Panov Formation

The Panov formation gets its name from Panov (duh), who played it for the first time in 1929 in a game against Mudrov, as White. As you maybe already know, Panov has a line in the Caro-Kann Defense named after him, the Panov-Botvinnik Attack, which goes 1. e4 c6 2. d4 d5 3. exd5 cxd5 4. c4. The Panov formation is characterized by the pawn-chain formed by d4 and c5, and Black generally has his own pawns on e6 and d5.

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The game continued: 4. ...Nf6 5. Nc3 Nc6 6. Nf3 Bf5(?) 7. c5! (Diagram)

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It is GM Andrew Soltis in Pawn Structure Chess (which will be the subject of a future book review) who annotates 6. ...Bf5 with a "?". He writes that White would have thought twice about playing 7. c5 had Black played 6. ...Bg4!, since in the Panov formation, the d-pawn is a permanent weakness in a fixed center. We will see that attacking the d-pawn is one of the three main options Black has against that formation.

So, why did White play c5 ? Let's look at the pawn structure which defines the Panov formation:

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We see that White has excellent outposts on e5 and d6, which means for him "excellent use of the black squares in the middlegame and a trump in the ending" (Soltis). Indeed, according to Soltis the reason as to why Bf5 is not nearly as good as Bg4 is because it lacks control over the dark squares (notice that Bg4 would have removed the f3-knight's capacities of defending the dark squares). The main drawback -- besides the fixed backward d-pawn -- is that it is Black who has the potential now to make any pawn-move to contest the center, with ...b6 or ...e5.

Black has three main plans:

1. contest the center with ...e5;
2. contest the center with ...b6;
3. attack White's d-pawn with Bf6 and Ne5 (or simply play Ne4 and f5 and attack on the kingside).

White doesn't have to fear ...e5 all that much, because it comes with its own consequences: after dxe5, White has gotten rid of his backward d-pawn and has created an isolated d-pawn on Black's camp, thus having an outpost on d4. Whether White's c5-weakness is better or worse than Black's d5 isolated pawn depends on your style of play (and your opponent's) I guess.

As for ...b6, White has two main options: he can take it with cxb6 or let Black capture on c5, and in both cases White can control the c-file with heavy pieces; or he can support his c-pawn with b2-b4, and maintain a passed c-pawn. (But beware!, use your head before playing b2-b4: ...a5 could make it look kind of bad, because a3 doesn't always succeed in defending the b4-pawn, if your rook on a1 is not protected and would thus be captured after ...a5xb4 axb4. Make sure your a-pawn wouldn't be pinned.)

Note that the Panov formation doesn't have to come from a Caro-Kann Defense. Even Black can obtain a Panov formation. For example, in the Tarrasch Defense of the Queen's Gambit Declined: 1. d4 d5 2. Nf3 e6 3. c4 c5 4. Nc3 Nc6 5. cxd5 exd5 6. g3 Nf6 7. Bg2 h6 8. O-O Be6 9. Be3 Ng4 10. Qd2 c5 (Diagram)

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