Rating: 
Summary: Pretty good
Review: A pretty good book. It outlines the key strategic motifs of nearly every basic pawn structure you will find in the game, and gives plenty of example games ranging from the obscure to the famous like Keene-Miles 1975. It's chock full of great positional advice and standard plans for almost every opening. I learned a lot of useful stuff, like that one key factor in deciding whether g4!? is sound in the Sicilian depends on whether black can play ...d5! in response immediately. The book outlines ideas for minority attacks, liquidation of the pawn center, etc. I found many interesting thematic similarities between seemingly unrelated openings by examining their pawn structures in this book. The only part of the book I found lacking was the discussion on Stonewalls especially the Dutch, a dubious but powerful opening in the right hands. The Stonewalls chapter was short even as far as overviews go and looked like the author got lazy and wanted to just get paid ASAP. Other than that, this book was awesome.
Rating: 
Summary: Not very convincing
Review: Althoug the book covers a large quantity of chess pawn structures, they are not covered in depth. They are just exemplified. So it is a book only helpful for beginners or chess instruction, but nothing more.
Rating: 
Summary: Excellent
Review: Andrew Soltis as written a great number of chess books. This ranks among his best. Most other books on pawn structures deal with the usual doubled pawns, isolated pawns, passers etc. However this book is different, as it deals with pawn structures that come out of most standard openings. This is very useful because say your opponent plays the caro-kann (1. e4 c6), by knowing the pawn structure arising from that opening you can transpose the game to obtain a structure that you are familiar with. By doing so you know the main plans/breaks which are typical of that structure. This is a far cry from memorising standard openings when most people are clueless as to the main plans arising in the middle game. This book is best studied slowly. The best way, is to study a structure that you encounter most often in your games, go through the supplementary games at the end of the book, and finally get some more games from your database (e.g. chessbase) with the same structure. This will ensure you will remember the plans and ideas more often than your opponent, and hopefully lose less often. Finally this book is rather advanced so for beginners/intermediate players it is recommended to spend time doing lots of tactics before buying this book.
Rating:
Summary: How "P.S.C." helped me
Review: I am currently a USCF Life-Master. I have won more than 100 rated tournaments. My personal chess library is over 1,200 books. When I was studying to become a Master, it was a tremendous eye-opener to me to discover that there are not more than around 15 basic pawn structures. GrandMaster Andy Soltis (who has played me and beaten me twice in over-the-board encounters) lays out logically, all the basic different pawn structures. He shows that there might be dozens of different move orders to reach a certain structure, but once you get there-- there are only a limited number of plans that work within the given pawn structure. He logically and sensibly lays out these different plans. He shows many practical examples of how each plan may have worked in real, OTB play; usually in the games of a well-known GM. The examples are very poignant. His advice is easy, sensible, logical, and readily assimilated. It does not matter if you are a Master, or just a Novice who wishes to improve ... this is a book for you. Credit this one book for turning a humble expert into a Master who has tied for first in four different State Championships. Easily belongs in my list of, "The Ten Best Instructional Books Ever Written! "
Rating:
Summary: Excellent if this books fits your personal need
Review: I bought this book and it sat on my shelf for several months, as I didn't immediately have the level of understanding required to benefit from it. When I finally came around with a serious need to understand openings and middlegame better, this book was a true lifesaver, showing me the underlying principles which constitute many of the game's famed openings (Sicillian, Caro-Kann, etc) which had so far eluded me entirely. It has given me greater appreciation of how the pawn structure affects the avenues of attack and defense in those instances, and how a single pawn move will affect those plans. This is *not* light reading by any stretch of the imagination, but for the serious student of chess, this work shows many essential principles that no player should do without. Absolutely outstanding.
Rating: 
Summary: Pawn Structure Bust...
Review: I got this book thinking it would help me with my pawn play... To say very least Ive found it rather a waste of my money... The layout leaves lots to be desired personally... Lots of the coverage in certain openings is nill at best which is rather annoying to say least... Like he does not realize some openings even exist in chess it seems... The typical over analised over played openings have some coverage... Yet the coverage of the Scandanavian is nill at best to say least... Which perhaps people at top level are afraid to use... Yet at the club level this opening is used in many forms... I try to be fair about the chess books I have and how I see them... Id have to say this might be the worst one Ive ever gotten... Bout all it taught me was Caro-Kant Pawns structure is related to the Scandanavian... Im sure or least I hope there is a better pawn book to spend your money on... About the only good thing I can really say about this book is if you play over used openings give it a look... If your a person that uses opening that are not super over analised to death than dont waste money nothing here for you... Some openings that are used many times are not even in the index to look up etc... Even those you look up in many cases there is nothing worth looking up... Maybe 1 star is rough, but this book has been over rated long enough... Maybe the actual rating is 2 stars or 3 at best, but thats bout it...
Rating:
Summary: Pawn Structure Bust...
