Chess owes its extraordinary strategic depth to pawns. These humble pieces can take on many roles in the chess struggle. They can be blockers, battering-rams, self-sacrificing heroes, and can even be promoted to the ranks of royalty. This book elucidates the pawn's multi-faceted nature. The author, an experienced grandmaster and trainer, tackles a fundamental chess topic, and by investigating high-quality games from grandmaster practice, provides an armory of pawn-play concepts that will help the reader make the right judgments at the board. Includes chapters on isolated pawns, hanging pawns, passed pawns, doubled pawns, backward pawns, pawn-chains, and pawn-islands.