Book Description

Opening preparation in chess is always difficult and a lot of books have been written about this topic. The goal of this book is to illustrate how specific pawn structures should be studied for typical themes even if they arise from different openings. The pawn structure with (typically) White's isolated queen pawn on the 'd' file has been known for over a hundred years, and different players have shown best plans for both sides over the years. Historically, Mikhail Botvinnik popularized White's play, and positional players such as Karpov have performed well on the Black side of the same structure in several modern openings. At the same time, all strong modern grandmasters are well familiar with the principles of this pawn formation for both sides, and the goal of the book is to translate that knowledge on to the readers. Positions with isolated pawn test both positional and tactical skills of both sides. Despite the dynamic balance often present in these structures, whoever is more familiar with their ideas usually comes out on top. Given the wide prevalence of positions with isolated pawns, developing a skill for handling them is nearly guaranteed to improve your results, and the goal of this book is to guide an unfamiliar player through the basic ideas, as well as to explain the subtler points to those already familiar with the common plans in IQP structures. Tactical exercises throughout the book should reinforce the acquired knowledge. At the end of studying the material presented here, the reader should be able to not only find correct plans once the IQP structure appears on the board, but also correctly assess various transformations to and from the IQP positions and therefore be much more confident in a wide range of openings or structures that can lead to IQP or emerge from it. The publication is a follow up to the book 'The Break - Learn From Schlechter, Botvinnik and Kramnik', which also looks at various themes related to pawn structure.