Customer Reviews

Understanding Pawn Play in Chess

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Often overlooked is the importance of preparing long term planning for not just the endgame, but the use of pawn chains, and even what is considered a weakness, doubled pawns being used as a "battering ram!" and opening a file. These are very important aspects of chess and what has been called the "backbone" of chess is often forgotten in light of only tactics. True, tactics books, trap books and opening books have a very important place and all should be studied. But the "use of pawns" should not just be a chapter in a book, it should be a couple volumes of books! If you are a beginner, even an lower end intermediate player you will get more results in studying tactic and chess traps. But Once you reach a solid intermediate level then you should start thinking more about the finer points of play. Now, I like the overall approach of "Understanding Pawn Play in Chess" but I think a few words (to say the least) were lost in the translation (it seems clear to me that the author's first language was not english), which is why, though I feel this is a good book, some of the important ideas were lost the the translation, and can be a little confusing. Solitis's "Pawn Structure Chess" is a good alternative. I also like going over complete game books such as, "Understanding Chess" and "Unbeatable Chess Lessons and More Unbeaable Chess Lessons" as ways to gain an understanding of all aspects of the game, including the critical use of pawns.

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.

This book uses complete games to examine pawn structures--their strengths and weaknesses. Marovic uses a conversational tone to explain important points and keeps analysis to the minimum needed to illustrate the explanation. In separate chapters he examines isolated pawns, passed pawns, doubled pawns, backward pawns and pawn-chains.
Marovic uses games from throughout the history of chess to illustrate his material and does a great job. I would recommend this book for players rated (USCF) from Class B and up, although rapidly advancing lower rated players would also benefit from reading the book as well.
The only thing that could make it better would be a few more diagrams.

Traditionally chess books are often grouped in the categories: opening, middle game and ending. Marovic's book "Understanding pawn play in chess" covers a very important topic in chess, which includes all the three phases of a game. It will help you little if you know the moves in the French opening, but you don't know how to handle the pawn chain from a French opening. Means how to attack the wedge and the base of the pawn chain. "Understanding pawn play in chess" will help you to do understand what to do with pawn chain. So if you want to extend your knowledge about pawn structures this is the book for you. The topics covered in this book are: isolated pawns, isolated pawn couples, hanging pawns, passed, doubled, backward, pawn chains and pawn islands.

One Minus with this book, is that the author and Gambitbooks could have used more diagrams for each game. You must always use the board when going through this book. With more diagrams describing the most interesting position for the pawn subject, the book would become more readable.

Having read the classic manual Pawn Structure Chess by Soltis, I was very interested to see how this book would stack up. I learned a lot from Soltis, and I hoped to expand my understanding about how pawn structures affect plans and strategy. I was not disappointed. Marovic uses many, many complete game examples, but his annotations are so succinct and clear as to make the large number of games effortless to get through. One thing he does well which is VERY hard for most chess authors is present the model games in a sequence in which their respective lessons build upon one another to deeply reinforce the concepts he's trying (and succeeding) to instruct. The one caveat, if you want to call it that, is that I think this book will be most helpful for people with an intermediate knowledge of openings, as the pawn positions discussed tend to reoccur in specific openings with specific piece placements. However, this shouldn't be a problem as I believe the intended audience is above 1600 USCF anyway, and should thus know the difference between a QGA and a QGD.

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.

I am currently 2000 USCF rating (adult, amateur, have a job and 3 kids...) and have studied chess intensively over the last 2 years resulting in a 400 points (!) rating increase in that period.
The more I study chess the more I get to appreciate the importance of the pawn structures in chess. (O.K., I did know that pawns are important since long - Philidor: "Pawns are the soul of chess" - , but to be honest I never really understood that completely...) Pawns simply affect every aspect! They decide for example whether your knights bishops or rooks are good or bad and your plan will be circling around the pawn structure as well; a bad pawn structure gives you also a bad endgame, and so on...

