Pawn Structures in Chess: The 6 You Will Meet Most

A pawn structure is the way both sides' pawns are left after the opening, and it is the single biggest factor in choosing a plan: pawns cannot move backwards, so they decide which squares are strong, which files open and on which wing you should play. Half a dozen structures turn up again and again, and each one comes with its plan almost written down. Recognising them is the quickest way to stop playing move by move.

How to read a structure

Before looking at the named structures, keep four questions to hand. They work in any position, including the ones that have no name:

• Which squares can no pawn attack? A square like that, in the opponent's half and protected by one of your pawns, is an ideal outpost for a knight. Almost every plan starts there.
• Which files are open or half-open? A file with none of your pawns on it is a file for your rooks. A half-open one points at an enemy pawn, which becomes a target.
• Are there weak pawns? An isolated pawn, a doubled pawn or a backward pawn —one that cannot advance without being lost and that no neighbouring pawn can defend— are long-term targets.
• Which pawn breaks exist? A break is the pawn advance that opens the position. Knowing yours and your opponent's is knowing where the game is heading.

With those four answers, each structure below explains itself. And a good plan almost always comes from the structure, not from a stray idea.

The Carlsbad structure

This is the Queen's Gambit structure after the exchange on d5. White ends up with pawns on d4 and e3 and a half-open c file; Black has a pawn on d5 and, almost always after ...c6, a half-open e file.

The plans are among the clearest in chess:

• White's minority attack. On the queenside White has two pawns (a and b) against three. White pushes them with b4 and b5 to exchange on c6: if Black recaptures with a pawn, a weak pawn is left on c6; if Black recaptures with something else, the d5 pawn loses its support. Rooks on the c file do the rest.
• Black's kingside play. With the e file half-open and the e4 square for a knight, Black looks for active pieces against White's king: a knight on e4, a rook lift via e6 to g6 or h6, sometimes the advance ...f5.
• White's central plan. The alternative is to prepare f3 and e4 to build a mobile centre, above all when White's king has castled long or stays in the middle.

The Queen's Gambit guide explains how you reach this structure from the Exchange Variation. Nor is it unique to that opening: with colours reversed it also appears in the Exchange Variation of the Caro-Kann.

The isolated queen's pawn and hanging pawns

The isolated queen's pawn is a pawn on d4 (or d5) with no friendly pawns on the c or e files. It is the structure of the trade-off: weakness in exchange for activity. The side with the IQP attacks with the pieces —knight to e5, a battery against h7, the d4-d5 break— and avoids exchanges; the side facing it blockades the square in front, trades the minor pieces and attacks the pawn once the attack is over. It has its own isolated queen's pawn guide, with the Botvinnik game that sums it up.

Hanging pawns are its closest relative, and they often grow out of it: two neighbouring pawns on the c and d files, on the fourth rank (or the fifth, for Black), with no friendly pawns on the b or e files.

Together they control the centre and give space; the trouble is that neither has a pawn beside it to defend it, so if one advances, the other is left behind and weak. That gives the plans:

• The side with the pawns wants to keep them side by side and push one only when the advance wins something concrete: opening a line against the king, kicking a piece or freeing a square. While they stay together and backed by the pieces, they are strong.
• The side facing them wants to pressure them with rooks on the c and d files and pieces that attack them, to force one forward. When that happens, you blockade the one that advanced and attack the one left behind.

The Maroczy Bind and the hedgehog

Against the Sicilian, White can put pawns on c4 and e4 before Black plays ...d5. That pair controls the d5 square and takes away the central break that frees Black's game: it is the Maroczy Bind, named after the Hungarian master Géza Maróczy.

Each side's plan comes from the space:

• White has more space and wants to keep it: calm development, control of d5 and, above all, not allowing ...b5 or ...d5 on good terms. With more space, every exchange of pieces suits White less.
• Black has less space, so exchanging pieces suits Black —knights especially, for instance on d4—, along with putting the bishop on the long diagonal and patiently preparing the ...b5 or ...f5 breaks. It is a structure in which Black suffers a little and waits for the moment.

A variation on the same idea is the hedgehog: Black sets up pawns on a6, b6, d6 and e6, stays behind the fourth rank and waits for White to overextend before breaking with ...b5 or ...d5. It looks passive and is one of the most dangerous structures for anyone who attacks without a plan.

Both appear in many lines of the Sicilian, and from the English Opening as well.

The closed centre and pawn chains

When the central pawns lock against each other, the centre stops being where the game is played and the action moves to the wings. The rule, which goes back to Nimzowitsch, is simple: attack in the direction your chain points, and strike at its base, the rearmost pawn.

The clearest example is the King's Indian, when White closes the centre with d5:

White's d5-e4 chain points to the queenside, and Black's d6-e5 chain to the kingside. That is why White plays c5 to open the c file and Black plays ...f5 to attack the king. It is a race: whoever arrives first wins, and in this structure a tempo is worth more than a pawn. The King's Indian guide explains how that race is played.

The Advance French is the same idea with the roles reversed. After 1.e4 e6 2.d4 d5 3.e5 c5 Black attacks the base of White's chain, the d4 pawn, straight away, and White looks to play on the kingside, where the chain points.

The Stonewall and other structures

The Stonewall is a wall of pawns on d4, e3, f4 and c3 (or d5, e6, f5 and c6 for Black). For White it gives huge control of e5, and a knight there is the strongest piece on the board; the price is the hole on e4, which no White pawn can ever control again, and a dark-squared bishop shut in behind its own pawns. It has its own Stonewall guide.

A few others are worth knowing by name:

• Doubled pawns. Two of your pawns on the same file. They are usually weak in the endgame, but in return they open a file and control squares: they are not an automatic sentence.
• A majority on one wing. Whoever has more pawns on a wing can create a passed pawn there. In the endgame, a queenside majority, far from the kings, is a concrete advantage.
• Passed pawn. A pawn with no enemy pawns in front of it or on the neighbouring files. In the middlegame it ties pieces down; in the endgame it often decides.

How to study them

Structures are easier to learn than almost anything else in chess, because the plans repeat from game to game:

• Start with the ones from your openings. If you play the Queen's Gambit, the Carlsbad and the IQP will come up often; if you play the Sicilian, the Maroczy and the hedgehog. There is no need to study them all at once.
• Look at model games, not variations. Two or three master games in each structure teach more than twenty opening lines, because they show the whole plan.
• After each game, name the structure. Ask yourself which one it was, which plan it called for and whether you followed it. If you do not understand why a move was good, at Ask the GM you can ask a master about that exact move.

In the catalogue, Evaluation, structures and attack has a lesson devoted to typical pawn structures, and Openings and Structures: Keys to Playing with a Plan ties the structures to the openings they come from: the isolated pawn, doubled pawns, weak squares.

In short: pawns barely move, and that is why they decide the game. If you recognise the structure, you already know which wing to play on, which squares to look for and which exchanges suit you. The rest is execution.