In today's world of databases, anyone can spew out a bunch of games and place a few comments next to them. However, a skilled (and caring) writer is needed to put this material into a proper form, to never lose sight of the book's theme, and to describe the ups and downs of each position in a clear and instructive way (this last is the hardest of all--only a handful of writers can make difficult concepts easy to grasp).

Winning Pawn Structures theme is obvious: it offers us a detailed look at isolated d-pawns. This subject is actually an extremely important one, since it occurs often with either color and from dozens of different openings. However, few players sit down and say, "I think I'll study the isolated d-pawn for the next three weeks. Then I'll go really wild and inject some doubled pawn theory into my veins." Of course, few players ever excel in chess, and it takes this kind of work ethic to take you into more rarified climes.

Though the title plays tricks with our minds (it's really about isolated d-pawns, so why not simply say so?), and though many of the title topics are identical to those found in Isolated Pawn (a book I gave a thumbs down to), Grandmaster Baburin steps beyond mere presentation of material and instead demonstrates an amazing talent for making potentially difficult subjects fairly easy to comprehend.

Of course, the examples in this book are no better and no worse than the ones in Isolated Pawn. What really separates these two explorations of this particular pawn structure (aside from the superior English and fine production) is Baburin's desire (one can only do this if one desires to do it, and the amount of work needed to accomplish this turns the financial aspect of chess book writing into a disaster) to explain everything he can in clear, interesting, and highly instructive language. Each chapter has a summary of what was explored (a very useful feature for the non-master), and each example has so much prose that the reader never becomes bored and never loses heart (if a student thinks things are too complicated, there's a tendency to simply give up).

I also appreciate the fact that the Grandmaster has looked deeply at each and every game, trying his best to understand its subtleties and impart that knowledge to you. I strongly recommend Winning Pawn Structures for players in the 1600 to GM range. In fact, I can't wait to see Baburin's next book; teachers like this are very hard to find!

YOU CAN FIND THIS BOOK AT