Pivot point

 I sorted out the 197 items that I found in the 50 positional problems I'm working on. I made a decision  which items I must study first. I decided to focus on the pawn breaks. These are the most complicated and probably rewarding items to study first.

There are a lot of aspects that must be learned. Today I focus on the pivot points. The saying goes "if a pawn is well protected by pieces, it probably stands in the way". This means that when a pawn moves, a pivot point behind it becomes cleared.

There are two preconditions which might make you refraining from playing a pawn break:

• When your king is not safe
• When you are behind in development

When your king is not safe, opening the position might become disastrous.

When you are behind in development, your opponent might be the one who is going to profit from the opened lines of attack instead of you.

A single pawn move might have an effect on:

• 6 squares (knights)
• 4 diagonals (bishops)
• 3 files (rooks)

So it might have a big impact on the LoA landscape (lines of attack).

White to move

r2q1rk1/pbpnnpbp/1p1pp1p1/8/3PPP2/2NBB3/PPPQN1PP/R4RK1 w - - 0 10

There are 3 potential pawns that can be used to break:

• d4 (3:1)
• e4 (2:1)
• f4 (4:0)

The values between parentheses indicate the amount of pieces from white that gets a bigger scope vs the amount of pieces of black that benefits from the same move.

1.f5 is a move that enhances the scope of 4 white pieces (B,N,R,Q) and of 0 black pieces. So it is a multi purpose move.