Putting pressure on pawns Why is it important to develop your pieces to put "pressure" on opponent's pawn(s)? I hear this a lot from YouTube videos in which experienced chess players commenting as the game develops. It's "just" a pawn! Why design a tactic or strategy around a pawn?
Attacking a piece is often not very useful: the piece does not feel any pressure but just moves away. A pawn won't escape so easily, so attacking a pawn forces the opponent's pieces to defend it and thus limits their freedom. There are a few possible gains of an attack on a pawn: the opponent cannot get enough pieces to defend the pawn so you immediately win the pawn, or his pieces are so badly placed defending the pawn that you can gain advantage on another part of the board, or the pawn has to move and leave weak squares on both sides of it because it cannot ever again protect the squares that it attacked a move ago.