Game 3, KW's Major Digression,
7 Patterns You MUST KNOW for
Control of a Square
[Pattern #5]

(KW, June 25th) My advice to you is Know The Following 7 Patterns

Knowing When You Control A Square
- PATTERN #5 -

If a Pawn is Controlling the square,
move a Pawn to the square to gain Control

This is evident in the diagram. Moving e5-e4 allows the Pawn to be counted in the table. The Pawns cancel one another out, and Black will gain Control over e4. In this case, a Pawn is mightier than a Piece! (This is true if the balance of values is equal otherwise).

This is one evidence of Philidor's well known quote, "Pawns are the soul of chess".

A corollary would be:

Don't move a Center or Subcenter Pawn unless it helps to gain Center Control. The Hypermoderns understood this well. Move Center Pawns only when it helps to gain Control of the Center, or allows Pieces freedom to help Control the Center. Once moved, a Pawn cannot back up! So move them only when advantageous or necessary!

Another corollary of this Pattern would be:

If a Pawn controls a square, and you do not have a Pawn to move in order to gain Control, the only other option is to sacrifice a Piece in order to gain Control.

An addendum to this would be:

Sacrificing a Piece normally works best around the opponent's King. Sacrifices are specialty Patterns within Middlegame Tactics that are outside our attention now.

All of the above demonstrate some of the main causes why COA Control and COA Center Domination are only "rules of thumb". There are two main reasons for this:

Pawns affect a square differently than a Piece; and

The quantity of pieces attacking a square does not take into account the quality (in other words the balance of values in exchanging as shown in the diagrams and the table).

One other Pattern affects our current position: Pattern 6 (on the next page →)