Attacking King in The Center: 4 Tips to Follow

The king in the center is always a questionable factor during a chess game. It always raises the doubt whether it's safe or not. Sometimes
bravery can be easily confused with imprudence and a player can find himself under an unstoppable attack against his king. The basic
principles of the opening, in 90% of the cases, should not be broken.

 Fight for the center

 Develop
 Castle

Whenever one of these principles is not fulfilled, it is likely that an attack can be developed against the king. In this article we are going to
provide a few examples of attacks when the opponent’s king is caught in the center. However, more than illustrating beautiful combinations
and sacrifices to delight the readers, our goal is to help you learn how to sense the moment in which you must start an attac k, improve the
execution and seize the initiative.

“The player with advantage must attack or he risks losing his advantage”

The phrase above it is well known to chess players but applying it on the board is a totally different thing. The king in the center, as an
element, is not a static factor. It is something that, in most games, is only a temporary problem. For example: our opponent might have been
busy taking pawns, and he is two moves away from castle. If we let this happen, the advantage will be on his side. The same thing can be
applied not only to material gains, but also to moving too many pawns in the opening, incorrect development etc.

Should I do it or not?

This is the question. Sometimes you sense something is wrong in your opponent's position but can't see a concrete line and decide to take a
pass on the occasion. That's not right, and it can be worked upon in order to improve your “attacking radar”. Unless you have a born natural
intuition that allows you to think: “..stop, here I must have something”, you need to improve your skill to evaluate quickly the position and
identify the relevant elements in it.

For that, we have created a list of the most common elements to help you out:

1. Our opponent has made too many pawn moves in the opening, 2. Our opponent has one (or two) piece(s) misplaced on the board.
hasn't developed and his king is not yet ready to castle. - This is a - Lack of coordination is always a source of trouble.
common element.

In this case, white struggled to develop and, desperately wanting

We can see in this position that black went crazy in the opening,
hunting down white’s dark squares bishop, which is now trapped.
However, he ignored one of the basic principles of the opening,
thus leaving his pieces undeveloped and his king in the center.
White to play and win.
to get some space, misplaced his pieces, while black has obtained
a dream position. Such actions never go unpunished, so find the
win for black!

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3. You have material superiority on a certain sector of the board, in 4. Superior development. This speaks by itself and has a lot to do
this case, the center. We are not talking about the material outside with the point mentioned above.
the board, but the pieces located in a particular area. For example,
you have 3 attackers vs 1 defender, which gives you an edge.

White’s lead in development is crystal clear in the diagram above.

He has already castled and is creating mate threats with the help
This is the kind of superiority we are talking about. Black has of his queen, rook, bishop and knight. White to move, find the win!
already developed harmoniously and started an attack. He has
already three pieces “looking” at the white king, which is stuck in
the center, while white has only one piece to defend his monarch,
the dark squares bishop. Black to play and win!

In conclusion, it is very important to follow the basic development rules and only after finishing the development start taking actions on the
flanks. Also, make sure your opponent won’t escape unpunished if you have obtained an opening advantage. We will show you how to do this
and what type of moves to look for in the second part of this lesson.

Solutions to the diagrams:

#1 7. Qxh5! Rxh5 8. Bg6#

#2 13...Qg3! 14.fxg3 [14.Qxe4 Rxe4 15.fxg3 Bxg3+ 16.Ke2 Bd1#] 14...Bxg3+ 15.Ke2 Bd1#

#3 15...Qf1+! 16.Kxf1 Bd3+ 17.Ke1 Rf1#

#4 16.Nxf7 d6 [16...Qc7 17.Rxe7+ Kxe7 18.Re1+ Kf6 19.Qg5#; 16...cxd5 17.Nd6#] 17.Nxd6+ Kd7 18.Qe5! Bxd6 19.Qg7++–

We cannot say this is a variation to fully replace the mainline against the Dragon, that’s not our intention. It is, however, a very good practical
choice that is easy to learn and remember and it will turn out very useful when you're not confident on the main line and your opponent's
preparation. So we suggest this modest looking weapon to be a part of your repertoire.

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Attacking King in The Center: Part 2

In the first part of this article, we have presented a few elements that should ring an alarm and help you realize that it might be time to launch
an attack against your opponent. In general, the ideas we mentioned can be applied in other circumstances as well, not only when our
opponent's king is in the center. You can also consider them when attacking the castle, for example.

Once you have noticed one or two of the factors mentioned before, you might ask yourself the next question:

What to do? What to look for?

To make it easier, you should look for moves with the following characteristics, or at least with similar goals:

 Piece sacrifices – In order to destroy your opponent's king shelter.

 Pawn ruptures – As with sacrifices, pawn ruptures are a very effective method in order to open the position

 Threats – Adding more pieces into attack with tempo, chasing your opponent’s pieces or creating threats that keep him unable to
solve the problem of his king while you set the conditions to execute any of the first two.

