Chess 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 Dražen Marović 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.

Dražen Marović 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.

"...uses good examples, explains them well, and ties concepts together with useful introductions and summaries" - Randy Bauer, RANDY'S REVIEWS

"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 PASSANT

"Understanding Pawn Play in Chess, which features the superior production values typical of Gambit Publication 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, INSIDE CHESS ONLINE, BLITZ CHESS

"...some of the modern games Marović has selected are surely destined to be regarded as classics in the future. Highly recommended to ambitious students of the game" - Phil Adams, MANCHESTER CHESS SCENE

"Contains over 100 complete games, each demonstrating a particular pawn strategy...an excellent book" - Alan Borwell, SCOTTISH CORRESPONDENCE CHESS

"Serious study of this book will reward any player, regardless of their standard" - IM Danny Gormally, WEEKEND CHESS

"GM Marović utilises 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

"My favourite chapter is the final one - that on pawn islands... a fine addition to chess literature" - John Pugh, CHESS POST

"... a fine choice of games to illustrate important ideas. By using words where some authors would use a maze of variations we have a clear and very readable treatise on a subject which will prove of great interest to players of all levels" - Monroe Morrison, OPEN FILE

"His writing is instructive, based on an excellent choice of games to stress his points" - GM Lubosh Kavalek, WASHINGTON POST

Download a pdf file with a sample from the book.

Gambit books by Marović: Dynamic Pawn Play in Chess, Secrets of Chess Transformations, Secrets of Positional Chess, Understanding Pawn Play in Chess.