Pawn Pattern and Properties

Home * Board Representation * Bitboards * Pawn Pattern and Properties



There are two approaches to determine pawn attack-sets, pawn move target squares or pawn-structure properties - using a single pawn or set-wise with multiple pawns. Since we have up to eight pawns per side, the set-wise approach has some merits. Disadvantage of set-wise operations is, we likely need different code for white and black pawns, while pre-calculated lookups by color and square allows to write more general code.

=Moves and Captures= A pawn captures diagonally forward, but otherwise pushes forward one - or optionally two steps from it's initial rank. For white versus black pawns forward and backward are considered relative from either whites or blacks point of view.


 * Pawn Pushes
 * Pawn Attacks

=Properties= Properties about the pawn structure are likely subject of evaluation.

Pawns in touch

 * Pawn Rams
 * Pawn Levers
 * Defended Pawns
 * Duo Trio Quart

Fills and Spans

 * Pawn Fills are about Front-, Rear- and Filefills
 * Pawns and Files about closed, open and halfopen files
 * Pawn Spans are about Front-, Rear- and Interspans - Stop and Telestop
 * Attack Spans

Based on Spans

 * Double and Triple
 * Pawn Islands
 * Dispersion and Distortion
 * Isolated Pawns
 * Unfree Pawns
 * Open Pawns
 * Passed Pawns
 * Candidates
 * Backward Pawns

=See also=
 * Pawn Center
 * Pawn Structure
 * PawnKing

=Publications=
 * Hans Kmoch (1959, 1990). Pawn Power in Chess. New York: Dover, 1990. Previous ed.: New York: McKay, 1959
 * Lyudmil Tsvetkov (2017). Pawns. amazon

=Forum Posts=
 * how to detect information about pawn structure based on bitboard by Uri Blass, CCC, December 17, 2002
 * Pawn Pattern Matching by Gerd Isenberg, CCC, April 18, 2008

=External Links=
 * Pawn Power in Chess by Hans Kmoch - Glossary of Terms - Chess Forums - Chess.com
 * Pawn structure pattern of common chess openings
 * The Game of Chess: Pawns and Their Related Terms from Just Chess .biz

=References=

Up one Level