Doubled pawns: in 14 flavours

Categories of doubled pawns

How would you categorise doubled pawns? One way would be to use the file on which they are situated; that would give 8 types. Another approach might look at whether they are doubled and isolated or whether they have fellow pawns on an adjacent file.

Here I offer a classification based on the file the pawn moves from and the file the pawn moves to. I think this is particularly useful in the early part of the game when most other pawns are still on the board.

Most pawns can capture two ways but rook pawns can only capture towards the centre. That gives 14 different types of doubled pawns. I'll show an example of each type in the rest of the blog and give some summary commentary on the peculiarities of each type. I'll mostly focus on positions arising out of the opening.

Before diving into that detail I'll note the main advantages and disadvantages of having doubled pawns.

Advantages and disadvantages of doubled pawns

The good news is that doubled pawns means more open files to work with, handy for rooks in particular. There may also be a favourable element from the exchange which triggers the doubled pawns, for example if a bishop is traded for a knight.

The bad news can be split in three:
- One of the doubled pawns might become weak, often the more advanced one.
- Nearby squares may be weakened by the pawn moving sideways.
- The pawns may be less mobile, most critically being less able to create a passed pawn.

That may sound like more bad news than good news, but in practice the results tend to be OK for a player accepting doubled pawns in an opening. As an extreme example, consider the next position with White having entirely doubled pawns. Would you rather play White or Black?

In fact White is significantly better with many open lines. Stockfish opened with the Grob 1.g4 and went on to win in a game I got it to play against Komodo Dragon.

Types 1 and 2: gh and ba pawns

This categories in the diagrams above and below were the ones for which I struggled most to find meaningful examples. The doubled rook pawns look ugly, but the open knight's file offers compensation. In these two examples a white bishop has taken an a6- or h6-knight, arguably not a great trade for White who is then a little weak on that colour complex.

Types 3 and 4: hg and ab pawns

The hg trade is a very common one. the Slav is just one opening where one of the most popular plans involves White hunting down a bishop with Nf3-h4xg6.

Black gains a number of advantages from this exchange. The remaining pawns are more compact, spread over 7 rather than 8 files which could make them slightly easier to defend with short-range pieces. The rook's file is also open for the rook, although that benefit disappears if Black subsequently castles short. You could also argue that the rook's pawn gains in strength when it becomes a knight's pawn as it can in future now capture two ways rather than one.

White gains the bishop pair. The pawns aren't really easier to attack but the g5 square could be a useful square for a white knight in particular. Black lacks the move ..h6 to kick away a piece from g5. The move ..f6 is not as attractive as it weakens other squares such as g6 and e6.

The ab trade is in one sense the mirror of an hg trade. However, in practice it is less likely that 0-0-0 will occur rather than 0-0. That makes the immediate opening of the file for the rook more valuable. In this position White's capture of the bishop on b4 was arguably a mistake as the advanced pawn cramps White without much upside.

Types 5 and 6: bc and gf pawns

This type occurs across a range of openings including the Rossolimo, English and as in the diagram a King's pawn opening. There is often a choice for the side taking on the doubled pawns between bc and dc. Although this choice brings a pawn closer to the important centre it doesn't help with development. The b-file may prove useful, but there are also squares on the a-file for White to use. For example, a knight landing on a5 could exert awkward pressure on c6.

Again this often occurs as the slightly riskier choice between recapturing ef or gf. Here there is nice square on h5 for a white knight or even queen. Countering that, the g-file can be handy though as Nepo showed in the last World Championship match.

Types 7 and 8: cb and fg pawns

Here the pawn landing on b4 reduces Black's direct influence in the centre. However, its presence can annoy White who may well play a3 in the near future to swap it off and open the rook's file. You could argue that the option White has of swapping it off is worth something. Doubled pawns can occasionally be intrinsically weak but playing against them is often more likely to involve swapping them off than winning the actual pawn.

If, like me, you've been brought up to accept phrases like "capture towards the centre" then this recapture also seems a bit ugly. However, here it opens up the f-file for Black's rook. It also keeps an h-pawn for defensive purpose, for example to dislodge a white knight arriving on g5.

