Understanding Pawn Play in Chess (Positional Chess)

A grandmaster shows how to make the most of your pawnsNew interactive ebook feature: each diagram is also a link to a lichess analysis board of that position!"The book would be an ideal study companion for an improving beginner or an average club play who wants to improve his/her handling of pawn structures" - Alan Sutton, En PassantChess owes its extraordinary depth to pawns. These humble pieces can take on many roles in the chess struggle. They can be blockers, battering-rams, self-sacrificing heroes, and can even be promoted to the ranks of royalty. On the other hand, if mishandled, they can be weak and provide targets for enemy attack.In this book, experienced grandmaster and trainer Drazen Marovic elucidates the pawn's multi-faceted nature. By investigating high-quality games from grandmaster practice, he provides the reader with an armoury of pawn-play concepts that will help him or her to make the right judgements at the board."Understanding Pawn Play in Chess, which features the superior production values typical of Gambit Publications books, can be recommended without reservation to all players between 1800-2200 and even those up to 2400 will find much of interest. " - John Donaldson, US Team CaptainDrazen Marovic is a grandmaster from Croatia, who has won medals as both player and trainer for various national teams. His pupils include Bojan Kurajica, World Under-20 Champion in 1965, and Al-Modiahki of Qatar, the first Arabian grandmaster."His writing is instructive, based on an excellent choice of games to stress his points" - GM Lubosh Kavalek, Washington Post"GM Marovic utilizes all his experience as a GM and trainer to outline appropriate strategies associated with specific pawn structures: isolated pawns (specifically IQP), isolated pawn couples, hanging pawns, passed, doubled and backward pawns, pawn chains and pawn islands. This approach ... has of course been attempted before, but not, that I have seen, with such clarity as in this book" - Jonathan Tait, BCCA Read more