The great reform of 1485, which created modern European chess, was particularly responsible for opening up new opportunities for attack and ushered in a period of rich development in chess technique. For three centuries of chess history, attack predominated over defense in the practice of the great players and mastery at that time meant skill in conducting an attack. Only with Philior did that first positional ideas appear, and with them more mature defensive strategies, these were to find in Steinitz a century later a legislator of genius.
During the classic era of chess from Morphy to Steinitz and on to Lasker the value placed on attack gradually decreased, for the perfection of defensive technique. This, however, was followed by a new period in which Capablanca, and particularly Alekhine, perfected the technique of attack, above all that of the attack on the castled position, founded on exact positional play. With Alekhine the aggressive and dynamic style of play reached a zenith, in the period which followed the tide again turned away gradually from the risks of the direct attack in search of new paths. The main reason for this is not to be found in any weakness inherent in the attacking style, but in the simple fact that given the conditions of present-day tournaments, it is more profitable and advantageous to make a study of openings.
Present day theory of many openings represents a detailed development of Nimzowitsch's idea concerning the central squares. There are still many gaps to be filled and there is a wealth of opportunity for innovation, as a result many players are inclined to concern themselves intensively with openings and to opt for a safety-first style. When the source of opening innovations begin to dry up, the problems of attack will present itself once more. The time may even come when the principles on which Alekhine built up his attacks will be completely understood, and those ideas, which in the case of Alekhine had the appearance of a spark of genius, will take on the more approachable aspect of attacking techniques.
For some players concentrating all their efforts in an attacking game is much more attractive than developing their skills in positional techniques and they will continue to concentrate all their attacking posture in this area regardless of the risks. They feel why should they perfect themselves in the style of positional techniques when they are most at home in attacking? The folly of this of course is that they will never learn to be a good well rounded player in both styles of attack and defense.
The Various Kinds of Attack
1. The main action is not in fact an attack on the king, but there is the possibility of such an attack latent in the position, some threat or other is being nurtured, or else the attack is concealed in a least one variation.
We can categorize attack in another way if we take castling into account. Thus we have;
Defensive Weapons of Attack
Before we can know how to attack, we first must know when an attack will be successful or not. Attacks can only be successful if they are focused on a weakness. We must know when a weakness presents its self due to the opponent ignoring the defense of that attack.
The weapons of attack, such as the sacrifice, the line-opening pawn-brake, the pin and the double threat, are well known. Every how-to-play primer introduces at least a few of them. However the weapons of defense have suffered from such a detailed examination. But the defender does have a number of good strategies to his advantage. But they are hardly as familiar as are the attackers
Here is a list of some of the main defensive weapons of the attack and themes to study.
1. Keeping attack lines closed or under control.
We examine the following.
1. Keeping attack lines closed or under control.
2. Repairing Weakness
Pawns Are The Root Of Most Weaknesses
3. Trading pieces for endgame safety.
4. Eliminate the Attacking Piece.
5. Relieve Pressure and Pins.
6. Confusing the Opponent's Pieces
7. Maneuver and Redeployment.
8. Breaking The Attacking Front
9. Seizing A Foothold in The Center.
The Attack Against The Uncastled King.
!The Attack Along The e-File
The Attack On The Square f7
The Attack On The King That Has Lost The Right to Castle.
First of all, it must be emphasized that the actual fact that a king has lost the right to castle does not necessarily always justify undertaking an attack aimed at mate. For an attack of this kind to be feasible, the loss of castling rights must at the same time involve the exposure of the king and an increased vulnerability to attack. In the majority of cases the attack is in fact in order. It only remains to be added that the loss of the right to castle can also entail a further weakness besides the danger, which faces the king; that is, communication between the rooks is made more difficult. In fact, an attack may logically direct itself against this lack of cooperation between the rooks, e.g. in a struggle for control of an open file.
