How should pawns be used to fight for the centre? How does the central pawn-formation affect planning for both sides? These questions are central to understanding chess, and are the primary subject-matter of this book. Following on from his successful book Understanding Pawn Play in Chess, Drazen Marovic now moves on to discuss more complex central pawn-structures and their impact on play both in the centre and on the wings. He begins by surveying how the pawn's role in controlling the centre has been developed over the last 150 years, and how this had led to the refinement of concepts such as the ''dynamic'' backward pawn and the positional exchange sacrifice. The bulk of the book is devoted to discussions of the main types of centre:

Open centre, Closed/Blocked centre, Fixed centre and Mobile/Dynamic centre

In each case, the reader is helped towards a deeper understanding of the key strategic ideas by the author's use of carefully chosen instructive examples from practice.

Drazen Marovic is a grandmaster from Croatia, who has won medals as both player and trainer for various national teams. His pupils include Bojan Kurajica, World Under-20 Champion in 1965, and Al Modiahki of Qatar, the first Arabian grandmaster. Marovic has a wealth of experience as a writer, editor and television commentator on chess. He is currently the trainer of the Croatian national team.