A bishop that stands on the same colour as its own pawns is a tall pawn: it defends nothing that needs defending and attacks nothing at all. Learn to keep your pawns off your bishop’s colour, to trade a bad bishop, and to fix the opponent’s pawns on the colour of his bishop.
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After 1.e4 e6 2.d4 d5 3.e5, Black’s bishop on c8 looks at its own pawns on d5 and e6 and sees nothing else for hours. That is the classic bad bishop. The lesson is about the colour relationship between a bishop and its pawns, and what to do when yours is the wrong one.
What you will learn
01The test for a bad bishop: are its own pawns on its colour, and the enemy pawns on the other?
02The pawn rule that keeps a bishop good, and why it matters most when pawns are fixed.
03The two French manoeuvres that swap off the c8 bishop: ...b6 with ...Ba6, and ...Bd7 to b5.
04How to fix the opponent’s pawns on the colour of his bishop and win the ending that follows.
The rule of thumb
Two sections from the French and two from bishop endings. The French position shows the c8 bishop boxed in by its own chain. A bishop ending with every black pawn on a light square, the colour of Black’s bishop, shows the bad bishop with nothing left to hide behind while the white one picks the pawns off. The third section returns to the French for the trade manoeuvres. The fourth gives the winning method: fix the pawns, keep it closed, walk the king in.
The club mistake is to judge bishops by where they stand instead of where the pawns stand. A bishop on a long diagonal is still bad if the pawns it should attack sit on the other colour. The second mistake is trading the wrong bishop: with same-coloured bishops, the player with the bad one should seek the exchange and the other should avoid it.
How to practise it
Three quiz positions follow the four sections. Two are bishop endings with fixed pawns, one with the black king on h7, where you find which pawn falls; the third is a French position where you choose the pawn break that begins to free the c8 bishop. Voice or tap, one move each. It sits in Pro.