This can be divided up into the following episodes;
Choosing The Correct Moment For Castling
The general rule that one should castle as soon as possible is therefore quite in order though it must at once be emphasized that there are also many exceptions to it.
Focal-Points
Complex focal-points.
These real complex focal-points can be divided up as follows:
In general, one or more of the attacker's pieces control both focal-points, while the rest, in the course of the attack, transfer their influence from one focal-point to the other, preferably in the shortest time possible (i.e. one move). As far as simultaneous influence over two squares of different comors is concerned, for practical purposes only the queen comes into consideration, and in exceptional cases the rook; but if the focal-points are of the same color, both the knight and in particular, the bishop are effective. All the pieces are capable of transferring the attack from one focal-point to the other, though the bishop is unable to do this if the focal-points are of different colors. The bishop is, however, well suited to the case of focal-point of the same color, while when the focal-points belong to the third group, it is indeed the classic piece by which the whole network is dominated.
The classic Bishop sacrifice.
The earliest instance of the sacrifice of the bishop on h7 followed by Ng6+ occurs in Gioacchino greco's handbook of 1619. Some writers give it the name of Greco's sacrifice, for which there are some grounds, while others call it Colle's sacrifice, for which there is in fact no justification, as Colle never played a good game which contained the sacrifice.
Necessary conditions for the classic bishop sacrifice.
# Ranks, Files and Diagonals In The attack On The Castled King.
The role of the files in the attack on the castled king.
There are four ways of establishing a rook (or a queen) on and open (or half-open) file:
The formation with rook on h1 and pawn on h4.
Pieces and Pawns In The Attack On The Castled King.
Using the heavy pieces in the attack.
The sacrifice in the attack on the castled king.
The destructive sacrifice
The pawns in the attack on the castled king.
Our discussion of the destructive sacrifices have shown us a procedure for dealing with the opponent's pawns, and now we shall examine the part played by the attacker's pawns in the attack on the castled king. This part is a very varied one, reflecting as is does, the rich possibilities inherent in the pawn's movements. The pawns are, above all, the pieces which cost one the least of sacrifice in one's efforts to weaken the enemy position; they are also excellent at harrying one's opponent's pieces as well as helping to support one's own on focal points or strong squares. In all these cases the positive characteristics of the pawn are to the fore. The other side to the use of pawns in an attack on the castled king is a logical consequence of their negative characteristics, namely their limited mobility and the impossibility of reversing their moves. The attacker's pawn needs, on average, three moves before it can have a direct effect on the opposing castling area itself, also, the attacker cannot transfer it from one file to another at will, but only when opposing units are so placed as to come into its line of fire.
Thus all the different aspects of the pawn's special characteristics find their expression in an attack on the castled king, and the picture becomes still more varied when we fill in the spatial side of pawn operations in this kind of attack. Here is a brief summary of a pawn's role in the attack on the castled king.
1. The attacker's pawn (with or without a sacrifice) forces the opponent to weaken his castled position.
These various types of action are usually interrelated in practical play, and single moves often combine two or more such functions. Indeed, when the process is observed as a whole over the space of a few moves, the continuous transition from one type to another is virtually the rule, except in the case of point 4 (center pawns). As an example of the kind of progressive changes, which can take place in the role of a pawn attack let us, look schematically at the career of an h pawn move by move.
h3: the pawn advances and drives an opposing piece from g4. This could be termed a little bayonet (point 5)
Every chess player will admit that such a career on the part of an h-pawn is in no way exceptional but is, on the contrary, a typical illustration of the many sidelines of a pawn's role in an attack on the castled king.
The role of the pawn center
The center pawns have the task of controlling important squares and preventing the opposing forces from using them. As a result the pawn center is the main weapon in the struggle for an advantage in development and space. However, in addition to the general positional function of restricting the opponent, the pawn center also acts as a basis for an attack on the castled king. Firstly, the overall restriction imposed on the opponent makes it difficult for him to deploy his pieces and so indirectly assists the attacker's plans; in addition, each of the center pawns directly controls the outer squares of the castled position, Thus, on e5, the e-pawn controls the important square f6 and on e6, the square f7; a similar control is exercised against the queenside castling position by the d-pawn (the squares c6 and c7).
