Pawn Pattern and Properties

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Samuel Bak - Hero

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
• Pawn move generation in bitboards by Marc-Philippe Huget, CCC, November 29, 2019

Re: Pawn move generation in bitboards by Álvaro Begué, CCC, December 05, 2019 » C++

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

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