Pawn Structure Chess by A.Soltis

Has anybody read Pawn Structure Chess by Andy Soltis? If so, is it good and worthwhile purchasing? If not, is there something else that is better for learning about pawn structure?

It's pretty much the standard book to study pawn structure.  IM Danny Rensch recommends it to accompany his pawn structure videos.  It seems well written, but it's pretty dry due frankly to the subject matter.  Definetely a book that needs to be studied with a chess set unless you're a genius or something.  I need to give it another go.

The only other book I know of is Hans Kmoch"s Pawn Power.  That is also supposed to be excellent although he apparently introduces his own special vocabulary which I wasn't up for learning.  You could do a Search Forums for some earlier threads on the subject.

I purchased it. I didn't find it that useful because many of the pawn structures in the book I don't even play. Most of the pawn structures aren't covered in huge depth. None of the games have much annotation. You need to be a good player before you read the book and be willing to do a lot of work.

I have both Soltis's book and Kmoch's book.  They are both way beyond my comprehension.  Probably because I don't have the background knowledge for the books to be useful.

I found it very useful. I don't play every structure of course, but seeing the same type of ideas over and over helped drill the ideas into my head. Where are the pawn breaks, how the structure can change afterwards, what side of the board makes sense to play on, and how you can form short and long term plans around these considerations.

Over the month or two I read it, I probably gained ~100 rating points worth of strength, then probably even more as I continued to play and think about these ideas over the next year... so this was a weak area for me and it really helped. It wont be as useful for everyone, but it was great for me.

It iis a very good book.  Well worth the price, and an important addition to chess improvement.

I have it and have found it useful. Not as a "read the book and learn the material" type book, but as a reference book for use during correspondence games.

Guess it depends on how your brain is wired.  I find figurine algebraic even easier than the regular algebraic.  Of course I've spent more than a few hours poring over FCO so maybe I'm just used to it.

I found it extremely useful. Probably the best chess book I've ever read, it truly allowed me to understand the plans behind openings, provided massive insight into what was happening in grandmaster games, and allowed me to find the best moves in a given situation much more easily knowing where the pieces were best in any given pawn structure. It along with flipping through a couple thousand master games is what allowed me to ascend from an 1815 level player to a 2205 uscf player in the last four years. I did a lot of other things too but without the understanding from this book none of the rest would have helped, it was a big turning point for me.

This is the best book for beginning your education into pawn structures. There are books that go deeper on specific structures, but this gives you a good level of understanding of all the main ones (except for some Nimzo stuff).

Excellent teaching tool.  Understanding pawn structures is like a military commander reading the lay of the land so as to effectively deploy his forces for battle.  Ignore this at your peril.  Soltis communicates well.  Love his work.

It's a great book, if only because it gives insights on the way chess masters think about chess.

Excellent analogy.

Is the early version (1986) in Algebraic or old notation?

I found that the 1986 McKay version is in Algebraic.

What about the 1976 version?

Has anyone read Chess Structures, by Mauricio Flores Rios? How does it compare with Soltis's book?

I have them both.  Rios book is much more detailed than the Soltis book. I would go for Rio's book.

I agree.  I have both books as well.  Soltis's book is also useful, but if I had to choose only one, it would have to be Rios.