by Pauline Moreunava

Created on: October 22, 2009

Pawn Princess

Quiet, cloaked, step by step advancement

Under shield of knight and night

Enters the pawn that was never a pawn

Enshrouded in the poverty of insignificance,

No one but she understands the threat of mere potential.

Mere whispers of her now humbled movements; beware she,

Entereth unto full liberty, in finally dubbed authority.

This was the best way I knew to capture the essence of the power within the pawn. If you read the first letters of each sentence downward, you get the result of a pawn slowly crawling disguised towards it's true potential in the game of chess.

Many chess opponents security in their game crumbles once a pawn attains queendom. It truly throws the less advanced chess players off by the second-questioning in their mind once the pawn for queen trade is made. This is the most important unspoken defense or offense-to shatter the sheild of your opponents game plan-for not paying more attention to what they thought was an unpowerful piece in the game of chess.

There is no other piece that has such underestimated power than the pawn, as well as power once it is dubbed a queen.

Once humbled by small steps for advancement, the pawn overlooked is the deadliest mistake a chessplayer could make; depending on the opponents knowledge of the pawn.

Most opponents will opt for different powerful-looking moves, usually neglecting pawn strategy which is the lengthiest and strongest strategy.

Along with the pawn, the best defense protection for the pawn-or princess disguised as I like to call it-is to "ride" with a knight, as real princesses would have travelled.

Not to move the pawn unless the next step is protected by nonconspicuous knight(or other piece) is another of the major mistakes a novice player may commit.

No opponent likes to lose a "greater" piece to a pawn and this conditioned chess circumstance is the key to successfully winning the opponents mind over to the knowledge that you are the superior player than they, to have accomplished such a task without their noticing it.

Once queened, your oppenent has no other choice than to fear that other pieces may have gone unnoticed and hurries the opponent into"dignified" handing over the game to you.

When teaching others the the goal of chess, we must not forget pawn stategy...for by doing so we create a chess injustice for ourselves and whom we teach. It pollutes the entire history of chess.

To play chess without reconditioning ourselves and our students to humble pawn advancement to queen is playing a half-empty game of skill and stategy, not wothy of it's reputation as the greatest game ever played.

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