Have ordered the new edition, has lots, claim 60%, new material using recent games. The original is one of my favorite chess books.

I haven't read this book from cover to cover yet, but I highly recommend it - I have not seen pawn structures covered in this much detail before. If you are a Nimzo-Indian devotee from either colour, then this book is perhaps even more important than a repertoire book on the Nimzo.

Gerry1970 wrote on 03/27/09 at 00:29:18:


For chapter one, I played out the games and most of the variations on a board. I largely skipped the opening theory parts, and some of the smaller variations I calculated in my head. I paid especially close attention to the verbal explanations. I'm sure I missed some stuff, but I never intend to read a book just once. I will go through it again some time in the future. I will go slower and play through every variation until I feel I understand what's going on.

I am taking a different approach with chapter two. I don't see the Nimzo Saemisch structure in my games very often, but Isolated Queen pawns do arise in my games. For this reason, I am only taking a game or two a day instead of the four to six a day I was doing.

Regarding dedication to improve: I would say I definitely have a thirst for it. I've got most of Dvoretsky's works, and he's insanely difficult at times, but I cherish the challenge and don't get dismayed when I fail to solve several of his puzzles in a row. I used to not like studying endgames, but I realized I needed to learn to develop a taste for it. For me, alot about improving is developing a taste for the areas in which I am weakest, or care the least about, and working hard on them. This seems to be working...I've gained something like 50 USCF rating points my last 5-6 tournaments, and I have been playing at a 2350 average over the same time period (my rating currently is 2285). Lots of draws against IMs, but zero wins.

It might help that my memory is, I guess, above average. Not too far back, I took the Spark Notes quiz on Moby Dick some 6 years after I read it, and missed only 2 questions out of 25. I retain alot of information I read, even at a fast pace.

"Pawns are the soul of chess." -Philidor

Well, I've had this book for a few days, and am very, very happy I got it. I devoured the first chapter, which was 84 pages in length and covered mostly the Nimzo Saemisch. I'm well into the IQP chapter now.

Emphasis on pawn structure is something alien to me, since I have primarily played 1.e4 with white, and the Najdorf and KID with Black (though lately I have done all kinds of experimenting with openings for both colors in an effort to understand more types of positions). My large chess library had not a single book on pawns. OK, so some books do have a small chapter on pawns, but nothing special. My general attitude had been that pawns were only good for sacrificing  . I got my first clue that this attitude was incorrect when I watched Kasimdzhanov's DVD on strategy (which I also highly recommend). 

Why the big deal about pawns? Pawns are helpful reminders of how play could and should develop. You cannot formulate a plan without taking into consideration those little foot soldiers. This book does an excellent job of explaining clearly the ins and outs of certain pawn structures. Basic questions are answered, like: Where should both sides be playing? Which pieces are problem pieces? Also, more advanced questions are tackled, such as: Do the positions reach a crisis point earlier or later in this opening/structure? Would this fit my style?

Other things I like about this book: it is well made (quality paper), very well organized, the author clearly spent alot of time and effort into writing it, and he is brutally honest at times. Lots of verbal explanations, and not a deluge of variations.

Now Sokolov does not cover all pawn structures. There are no Grunfelds, Sicilians, or hedgehogs in this book. He does, however, thoroughly cover structures that arise from most classical queen pawn openings. For example: the Tarrasch Defense, the Semi-Tarrasch, the Nimzo Saemisch, the Queen's Gambit Accepted, some QID positions, some QGD positions (like the Tartakower), Ragozin, etc. Often he will give an overview of an entire defense to further give you a feel for resulting positions, as Sokolov did with the Tarrasch Defense. I would suggest if anyone plays 1.d4 or one of the above defenses to it, this book is a must-buy.

Each game has been commented on throughout. He does not stop annotating after the opening stage. In fact, you could probably skip the emphasis on openings and pawn structures and still get lots out of this book. 45 chess lessons from a world class player like Sokolov for so little money is hard to pass up.

I believe this book will greatly reward anyone who puts in the time and work to read it, study it, eat it, and know it inside out. Even if you don't play any of the openings listed above, this book will open your eyes to planning and to the power of the pawn.

Hope this was helpful to anyone thinking about buying it.

After thinking on it for a long time, I decided to order this book. I'll get it in the mail in a few days. Maybe I'll post my impressions on it later. I don't have any books that deal specifically with pawn structures, so maybe this'll fill a gap in my chess library.

Fluffy has done a review at Chess Cafe.

"When I was young, at least in a chess sense, one of my favourite books was Andy Soltis’s Pawn Structure Chess. This old book was a basic guide to middlegame structures. It contained explanations and illustrative games dealing with such structures as This was a useful guide and it helped me a great deal in my understanding of pawn structures and their relationship to middlegame planning. Sokolov’s book does not examine structures such as these, as they have already been well covered in chess literature, and not only by Soltis. Winning Chess Middlegames looks at pawn structures that are very common in modern tournament play that are not easily found in chess books.

The full review can he found at http://www.chesscafe.com/Reviews/books.htm

There is considerable KID material in the two books I mentioned earlier (by Soltis and Marovic).

This book is very good for d4 players, and classic d4 defences. For example there is some great information on QGD Tartakower, which people on this forum conplain of lack of recent coverage. Wish there was something similar for KID, but suppose you can't play that opening in a pawn structure way...

Bye John S