Mastering the Isolated Queen Pawn (IQP)

1/17/2025 at 9:00:11 AM

This analysis is largely drawn from the book Winning Pawn Structures by Baburin (1998), which the blog author credits. Most chess books do not keep their relevance past 5 years, so it's a great testament to the quality of the book that it's still highly esteemed today.

Baburin is a Russian-born Grandmaster who came to Ireland around 1993. You might think the popularity of this book would have led to a generation of Irish players who specialized in IQP positions. But instead the opposite seemed to happen: it bred a generation who assumed their opponents had read the book, felt they hadn't mastered it themselves, and avoided those positions with both Black and White.

A contributing factor was that this book was more difficult for young intermediate players to grasp than an openings manual, where you can improve your results just by memorising a few extra lines. Perhaps also that there just wasn't the same culture of chess and chess education that other European countries had: Irish players just weren't used to being taught how to play the middlegame.

by dmurray

1/17/2025 at 9:09:14 AM

Another very good guide to IQP is it's chapter in Chess structures: A grandmaster guide by Mauricio Flores Ríos.

IQP is, if you ask me, bread and butter of chess and should be introduced to begineers way earlier than it tends to be. Plans for both sides are clear and thematic (consequently less memorization in opening is needed), it's imbalanced and based on piece play (consequently tactics and calculation) more than on abstract considerations.

by smatija

1/17/2025 at 10:08:47 AM

Agreed! But it's hard for beginners and intermediate players to follow that kind of path without a culture of coach-directed learning. For best effect, a gruff, grizzled, Soviet coach.

by dmurray

1/17/2025 at 1:28:30 PM

> Most chess books do not keep their relevance past 5 years...

That's just not true.

by jovial_cavalier

1/17/2025 at 10:55:01 AM

Chess is such an interesting game wish more poor children had access resources to learn it without sthe stressors of poverty

by gunian

1/17/2025 at 11:00:25 AM

https://lichess.org is an excellent open source chess server with plenty of learning resources for pure beginners.

As you progress learning resources sadly get more and more expensive indeed. Not to mention the cost of tournaments (travel and accomodation expenses add up very quickly).

by smatija

1/17/2025 at 4:38:47 PM

For me as a hobbyist it's so hard to know what to learn and even to know what level the teacher should be.

I'm at 1200 in lichess, tried for example multiple ,,beginner friendly'' openings, like London / Kings Indian defense, but I realized that as four knights opening is the most natural for me, I should focus on the Italian, which is the closest to my natural style of play.

Also there are tactics practice, books, videos, but I get discourage when I see how fast some people are advancing (especially as I'm in my 40s).

by xiphias2

1/17/2025 at 5:18:00 PM

The biggest thing is to not focus too much on openings. Past 4 or so moves everything can be mixed up and tactics are more important.

You're at the level where you're probably not hanging all your pieces or hanging mate-in-one too commonly. So learn endgames. You can win/draw like 75% of the time from even being down a piece or two at your level if you can play the endgame quickly and accurately.

Then, refine the middlegame, learning how to get the advantage. Doing puzzles for dozens of hours will teach you how to recognize a lot of basic tactics that can win early.

But only once you've scraped the barrel with the middlegame would I start focusing strongly on openings.

by blharr

1/17/2025 at 7:37:13 PM

Thanks, great advices, I will follow them.

Yes, I'm through the trivial things that's why I feel that I've got stuck.

Probably I spent too much time playing and not enough practicing.

What you write makes a lot of sense, I know the very basics of end game play, but not on my level for example, and just playing against people doesn't give me the consistency I need to get better faster.

The same with tactics, I can spend many hours playing with other people and I'm getting better with tactics, but again it's not enough to get consistent with pattern recognition.

by xiphias2

1/17/2025 at 11:10:28 AM

I didn't mean me I am one of the privileged kids after all I am posting on HN :) just musing out loud digitally about all the people that dont't have access to that for various reasons or the time to devote to it but such is the way of the world

by gunian

1/17/2025 at 12:20:00 PM

Of all the games, chess is a pretty well-distributed one. Maybe not quite as cheap to set up as football, but it's pretty close. You can create a board and pieces out of two sheets of paper and a pen.

Learning it is tougher of course!

by robertlagrant

1/17/2025 at 1:03:50 PM

I am curious why you connected this to child poverty.

Are there things that you wish poor children had less of, with more stressors from poverty?

by rco8786

1/17/2025 at 5:55:38 PM

presumably it's because the stressors of poverty forces one to think in the short-term, while Chess incentivizes long-term strategy.

If you learn not to take a pawn because 5 moves later you'll lose a bishop, maybe you won't take on credit card debt when 5 months later you owe 10% more in interest.

by jjmarr

1/17/2025 at 7:52:30 PM

lol credit cards that's a million privilege steps ahead most children in the world do not have two hours to spend on their own education much less chess they work etc

by gunian