Now we will move on to some examples, from my own practice.

Black's last move was h7-h6? attacking the bishop that had just moved to g5, pinning the knight. I still can't believe my opponent (now IM but
at that time already strong FM) played such move. But it is simple to understand, confusing guts with imprudence, not being aware enough of
the lack of development and underestimating the risk of delaying the castle. White to play and win by force.

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Attacking The Castled King
The art of attack is for sure one of the most important elements in the middlegame. Knowing when to begin an attack and how are
certainly key things to learn in order to improve your play. It is often said that there are players who like to attack more than others, and
they do this better than others by nature.

While there is some true in this affirmation, learning how to attack should be no different than learning to play with the bishop pair or
any other technical element. In other words, we mean that it's something that can be trained, improved and perfected by anybody.

When to attack? In order to answer this question right we need to evaluate each position precisely and each position has characteristics
of its own. However, there are a few positional elements that can help you through the evaluation. We have elaborated a few bullet
points to help you with this:

 Material superiority – This doesn't mean material outside the board but inside. The pieces placed in a certain area of the
board, or with influence in that area. Before you start an attack, make sure you have more attacking pieces than your
opponent has defenders.

 Development advantage – This point is related to the previous one. If your opponent is behind in development this means he
has less pieces available. Therefore, this is the perfect time to attack before he can get back in the game.

 The enemy's king is weak – If our opponent's king shelter is weak we should try to make the most of it. By weak we mean
different situations, for example: if his castle has been shattered with doubled pawns, if he has advanced any of the three
pawns that defend the king, if one our pieces exerts pressure against any of these three pawns – could be a rook, a bishop or
a knight; anything that can be potentially sacrificed in order to break through.

 Potentially weak king - Your opponent's castle may not be weak at the moment but you have the opportunity to create
weaknesses. This sometimes means removing a piece that protects the king, like trading the fianchetto bishop or advancing a
pawn in order to hit the enemy's castle.

 Piece coordination – Pay attention not only to your pieces, but also your opponent's. If he has a piece off the action, or
placed on a poor square, this can be a motif to start an attack. This concept is similar to numbers 1 and 2 of this list.

 Sacrifices – Don't be afraid to sacrifice material in order to destroy your opponent's castle. In fact, if your opponent's castle
has no weaknesses at all, most of the times you will need to sacrifice a piece to fuel the attack.

Now that we have mentioned the main concepts to have in mind when planning an attack against the opponent's king, let's have a look
at the theory in practice.

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 Kasparov – Portisch

The position in the diagram above is very interesting. Both sides have carried along their development strategy and now it's time for
some concrete action. If we try to apply some of the points mentioned in the list, we will find a few of them. White has material
superiority on the kingside as his two bishops exert some pressure against black's castle.

The knight on a5 is temporarily away from the center, meaning that the white knight can jump to e5, freeing the queen to go to the
kingside to the squares g4 or h5. Both white bishops are attacking squares of the opponent's castle and they can be sacrificed anytime.
Having all this in mind, there is no surprise that Garry went 17.d5! unleashing a winning attack.

Game 1 - Move List:

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 Volkov - Miroshnichenko

White has some positional advantage in the position above due to black's weak dark squares. What is the best plan? Here we can think
about weakening our opponent's king by means of h4-h5 and later trade off the fianchetto bishop via Bh6 or Bf6. It's worth noticing
again white's superiority on the kingside.

Game 2 - Move List:

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 Svidler – Motylev

Despite the lack of material on the board, there is still plenty of play. Apparently the position is close to equal; perhaps black is just a
couple of tempos away from solidifying his position. However, it's white to move and Svidler finds a way to use his better piece
coordination and create great problems for his opponent.

Game 3 - Move List:

With this we conclude our survey on attacking the castled king. We hope you have enjoyed and learned a few things about creating attacks.

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Attack on the King: Race on Opposite Sides of The Board
Opposite flank attacks is a common element in chess. In the most popular openings like Sicilian – Najdorf, Classical or the Dragon, it is very often that
white chooses to castle queenside in order to launch an attack against the black king located on the opposite flank.

In such situations, it is very important for both sides to master the art of defend and attack at the same time. The margin for error is very small and one
should not hesitate when it comes to sacrifice material in order to open the files. For this article we have selected a few examples that will help you
understand the tense battle when both sides have the same goal: to destroy the opponent's castle and checkmate!

Before we move on to the games, it is worth mentioning what are the patterns we should follow in order to succeed when attacking the enemy's castle.