Types 9 and 10: cd and fe pawns

This cd trade tends to increase the central control of the side with doubled pawns. Here Black gets an extra bonus in that the doubled pawn covers the e5 square which is normally weak in a Stonewall Dutch.

This fe pawn doubling will often weaken squares around the king. Here White has made a typical pawn sacrifice. Black's pieces struggle to develop quickly. Playing ..g6 to get a line for the dark-squared bishop may encourage moves like Bd3 and h4-h5. In similar structures White will usually also have a plan of targeting the doubled pawn with moves like Ng5, Bc4, Qe2 to try and slam a piece in on e6.

Types 11 and 12: dc and ef pawns

These two categories are very common. The first one shown here is an Exchange Ruy Lopez. It's often mentioned that White will win the pawn ending if all the pieces get exchanged. My sense is that this really doesn't happen often enough to be worried about allowing the doubling. Before the ending there is faster development, two bishops and an open d-file for Black to work with.

This is generally seen as the safer recapture when White plays Bxf6 or Nxf6. Black gets speedier development for the bishop, the e-file and an extra defender of squares around the kingside.

Types 13 and 14: de and ed pawns

I think these two categories are less common. In the de version shown here the advanced doubled pawn is an annoyance for White so a plan of exchanging it with f3 may well make sense.

Here the ed exchange looks slightly odd but the pawn isn't especially weak. It's fairly likely that Black with play ..d6 and exchange one of the pawns.

How do the 14 positions perform?

I was curious how the side with the doubled pawns did in terms of results. Black had the doubled pawns in all cases. At master level you would normally expect Black to score in the region of 45% for normal openings. Given the randomising nature of blitz and bullet it makes sense that the results on the monster Lichess database show a closer 48% score. The table below shows the performance from the Lichess master database (mostly classical games) and the monster played on Lichess database.

All but one of the positions is deemed equal or favourable for white by Stockfish. However the results are fairly close to 50:50 in both databases. Types 2 and 4 had hardly any data points for master games so should be ignored. Type 10 is the suspect Alekhine's Defence where White plays a strong pawn sacrifice to double the pawns. That is the only position where the doubled pawns suffer badly.

Interestingly types 6 and 12 show two promising ways of meeting the Trompovsky by accepting doubled pawns.

Further study

If you fancy digging a little deeper into the topic of doubled pawns then all the above examples are included in a Lichess study I created called "Doubled pawns". I'll put the link in the blog forum. I also included a few games to illustrate playing with and against doubled pawns.

I also recorded three videos covering the material in a little more depth:
Doubled pawns in 14 flavours (youtube.com) (More detail on the 14 examples above)
Playing with doubled pawns (youtube.com) (Some sample games playing with doubled pawns)
Playing against doubled pawns (youtube.com) (Some sample games playing against doubled pawns)
(2) Doubled pawns - YouTube (Playlist for the 3 videos)

I'm not aware of any single reference point for doubled pawns, but the following books might be helpful if you want more detail:

1. Sam Shankland's Small Steps to Giant Improvement Chapters 11 to 16 lays out a nice theoretical approach.
2. Volume 1 of Ivan Sokolov's Winning Chess Middlegames Chapter 1 deals with typical queen's pawn doubled structure.
3. In his recently published second volume of Winning Chess Middlegames Sokolov picks up the doubled f-pawns common in the Rauzer Sicilian.
4. In volume 2 of Chess Middlegame Strategies chapter 3 Sokolov covers the Caro-Kann doubled f-pawns.
5. There are a couple of chapters in Tiviakov and Gokbulut's Rock Solid Chess. This includes some Trompovsky and Italian game examples.

I daresay I missed some good other sources so please post in the forum if you can recommend others.

Finally

Thanks for reading. Please feel free to post thoughts and feedback in the forum.

If you enjoyed the topic above you might enjoy my recently published book Better Chess Faster which deals with how we can use our time wisely in blitz and classical. Improving our understanding of themes such as doubled pawns is one practical example of speeding up our decisions. It was reviewed in the first New in Chess magazine of 2024 (4 stars out of 5) and is available on Amazon here Better Chess Faster: Strategies for online and live play: Amazon.co.uk: Crocker, Mr Phil: 9798829874704: Books