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I wonder if there is any existing or a way to create a chess database organised only according to pawn structures, where the notion of a pawn structures is crudely defined by GM Andrew Soltis in his book Pawn Structure Chess and GM Mauricio Flores Rios in his book Chess Structure: A Grandmaster Guide as shown in this Wikipedia article?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pawn_structure

I have the first book and I read a free excerpt of the second.

The software I am currently using is SCID vs PC.

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    You could use the Chess Query Language to search a PGN for arbitrarily defined pawn/piece structures. Admittedly, you'd have to create the definitions yourself...
    – GloriaVictis
    Commented Dec 8, 2016 at 17:00
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    Since pawn structures correspond to openings, a search for openings should give you a very good match as well.
    – user1583209
    Commented Dec 8, 2016 at 17:20
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    You can search for pawn structures using Scid -- e.g. a black pawn on the d-file, no black pawns on the c- and e- files, no white pawns on c- and d- and one on the e-file. Is that the sort of thing you're looking for?
    – RemcoGerlich
    Commented Dec 9, 2016 at 15:09
  • @RemcoGerlich yes exactly, I am looking for just pawn structures regardless of the positions of other materials. I am new to SCID, I would really appreciate if you write detailed answer how to do it in SCID.
    – Haider Atrah
    Commented Dec 10, 2016 at 20:40
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    Not the answer you're looking for, but Chessbase has the ability to set it up in the search mask, and also has the easy button 'Find similar pawn structures' which will then bring up the search mask it is going to use so you can modify it (in CB14) and then will give you a list of games with similar pawn structures to the current position.
    – Jerry Snitselaar
    Commented Dec 10, 2016 at 20:43

1 Answer 1

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In SCID, from the Game List you can select the "Change filter" icon followed by the "Search for material or board patterns" icon. In the window that pops up, you can select the location of up to ten pawns. Although ten is not enough to specify the pawns of both sides, you can also separately specify the number of pawns each side has.

You can also select just the file and not the rank (for example, you might care that your a-pawn exists, but not about its exact location.) And you can specify that a particular file doesn't have any pawns of a particular color. Here's what the screen can look like:

enter image description here

In this example, for a game to match the filter, Black must have pawns on b7, c6, e6, f7, and g7, no pawn on the d-file, and exactly seven pawns. Additionally, White must have pawns on c2, d4, and f2, with no pawn on the e-file, and exactly seven pawns.

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