On the attack:
 Use your pawns to break the opponent's castle. It does not matter if you lose one or two pawns, the goal is to expose the enemy's king.
 Gather pieces on the area you are developing your attack. It is important to have some material superiority. This does not mean material
advantage, just to have a superior number of pieces where the action is, for example 4 attackers versus 2 defenders. If you don't have enough
pieces on the attack, it won't succeed.
 Keep an eye on central ruptures. This is important! When you are attacking, your opponent will try to strike in the center as well. Make sure his
reactions are not powerful enough to disturb your plans!
 Your opponent will counterattack and use sacrifices as well. Keep in mind that you do not need to capture his pieces. For example: black plays
''Nxb2 with your king on b1 or c1'' since it isn't check, or doesn't have any mate threat, you could just accelerate your attack and create your
own threats.
The following examples will show fierce battles against the kings castled on opposite flanks. We recommend you have a close look at each one of them.

In this first game, between Bologan and Ye, we can see how white applies the ideas mentioned above and does not hesitate to sacrifice a couple of
pawns in order to develop his attack. Note how the first sacrifice 19.e5 is done in order to keep the center closed. It's the key move that allowed white's
attack to succeed.

Game 1 - Move List: (Bologan-Ye)

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In the next game, things don't go very well for white. His project of attacking the kingside was put on hold by a very effective counterplay on the
queenside. Just a great display by the former world champion.

Game 2 - Move List: (Reinderman-Kasparov)

We consider the last game we have chose, between Timman and Naiditsch, a very good one. We can see here how Naditsch developed his attack
against the white king without wasting any time. He continued by sacrificing material and ignoring white's threats by creating stronger threats of his own.

Game 3 - Move List: (Timman-Naiditsch)

We hope that with this article you have enriched your understanding on these attack races on opposite wings. Knowing the patterns will help you save
time and make the correct decisions in your games when you're under such circumstances.
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Attack on the H-File: 3 Ideas to Keep In Mind
In today’s article we are going to continue our inquiry on the art of attack in chess. We have seen so far numerous ideas of sacrifices that can destroy
our opponent’s castle and leave the king open. Another plan you could use in order to start an attack against the short castle is to use the h file.

This is most often used in positions with opposite side castles or in cases where you haven’t yet castled, but your king is in no danger, so you can start
actions on the kingside. The advantage of this idea is that it is usually very fast, as your rook is already on h1 and the only thing you have to do is open
its file.

First of all, let’s see how you can open and use this file in your advantage:

 One of the most common ideas is the advance h4-h5, aimed usually against a fianchetto type of structure. This is very effective in such cases
as the rook quickly activates, making the attack even more dangerous;

 Another idea to open the h file, this time a tactical one, is sacrificing a light piece on g5. How can we do that? As always, you need as many
pieces as possible to help sustain you attack, hence bringing a knight or a bishop on g5 is most of the times very useful. When your opponent
tries to chase it away by h6, you can play h4 (!), leaving the piece there with the idea of capturing back with your h pawn and open the
powerful h file;

 If your rook is no longer on h1 and your kingside structure can’t be weakened by the advance of the h pawn, always remember the idea of a
rook lift. It can be brought in the attack via the 3rd rank on h3 and create mating threats.

 Now that we have reviewed the ideas you can employ in order to start an attack along the h file, let’s see how Grandmasters use these plans
in their own games.

 We’re going to start with the game of a very skillful attacking player, Grandmaster Judit Polgar, who won a very nice game in a French
Defense against a strong Grandmaster, Ferenc Berkes.

 In this game we are going to see the idea of opening the h file with a knight sacrifice on g5 in a position with castles on opposite sides of the
board. Judit started the attack very quickly after the opening, without any further preparations, and, thanks to black’s passive pieces, it proved
decisive.

Game 1 - Move List: (Polgar-Berkes)

In the next example we are going to see that attacks on the h files are possible even with castles on the same side (kingside). For this, we chose a game
played by the top Grandmaster Levon Aronian against Australian Grandmaster Zong-Yuan Zhao in the 2010 Chess Olympiad.

It started as an Open Catalan where white sought quick control over the center by bringing his rooks on the central files and pushing e4. It’s very nice to
see how Aronian regrouped his pieces and soon launched a powerful attack on the h file.

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Game 2 – Move List: (Aronian-Zhao)

Last, we are going to see an example where white quickly starts an attack against black’s short castle with h4-h5, leaving his king in the center. Known
for his preference for sharp, attacking positions, it is no surprise that top Grandmaster Baadur Jobava chose this plan against the young American
Grandmaster Ray Robson.

It is very instructive to watch how he didn’t allow any counterplay from his opponent in the center, making sure to first limit his rival’s piece activity as
much as possible.

Game 3 – Move List: (Jobava-Robson)

We hope that with this you’ll have one more attacking plan up your sleeve and you’ll be able to successfully use the ideas we presented in this article in
your games.

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