Marovic in his book discusses 7 aspects of basic pawn knowledge (in 7 chapters): Isolated Pawns/Hanging Pawns/Passed Pawns/Doubled Pawns/Backward Pawns/Pawn-Chains/Pawn-Islands.
He hereby gives (complete) Grandmaster games explaining in each how the pawn structure affected the whole game. Marovics explanations are very easy to follow because he focuses on verbal explanation instead of giving heavy variations that would confuse the reader. While there is also a sequel to this book (Dynamic Pawn Play in Chess; I already bought that as well and I will start studying it immediately after I finish this review...) I am glad I got this more basic book first, as I have learnt a whole lot from it, and I am already 2000 USCF as I said before.
Bottom Line: If you are seriously interested in improving your chess understanding get this book! It's really the bible (part 1) on pawn play.
I recommend it for every chessplayer (even beginners!) up to 2000 USCF.
After reading this book you will definitely want to get his other book on pawn-play (Dynamic Pawn Play in Chess) as well...

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.

I am sad for this product, because I will be the first reviewer to write something bad. I want to give this book 1 star, because I don't feel I'm getting anything out of it, but I will give it three for some reason. Call it room for error on my part.

I don't like wasting time with reviews, but I'm here because I'm that frustrated with this book. I'm in the A class, so I would think that I can follow this book.

Here are my frustrations broken down, which has been impeding my learning:
(1) This book needs to quit with the "It is hardly necessary to mention that..." Yet he mentions it anyway. To my horror, I found this unnecessary utterance, a waste of text, valuable to me. In fact, I wish there were more of these unnecessary, petty comments. I don't like this author's attitude. His writing is pretentious, and I know the reason why it's pretentious; he is trying to cover up his lack of any teaching skills. These are really just annotated games, and the instructions / even annotations herein are skimpy. It reminds me of those bad opening books pre-Starting Out series. I love Lev Alburt's way of teaching for example. And I love any author in general who takes the time to explain any assertion (it adds credibility and is just what a good teacher would do).
(2) Roughly around the same idea, I would have liked instructions broken down into maxims and diagrams with arrows pointing everywhere. We don't need to excel at the art with color-coded, advanced memory psychology, but wow, please learn to teach. Repeatedly again, I would like some Jeremy Silman-influenced instruction, not this neophyte of a teacher's grandmaster luster, loaded with assumptions and arrogance. Books are about communication, and the more a book exiles rather than enlightens or includes, the more of a failure this book is.

To be fair, Marovic does indeed give maxims at the end of the chapter, but they're simple and could have been worded better. But these maxims come last, at the end of the chapter. Please, the maxims first, then the demonstrations, and please, bridge the connection between the maxim's logic and the demonstration of this logic with clearer annotations and illustrations. His jargon is close to a lawyer, as he tries to build up to a "Therefore, we can assume at this point that isolated pawns are rendered weak when immobile" (these are my words imitating his style). Once again, this is arrogance designed to exclude unnecessarily, rather than include the curious, learning mind. Can anyone see how this is annoying? I wanted something more advanced than Jeremy Silman, but I must admit about Silman, his style is impeccable, especially his Silman's Complete Endgame Course. These are examples for this author to digest, when he can get past his solipsism. When this happens, I'll be ready to sit with this author and absorb some of his thoughts, now enclosed in a little bubble of people who has the gift to understand his convolution. Man, I really wanted an update to Kmoch's or Andrew Soltis's book on pawns. Those classics needed an update, a modern take. And this book fails at that.

This book is about pawn structures, as the titles says, but it has a main difference from previous books on the same subject (Kmoch and Soltis, wich I can recommend too).
The best thing about it are the examples Marovic gives. He mixes games from the classics (Capablanca, Alekhine, Rubinstein and others)with present days great players, like
Kramnik, Shirov, Fischer, Karpov and Kasparov.
Therefore the reader can see the treatments of the same structures over a period of a century.
The book, as always with the subject, is divides by themes, like Isolated Pawns, Hanging Pawns and so on.
After this one I bought all the other from the same author, where he uses the same method, of mixing classics and contemporary games.
A great book for all club players.