Learning typical middle-game plans tied to opening pawn layouts.
Why it matters
What is worth remembering about an opening is not the moves but the structure it produces. There are only a handful of common pawn skeletons, and each one comes with its own plans for both sides.
Learn the structure and you know what to do on move twenty, even in a line you have never seen. Learn only the moves and you are lost the first time the opponent deviates.
See it on a board
The isolated queen's pawn structure, reached in nine moves. It comes from half a dozen different openings, and the plans for both sides are the same in all of them.
Checked: the position really has the feature described.
How to play it
- After the opening, look at the pawns alone and name the structure.
- Recall the standard plan for that structure — the break, the file, the piece that belongs on which square.
- Study one structure at a time rather than one opening at a time. The same skeleton appears in several openings.
At each level
The same idea, said the way it is taught at each age.
Bishop · ages 5–7
Look at the pawns after the opening and remember the shape. The shape tells you the plan much better than the move order does.
Rook · ages 6–9
Structures transfer between openings. Studying the isolated queen's pawn once gives you plans in the Panov, the Tarrasch and half a dozen Nimzo lines at the same time.
What goes wrong
- Memorising fifteen moves of a line and having no idea what to do on the sixteenth.
- Treating each opening as a separate subject rather than noticing the structures they share.
Questions people ask
- Which structures should I learn first?
- The isolated queen's pawn, the Carlsbad, the French chain and the Sicilian's open c-file. Between them they cover most of what club players actually reach.