The Isolated Queen's Pawn
Okay, here we are! The week is through, I've been studying the Isolated Queen's Pawn chapter in "Chess Structures", and it's time for some writing. A few things to mention up front: I'm writing this primarily in the hope that the act of writing will make me understand it better. I'm sharing it on the off-chance it helps somebody else understand it better. It's obviously not a definitive or deep guide to anything. This is mostly a synthesis of Mauricio Flores Rios, but there's some original stuff too. The latter probably isn't very reliable. tl;dr Alternative title for this section: Some Generalizations That Are So Broad As To Be Useless Isolated Queen's Pawn aka IQP aka Isolani is a common pawn structure. Don't be afraid of the IQP! It brings open lines and central space, and you'll often get good attacking chances. On the flip side, if you don't have that activity, you may indeed be doomed to defending a sad position. Making th