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Today, I’m going to talk about a tactic that can give a strategic advantage. Of all the pawns, the f-pawn has a unique weakness. Unlike all the other pawns, it is defended by no piece other than the king at the beginning of the game. This makes it a target as strategically, the king is the one that needs defending, rather than the other way around. This is especially in the earlier stages of a game – active king movements results in the loss of the right to castle, and potentially places king safety at risk. Even when the king has castled short, the f-pawn often remains a target if it remains on its opening square, as we’ll see in this game.

In this game, my opponent with the black pieces ultimately attempted resolve the problem of their pawn on f7, which was targeted by multiple pieces, by moving it forward to f5. As can be seen by the Stockfish evaluation, this was the critical error – a change from an already unfavourable evaluation of around +3 to a devastating +15. The best move for the opponent was to bring an extra defender to the pawn, but the way to do this wasn’t obvious. As pawns cannot move backwards, the forward pawn push permitted an infiltration by my rook and queen, which ended up being winning after I evacuated my own king to safety.

I hope you found this game interesting, and thanks for watching!

Game on chess.com: https://www.chess.com/game/live/43455579963

[Event "Live Chess"]
[Site "Chess.com"]
[Date "2022.04.11"]
[Round "?"]
[White "vitualis"]
[Black "bskel"]
[Result "1-0"]
[ECO "B15"]
[WhiteElo "1363"]
[BlackElo "1364"]
[TimeControl "1800"]
[EndTime "16:08:32 PDT"]
[Termination "vitualis won by checkmate"]

1. e4 c6 2. d4 d5 3. Nc3 dxe4 4. Nxe4 Nf6 5. Nxf6+ exf6 6. Be3 Be6 7. Nf3 Bd6 8. Bd3 O-O 9. O-O Nd7 10. c4 Qc7 11. c5 Bf4 12. b4 Bxe3 13. fxe3 a6 14. a3 Rad8 15. Nh4 g6 16. Nf3 f5 17. Ng5 Bd5 18. e4 fxe4 19. Bxe4 Bxe4 20. Nxe4 Rfe8 21. Nd6 Re7 22. Qf3 Rf8 23. Rae1 Rxe1 24. Rxe1 f5 25. Re7 Qd8 26. Qe3 Nf6 27. Qe6+ Kh8 28. Nf7+ Rxf7 29. Qxf7 Qxd4+ 30. Kf1 Qd3+ 31. Ke1 Qc3+ 32. Kd1 Qd3+ 33. Kc1 Qf1+ 34. Kb2 Qxg2+ 35. Kb3 Qf3+ 36. Ka4 Qd1+ 37. Ka5 Qd8+ 38. Rc7 Nd5 39. Qxh7# 1-0