Attacking The Castled King - Same Side Castling Edition

One of the main opening principles is to castle your King as soon as you can. This is due to the fact that castling enables you to get your King away from the center of the board, and helps link up your Rooks.

This is part of the reason why one player might want to open up the d-file and trade Queens, as often, the only response is to take with the King, preventing the opponent from castling.

Now, let me ask you a common question: Do you prefer to castle Queenside or Kingside? Most players castle Kingside. When both players castle on the Queenside or Kingside, it is referred to as same side castling. You might notice how I said that this is the same side edition. This is because I plan to make a post later on about opposite side castling attacks, which are different because you have your Rook on the same side as your opponent's King. With same side castling, you don't have that option.

You are therefore forced to find other methods. That is what this blog is about.

So here are the main guidelines:

1. Use Bishops and diagonals

The Bishops are especially useful here. I discussed Bishops vs Knights a couple months ago, and this might be considered as evidence for those who support the Bishops. The diagonals are especially important for attack.

To simplify explanations, I will largely use this position, where both players play the Giuoco Piano Game and then castle King side:

Now we can discuss the diagonals.

When both players castle king side, if you're playing as White, the a1-h8 and b1-h7 diagonals are the crucial ones, and as Black, you need to control the a8-h1 and b8-h2 diagonals.

This is where the tactic known as the Greek Gift Sacrifice, a Bishop sacrifice when the Bishop captures the Pawn on h2 or h7) comes into play. As I do not know enough about it, I will not go into this topic. For those of you that want to know more, check out this blog post by @MatBobula.

It is worth noting that after castling King side, the players will likely play g3 and g6, which prevents attacks on the b1-h7 and b8-h2 diagonals. This ties into my next step.

An attack via the long diagonal was how I won this game:

Long diagonal attacks can go unnoticed due to their range, enabling them to be set up on the opposite side of the board from the King, as you saw in this game. The Bishop-Queen battery is lethal. Use it to your advantage.

2. Damage the Pawn Structure

What if White's Knight was moved to Nh3, and the c8-h3 diagonal was open for Black's Bishop?

The answer: Take the Knight.

While followers of my blog do know that I generally do not approve of trading Bishops for Knights, I did say then that the trade could be a good idea if it damages the pawn structure around the castled King. Because look at this:

White can either play gxh3 and leave their King vulnerable, or let Black get a free Knight.

If they play gxh3, the g-file is open, and Black can move the Queen to the file and stage an attack with the Queen and Knight. This does not work if White has played g3, but if they haven't, this can be deadly. My next tip is for if they have moved their g-pawn.

3. Use the h-file and the Knights

While the players, after castling, might play g3 and g6, the h-file is still critical. Even though, since you castled same side, you cannot form a Queen-Rook Battery, you can still use your Knights to launch an attack, as my opponent tried to do in the game I featured in my post on premoves. Even though that was a diagonal attack I blocked by playing g6, you can still launch a similar attack, moving the Queen down the h-file, as in this puzzle:

You noticed that here, the defending Knight has to be removed before you can attack. In this position, Black could play h6 and block the Queen attack, but that forces them to lose their Queen. This brings me to the point that to prevent a defense on the h-file, an attack on the valuable piece, such as the Queen, is a good decoy. A good idea is to move your Knight so that it attacks both the enemy Queen and h7, with your Queen also attacking h7. The opponent will either lose their Queen or be mated. This is also a good technique for capturing the Queen.

That is my 3 main tips for attacking the castled King if you castled same side. As I said before, opposite side castling is different due to the Rook and the ability to push Pawns, and I intend to go into that very soon. Alas, same side castling is more popular, so for now, this should help you score more wins.

Hope you gained some attacking tips

— ChessPawn921