Understanding Pawn Play in Chess

Rating:
Summary: Great book from the great author
Review: I personnaly own half a dosen books wrote in croatian from Drazen Marović, and they are excellent. Unfortunately, he doesnt publish in Croatia any more, so this is the only way to read his fresh stuff. Games of high quality in this book are anotated in a way which can help to improve your understanding, not just about pawn play, but about overall strategic issues in midgame, and correspondance between pawns and pieces. Recomended.

Rating:
Summary: Yes. It's a great book
Review: Recommended for 1800 + players? I think u are good enough to study this book if you're already have playing chess 1 year or more, ok ?

Rating:
Summary: ABC of Pawn structures.
Review: This book has got a wealth of information on pawn structures. It covers 6 different pawn topics. Isolated Pawn, hanging pawns, passed pawns, backward pawns, pawn chains and pawn islands. Strategical ideas are illustrated with well annotated games with the theme. For Isolated Pawns I would recommend GM Baburin book on the topic, is much more thorough. Also on hanging pawns there is also a book, I have not read it but mean to get it. Knowing these pawn formations will increase your positional understanding of chess, and how to play against them when these pawn structures occur in your games.

Rating:
Summary: The final word on pawn structures
Review: This book is better than both Pawn Structure Chess by Soltis and Kmoch's Pawn Power. It shows the strengths and weaknesses of various pawn structures that arise out of the most common openings, with 120 complete grandmaster games used to illustrate the author's ideas. Its basically a superior games collection organized into chapters based upon the prevalent pawn structure. This is one of the best and most useful (and interesting!!) books on positional/strategic chess Ive ever come across, and I own 200 chess books.

Rating:
Summary: A truly great book
Review: This really is the current definitive work on basic pawn structures. It covers six main types with an extremely good range of games covering about 150 years of play.
There is a great index by opening so my suggestion is to use this in conjunction with your opening book. Because as you all know pawn structure is derived from the opening. Major openings covered include: Queens Gambit declined & accepted, French defense, Sicilian and Nimozo Indian. The explanations are easily understood and really get down to the point. In one game which covered the queen's gambit I was able to relate what I had learned from Saddlers coverage of the QGD Lasker defense to the isolated pawn game in Marovic's book. In addition the key blunder made by Vidmar was brilliantly explained by Marovic, it was not the pawn move g3 that was the cause of the problem but the subsequent later exchange of the white squared bishop. Overall all serious players must buy this book to cover pawn play. Do n't waste time on kmoch's obsolete "Pawn Power". I am looking forward to his other books. I have no doubt that any player below 2000 ELO will benefit from a 50 point increase in strength from reading this book.

Rating:
Summary: For those who wants to have INSTRUCTIVE game collection
Review: When i bought this book, i bought the other Marovic book too (dynamic pawn play in chess). And when i opened these books i was disappointed.I had bought another games collection books.And i hate game collections.I get so easily tired going through endless moves and variations.So to be honest i but this book on the shelf.And for the next months i did not touch it.So after months, one morning i got up from the bed and felt like reading something different.So i took these books from the shelf and decided to try read this one.I started using CB-light program to make the moves on my computer screen.And you know what?I liked the book!I did not get tired as usually, and found it intresting to go through the games.What i liked most about the book was that it had continuation from game to game.I knew what to expect from every game.Same set-ups were used time and time again.And opening variations grew little by little.Also the ideas grew the same way.It felt refreshing.This book explaines strategic ideas rather than shows endless variations.In my view this book is all about strategic explanation in different set-ups. It feels like the missing link between opening books and the middlegame books!The other book is similar.This book is truly instructive!122 instructive games with strategic explanation!I recommend!