Pawn Play — Part 2
The pawns that attack, blockade and defend — by IM Siegfried Baumegger
The first course treated pawns as the element that sets the terms of a game — the permanent decisions that determine where the pieces belong and which side of the board each player should play on. Part 2 puts those pawns into motion.
Here they stop being structure and become weapons: the storm thrown at a castled king, the blockade that freezes an opponent's play before it starts, the defensive resource that meets an avalanche head-on, and the rook-pawn advance that modern practice has turned into one of the most feared ideas in chess.
Today we are pleased to present Pawn Play — Part 2 by IM Siegfried Baumegger, continuing the study of the element Philidor called the soul of the game.
The Core Idea: Pawns Decide the Attack
A kingside attack is rarely won by pieces alone. Pawns open the lines the pieces need, they drive defenders from their squares, and they arrive with a threat no piece can answer — because nothing wants to be attacked by a pawn. The same is true in reverse: most attacks that fail do so because the defender knew which pawn move stopped them.
That is the subject of this course. Not structure at rest, but structure in motion — and the judgment of when to push, when to hold, and when a pawn advance that looks committal is in fact the only way forward.
What the Course Trains
The material is built in four connected parts, each developed through carefully selected exercises:
Attacking the enemy king. The role of pawns in the assault itself — the storms that most typically arise from opposite-side castling, how they are prepared, and the moment they must be launched. This is the pawn as the spearhead of an attack rather than its support.
Blockading strategy. One of the most important concepts in the fight against enemy pawns: stopping the opponent's advance before it begins, fixing his structure, and denying him the freeing breaks his position depends on. Here pawn play becomes a form of control.
Defending against a pawn storm. The perspective changes — now you are the one facing the avalanche. The course trains the typical defensive methods: the counter-thrust, the closure, the timely exchange, and the judgment of which pawn moves shelter the king and which merely create the hooks the attacker was hoping for.
Making effective use of rook-pawns. The advance of the rook-pawn, often all the way to the sixth rank, is a relatively new stratagem — one modern engines and elite practice have turned from a curiosity into a standard weapon. The course traces it from its classical antecedents to the way the strongest players use it today.
Together they complete the picture begun in Part 1: from the pawns that shape a position to the pawns that decide the attack.
The Baumegger Method
IM Siegfried Baumegger brings decades of practical and teaching experience to this course, with the emphasis that defines his work: pattern recognition and transferable principles, not rote memorisation. The material is delivered as a structured study file of exercises and fully annotated model games — each part opening with its strategic guidelines, then a set of test positions to solve, followed by the complete games and solutions.
A Journey Through Chess History
The examples are drawn from the players who understood these ideas best:
- Tigran Petrosian, who appears throughout the blockading material — no one denied opponents their pawn breaks more completely
- The classical foundations: Botvinnik, Boleslavsky, Vidmar, Gligorić, Szabó, Benko and Larsen
- The modern masters of the pawn storm: Anand, Kasparov, Morozevich, Beliavsky, Grischuk and Adams
- And the players who made the rook-pawn advance standard practice — Carlsen, Ding Liren, Nakamura, Vachier-Lagrave, Gukesh and Ju Wenjun
— alongside Baumegger's own games, annotated from the inside. The range shows how the same pawn ideas have recurred in every era, and how the most recent of them are still being discovered.
How the Course Is Organised
The course follows the Guided Practice method: set up each position, decide on your move and your plan, and only then compare your decision with the solution. Active problem-solving is what turns a guideline into a genuine skill — so the exercises come first, and the annotated games reward you with the full reasoning once you have committed to an answer.
For the Serious Competitor
Pawn Play — Part 2 is designed for ambitious players who want to handle the sharpest phase of a game with the same confidence they bring to quiet positions. Whether you are launching a storm, blockading an opponent's counterplay, defending against an avalanche, or pushing a rook-pawn down the board, this course delivers the analytical depth and practical guidance that Modern Chess is known for.
Ready to put your pawns in motion — and know, in each position, whether to push, to hold, or to stop him first? This is the guide that shows you how.