we said that having a Pawn on d3 and another on d5 is an instance of both doubled Pawn and isolated Pawn formation. An isolated Pawn formation is simply having Pawns with no other friendly Pawns able to defend them from an adjacent file. They are weak for that simple fact especially during the end game.
Another formation you'll find is a backward Pawn. An example is having a black Pawn on f5 and g6 and a white Pawn on f4. Your black Pawn on g6 is said to be backward and is usually a weakness in your structure. Your backward Pawn can't be advanced without having to lose a piece. Such backward Pawns are also considered to be holes in your Pawn Structure.
A hole in your Pawn Structure is a square you can't control using a Pawn. This means that if your opponent lands a Knight or any other chess piece on that hole you can't drive it away using a Pawn. You should be able to find weaknesses in your opponent's Pawn Structure and take advantage of the situation. Pay special attention to these details especially if you play chess to win.