Review: I got this book thinking it would help me with my pawn play... To say very least Ive found it rather a waste of my money... The layout leaves lots to be desired personally... Lots of the coverage in certain openings is nill at best which is rather annoying to say least... Like he does not realize some openings even exist in chess it seems... The typical over analised over played openings have some coverage... Yet the coverage of the Scandanavian is nill at best to say least... Which perhaps people at top level are afraid to use... Yet at the club level this opening is used in many forms... I try to be fair about the chess books I have and how I see them... Id have to say this might be the worst one Ive ever gotten... Bout all it taught me was Caro-Kant Pawns structure is related to the Scandanavian... Im sure or least I hope there is a better pawn book to spend your money on... About the only good thing I can really say about this book is if you play over used openings give it a look... If your a person that uses opening that are not super over analised to death than dont waste money nothing here for you... Some openings that are used many times are not even in the index to look up etc... Even those you look up in many cases there is nothing worth looking up... Maybe 1 star is rough, but this book has been over rated long enough... Maybe the actual rating is 2 stars or 3 at best, but thats bout it...
Rating:
Summary: Helps alot when learning the openings
Review: I hate learning openings. This book has actually helped me learn the ideas behind the openings in a rather painless way. How can that be you may ask, since this is a book about the middlegame based on various pawn structures. Well, the reason is that you cannot really differentiate easily between an opening a middlegame and an endgame. They are all part of a seemless whole. Various openings lead to certain pawn structures which dictate certain middlegame plans for both sides. If you understand what the idea behing the middlegame plan is, then you understand the moves you need to make in the opening which makes memorization of variations easier. It also allows you to play the right move once your opponent goes "out of book" because you have a better understanding of what position the particular opening is trying to accomplish. I'll give an example of how the book has helped me. About a month ago I decided to learn the Caro-Kann as black (mostly to cut down on the amount of theory I need to know against e4). So what I did was look through the various line of the Caro-Kann in the MCO and see what the final pawn structures looked like. As it turns out, there are only about 5 pawn structures that are likely to develop. They are the: Caro-Slav formation; Kingside pawn chain; the panov formation; isolani; and the orthodox exchange center. Each of these pawn formations are discussed in pawn structure chess (the first three each have their own chapter and the last two are both found in the chapter on the QGD and its descendants). After studying the general strategic ideas for both black and white arrising from each of these pawn formations, I went back and looked at the variations again. All of a sudden the ideas behind the opening made sense and the moves of the variations seemed logical because I knew what the purpose behind the move was (As Silman says, the real purpose behind the opening is to create an imbalance and then develop around that imbalance). The effects of this book have helped me in the first game I played as black in the Caro. My opponent (rated over 100 pts higher than me) played a variation of the Caro that I wasn't familiar with. We both went "out of book" fairly early. However, I kept in mind what the middle game pawn structure was that I was aiming for and where my pieces needed to be to accomplish that goal. Well my first outing as black in the Caro was a success. The allegedly "dull" or "boring" Caro notched a 20-move win for me -- not bad. This book has also helped me see the similarities between various openings and how one opening can transpose into another. This is critical information to have at your disposal. The book does not exhaustively treat any particular pawn structure, however that is not its intent. The idea is to familiarize the reader with the structures themselves, the openings that they are most likely to arise from and the strategic ideas for both sides. Certainly entire books have been written on the isolated pawn. But this book is a great starting point to give an overview buttressed with a few examples of each strategy either succeeding or failing. All-in-all this is an excellent book. I really do not understand some of the criticisms I've read about it. The book is not supposed to be about pawn play so there is no comparison between it and "pawn power" because each book attempts to cover a different idea. Moreover, the fact that some of the examples are one-sided does not bother me because the idea was to show how a strategy is carried out in its pure form. The lack of depth of treatment of each structure is also the book's strength. The idea is to give an overview, not an exhaustive treatment since such a treatment could conceivably cover an entire book or more for each chapter (or subchapter) in the book. If you are serious about improving your understanding of how to conduct a middlegame and how that middlegame is tied to the opening due to pawn structure then this is the book for you.
Rating:
Summary: wonderfull
Review: MAN who wants to read a book about PAWNSTRUCTURES???? right??? WRONG!!!!!!!!!!! i was guilty of thinking this way too untill i read it ... this book sat on my shelf for months before i started reading it ... now i cannot put it down
i could not help but read others say or recommend that a more complete study of tactics would be better before buying this book..THAT IS JUST WRONG !! with out this information in this book you will have no way to use your "vAsT tAcTicaL kNowLedge".. ...this should be one of the first books on chess a player should buy .... plans actually start from the very first move now for me .. its great ..
Rating:
Summary: It May be too Advanced for Me
Review: Soltis discusses typical plans arising out of particular pawn structures and transposition possibilities arising from various openings. Games are presented illustrating general themes, but are not analyzed in detail. It didn't help me as much as I had hoped, but it is still on my shelf. It will be reread when other areas of my game, especially tactics, have improved.
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