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Pawns are the weakest and most expendable pieces on the chess board. However, pawns also have a superpower. When they get to the eight rank, they can transform into one of the other pieces including the queen. A passed pawn becomes increasing valuable as it marches up the board. In this game, I had a posse of passed pawns supporting each other and as we’ll see, this effectively locked the opponent’s pieces from play.

In this game, the advance of my queenside pawns captured a massive space advantage, to the point that the opponent only had pieces on their closest three ranks towards the end. The capture of their knight, would could jump over my barricade of pawns, pretty much signalled the end of any effective counterplay. The insight from this game is to not ignore the humble pawn! A group of passed pawns can be extremely difficult to manage!

I hope you enjoyed the video, and thanks for watching!

Game on chess.com: https://www.chess.com/game/live/32075411813

[Event "Live Chess"]
[Site "Chess.com"]
[Date "2021.11.30"]
[Round "?"]
[White "dimadb"]
[Black "vitualis"]
[Result "0-1"]
[ECO "D00"]
[WhiteElo "1124"]
[BlackElo "1169"]
[TimeControl "1800"]
[EndTime "22:24:46 PST"]
[Termination "vitualis won on time"]

1. d4 d5 2. Bf4 Nf6 3. e3 Bf5 4. c3 e6 5. Nd2 c5 6. Ngf3 c4 7. b4 cxb3 8. Bb5+ Nbd7 9. Ne5 b2 10. Rb1 Bxb1 11. Qxb1 Ba3 12. O-O Rc8 13. c4 a6 14. Ba4 b5 15. Bc2 bxc4 16. Re1 Nxe5 17. Bxe5 c3 18. Nf3 Bd6 19. Ba4+ Kf8 20. Qc2 Bxe5 21. Nxe5 g6 22. f3 Kg7 23. Nc6 Qb6 24. Ne5 Rb8 25. Bb3 Rhc8 26. Nd3 a5 27. Nc5 Rxc5 28. dxc5 Qxc5 29. h3 Qb4 30. Qb1 a4 31. Bc2 a3 32. Rd1 Rd8 33. Rd4 Qc5 34. Rd3 d4 35. e4 Qg5 36. g4 Qc1+ 37. Rd1 Qe3+ 0-1