Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #70936 in Books
• Published on: 1991-05-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 304 pages

Synopsis
Emphasizes the role of the proper use of the pawn in chess strategy, discusses how it interacts with the other pieces, and describes specific formations that employ it.

Customer Reviews

A very interesting book
First a word of warning: I only own the (original) german version of this book, there may be some differences to the English edition. This book is an outstanding description on how to use your pawns in a chess game. Intermediate chessplayers will improve considerably by working through it. However, it has one big drawback: Kmoch uses his very own, pretty weired names for some pawn constellations. Getting used to this names is necessary for working through this book, but hardly of any use for your further career as a chess player. All in all a great book with a disturbing flaw. I suggest first to work through Soltis "Pawn structure chess" and then through this book.

Profound treatment of underappreciated aspect of the game.
Very clear presentation of the elements of pawn play in all aspects of the game. Excellent, clear examples from real games with insightful analysis but without the dozens of variations that make for dense print,heavy reading and constant resetting of the pieces. Individual chapters on pawns and knights, pawns and bishops, pawns and rooks, as well as treatment of good and bad bishops, knights vs bishops, etc. Great illustrative game excerpts with just the subject pieces and also in combination with other pieces.

Explores how the pawn structure provides the basis for the standard themes in each type of position and how it should influence planning and strategy in the handling of the middlegame resulting from various openings. Gems of wisdom regarding when the pawn structure is favorable to each piece, how the pieces relate to the structure, and initiating changes in the pawn structure are scattered throughout the text.

This is a great reference for any player, but probably of most value to those with a fair or better command of piece play and tactics and an established repertoire of openings who want to raise their games a notch, or more - club and tournament players who are moving up past 1500 and beyond.

This is an older book presented in descriptive rather than algebraic notation and Kmoch uses a unique terminology, but neither fact should be an issue for anyone with the brain power to perform chess analysis.

Pawn Power helps. Need to understand descriptive notation
I found the book very useful at once, however, its usefulness greatly improved as I learned descriptive notation. A book based on algebraic notation would be easier.