Introduction to The Art of Attacking

Hi, everyone, I'm back today with an interesting topic for my latest blog:

How to Attack

You might be thinking "That's easy. Throw in a sacrifice or two, maneuver your pieces over to the enemy king, and BOOM! Checkmate! Why do we have to learn about this?!"  Well, that's partially true, but there's more to it. I know you all want to win your games (trust me, I can read your thoughts ), and you can only do that by attacking your opponent. So, let's get started!

Direct attacks to the king often occur on the board at the same time that different struggles are going on, such as gaining control of the board, improving piece activity, getting a material advantage, etc. Coincidentally (or not), these two things (attacking and gaining control of the board or a material advantage) are actually related. However, it is also worth to note that creating threats or direct attacks against the enemy king is an excellent weapon if you are down in material. When mobilizing pieces against your opponent's king, you may find that your opponent does not have the same flexibility to move his pieces as you do. If you choose to start a king hunt (figuratively speaking, of course), such actions are magnificent, and irreplaceable as a compensatory element in the fight for victory

It is understood that with moves that directly attack the King, the actions with the goal of completion of the game (either through checkmate or the gain of enough material) are the result of the attack maneuvers performed.

To study the art of attacking the enemy king, we are going to divide our study into two groups:

1.  Attacking when castled on the same side
2.  Attacking when castled on opposite sides

OK, that was probably a lot of information at once, so I'll take a break here. Don't worry, this is NOT the end of this. I'm writing this in a multi-part series, because there is a lot to talk about here. I promise you, by the time you're reading this, I will already have started on the next issue. So sit back, give this a thumbs up , and wait for my next post! I hope you enjoyed this, and thanks for reading!