The five steps that I outline here are relatively simple but they account for many of my own victories and they are present in one form or another in most master games.
The first step is simple enough. You will win many games if you train yourself to be aware of and to identify quickly all of your opponent's pawn weaknesses. In the following diagram, the two central black pawns form a pawn chain. As we have seen, the backward pawn at d6 is the weaker of the two pawns and represents a key weakness in the black structure.