how do i attack in chess

how do i initiate a attack in chess i dont know exactly how/

Before you attack, you must have an advantege:

"Any attack that is not decisive (the attacker does not have an advantage) will eventually fail"

So, to answer your question on how to attack:

1. Build an advantage in one of these areas: Space, Material, Pawn Strucutre (make you opponent have an isolated/backwards/doubbled pawn, etc), King Safety, development (pieces placed so they control more of the board), etc
2. Now, since you have an advantage, you will AUTOMATICALLY begin to see areas that you can expand your advantage
3. If not, use tactic-trainer and complete no less than 20 problems per day, then these things will begin to jump out at you.  I increased by rating by 400pts this way

Hope that helps

Simple.  You take a few minutes to consider your position, and if you are completely lost, pick up the chessboard and smack your opponent in the head with it.

LOL

You can't get better at attacking by reading.  You have to look over games and study strong attacking players and play games yourself. 

Try anything/everything.  Lose tons of games with all out attacks as long as you start to learn how to use pieces in conjuction with one another.

Becoming an  attacking player requires imagination and that is what you need to foster in your practice and play.

thanks immortal guy

 This is extremely good advice. Too many beginners, I find, want to just attack the opponent's king, straight away, before castling, with no regard to their own defence. Usually, this attacks are the equivalent of suicide of course. As OmniRiot suggests build a positional or space advantage first - then, and only, then think about attacking. However, often even then a direct attack on the king is ill-advised; rather, it makes sense to attack a piece or a pawn or the centre.

Rainbow rising, I was just trying to make a harmless joke.  While my post may have not answered his question, it did get him to laugh, so I do think my previous post was helpful!

Furthermore, "Does it make you feel big to mock someone who doesn't understand something?" was offhand, my post wasn't even close to mockery.

Apologies for posting this in public forums rather then sending a PM, but if I feel I have been insulted publicly, I must defend myself publicly.

2 other pieces of advice:  Read IM Silman's "how to reassess your chess", it covers all this stuff. Also, challenge players who are better than you, analyze the game afterwards to see what they did.  Use a computer to analyze the game and see where you blew it

thanks

Oh ya, and you, RainbowRising, what about you. The guy comes on the forums to ask a nice honest question, someone says a joke and you go ape-sh*t on his ass. Do you think this helps the thread starter to answer his question.

You think you're sooooo big, right, trying to make others feel bad for posting jokes. Huf, immature.

Please take it easy mr. White Knight. Not everything is a matter of life and death.

hm I'm a beginner too, attack starts after tactical advantage for black.
While for white it should start from move zero. But there is a weakness for white that in the beginning it doesn't have much peaces on the play field. While at the same time black can build a defense (and so its might get tactically ahead of white). Also as white is starting, it leads so the very first moves of the game are decided by white. Think carefully as black what you do, what are white's options?

For white and black in the first moves, they both like to control the center which is usual good, get pawn there or knights (well defended) from there you can spread attack lines all over the board.

In a typical game white advances pawn 2 blocks ahead in front of queen or king.
Such a single pawn is isolated (ready for black knight attacks) so white builds on a pawn line, or moves out his bishops (mostly attacking) or pawns defending pawns. Even white leads that, black has the advantage of knowing white's goal a bit. Usually when white starts 2 blocks ahead i make a defensive 1 block ahead on my (queen/king) pawns.


For black keep in mind white wants to control the center in just a few moves.
usually black plays defensive, there are several options for that, but the idea is black's defense is strong enough to counter white. Because if it's strong enough it can think of attacking better later. As when it is strong enough, white has not  much time to think about an equal good defense, (as it was thinking of attack), so at some moments after whites opening, it will make moves just to improve position only. From there it has often many places open in which black might be able to act.

Black might act earlier too, before white settles, disrupting white attack force.
Openings usually are short, so it might be possible to force white to alternatives, thereby you start attacking his ideas. You really attack when the other has to respond to your moves in a defensive way.

When it becomes more complex, just count how many peaces do attack a single peace of you, compared to how many peaces defend it, if your in plus, maybe you can attack with it, if your in negative, look around the board, you might not need to go in defense directly maybe another attack on another place is better, if not, can you go away from it?, if not can you defend it ?, if not just accept your peace loose, start attack on another peace, or reposition and try to get leading again. the one who leads makes more attack chance.

I hope this helps, i don't like to describe moves in move lists.
You also might look on you tube search on chess opening white / black.
Just watch it  a little, its no use memorizing many openings, get the basic idea as noted above, and take a look what other people do in their first moves. After that its just a lot of luck unless your a computer.   :))

I didn't get that last post?  Was that taken from a book or something.  Felt like the starting of a chapter...if so you should list the author.

I'm just getting started with it, but maybe "Art of Attack" by Vulkovic might be of help.

eh no just me my beginner words, i'm far of bobby fischer, but thanks

Chess to me is more about human tactics then it is like learning openings.
Just keep in mind peoples goals, and how people think. After a few movements the opening is done. So better learn the idea behind their openings, to understand the game itself.

i've learned a lot from this  post and the various responses, omniriot's advice was superb, keephealthy's  advice at first i thought the same  as rude, but after seeing his response to rainbowrising, i can see mthat it was no big thing to get stressed out over.

i do feel like others on this post, that when

advice is asked for by  a member in need of

help with his or hers chess game,  that it should be on point like the very first answer

to this post,   this is normal,   a post by any one at the right time might cause a antagonistic comment from someone else,

take the info you want, disgard  the bad  and go on with you chess learning experiences.

WISH YOU THE BEST LOGICAL CHESS 26

                          thanks  tony (antne003)

i say, play many games, try to advance pawns towards the enemy castle, try sacrificing pawns to open files at the enemy king, try taking on offensive openings, KID, the dragon sicilian and stuff as black, these openings and the likes are usualy catagorised by offensive pawn pushes at the enemy castle and piece coordination in the attack.

as white you can try another type of attackign games, try learning gambit openings, the danish gambit (e4-e5 d4-ed c3, for some reason i forgot the name of this well known opening but the line goes e4-c5 d4-ed c3. this is a very close cousin to the danish gambit. you can try some otehr things if you like, the kings gambit is fine, but might prove to be a bit complex if you are not familier with gambits

another thing, practice tactics. it will help you make the best even of unsuccessful attacks as you will spot weakness in your opponents defences.

at first you will lose many games wimply because you lost material in the attackign procedure, but in the end you will get the hang of it. don't give up.

one last thing!

IMAGINATION! :)

well, it's important. try to count on your intuition and use it. (it is prefferable to calculate things first, but even things are unclear, if you don't see a way to lose, then go for it!).

haha 'keep healthy', excellent and honourable answer, it is far too easy to respond aggressively when someone says something to you in the way that Rainbow Rising did earlier, good for you :)

what?