London System | Dealing With a Pawn Pusher

What do you do against an avalanche of pawns? It can be tricky and frustrating to deal with, especially in the London since your bishop is quite vulnerable at the start of the game.

But you know what they say, pawns don't move backwards. So I stayed calm in this game and tried to get my pieces in good positions, looking for outposts and pins on the weak squares left by his pawn advance. Another bit of conventional wisdom is when your opponent launches a pawn storm on one side of the board, attack in the center. It's tricky to do that because a lot of pawn pushes come with tempo. In fact, in this game I didn't even have time to castle! And my pieces were constantly harassed. So I did the best I could.

It worked and eventually my opponent blundered! Then he indulged me in a completely winning endgame, which is always fun. (Unless you blunder the endgame and throw away your win....) The idea was very simple, cut off the king using my rook, and push a pawn until I get a queen.

I hope you enjoy, and I'll see you next time.