The Pawn Avalanche
The formation composed of two or three neighboring pawns on the same rank is often called a "Phalanx" in chess literature, but when such a phalanx attacks it can also be suitably described as an "avalanche" or 'roller". An attack based on a pawn avalanche generally entails even more positional commitments than the bayonet attack, as it involves advancing two pawns instead of only one. On the other hand, the avalanche's power is also greater than that of the bayonet, for an avalanche drives all the enemy pieces before it and offers more attacking possibilities.
When attacking by means of a pawn avalanche, it is usually important that one's opponent should be unable to retaliate in the center or on the other wing. This is, admittedly, a general condition for any kind of attack on the castled king, but in the case of an attack using pawns it applies even more strictly, since one is more restricted positional and the actual process of advancing pawns is slower than play with pieces, with the result that one's opponent has greater opportunities for counterplay.
Ten Practical Tips
1. It is an essential condition for any attack on the castled king that the opponent should not be able to counterattack in the center or on the other side of the board, or rather that his counterattack should not be dangerous and not develop fully before the attack on the castled king. An attack using pawns usually progresses more slowly than one with pieces, since it often contains moves without any immediate threat. So, before embarking on a attack, one should beware particularly of the possibility of a counterattack by one's opponent.
The Attack on the Fianchettoed king Position.
The term fianchetto (from Italian, meaning little flank) denotes a bishop being developed on the flank (on g2, b2, g7 or b7), and if a player castles behind such a fianchetto formation, we talk of a fianchettoed king position.
The attack on the queenside castled position.
Some writers in the past have supposed that the difference is considerable between castling kingside or castling queenside and that castling long is much weaker than castling short; this is a great exaggeration. The castled position after long or queenside castling differs from the short-castled position only in this respect, that the positions of the king and rook are both a square nearer the center of the board. This can be useful for the rook, but it usually presents difficulties to the king, which is safer on g1 than c1. Reckoning in terms of tempi, the following picture sums up the difference: The position on the queenside which would correspond symmetrically to the one give by short castling (king on g1 and rook on f1) is king on b1 and rook on c1, and to reach such a position after castling long would require two tempi. But let us now apply a different method of calculation: the player has castled on the kingside and then spends on tempo on the move Re1. The corresponding position to this on the queenside would be king on b1 and rook on d1, and for this only one move is needed after castling long. The conclusion to be drawn from this is simple, whenever the rook is well placed on the d-file, castling long is fundamentally as good as castling short; if the rook is in fact need on the c-file it is weaker by two tempi, while if the rook is needed on a third square it is weaker by only one tempo.
In practice castling queenside usually occurs when the rook is well placed on
The d-file, and indeed the need for it to be placed there is often the prime
reason for adopting long castling. When reckoned in these terms, the
practical difference between the two forms of castling, but it is secondary
and concerns the activity of the queen. However, here too the advantages and disadvantages tend to cancel each other out. Thus one can say that castling on the queenside is almost equal in status to castling on the kingside in general terms of tempo and almost equal in status to castling on the kingside in general terms of tempo and security. If there are still players who doubt the security of castling on the queenside, it might be suggested that their reasons for this is probably of a subjective, rather than a subjective, nature. That is to say, many players remember some bad experiences, which they have had with castling long and are not aware of a very common mistake, one which is repeated over and over again, and again and again and over again and again and again........and again: they accept the tempo gained on the d-file by castling long as a gift, without wanting to pay the price for it; they neglect the consolidating move Kb1, and then when their opponent suddenly sweeps down, it is already too late and there is no time left. The results, of course, are blamed on queenside castling.
In master chess castling on the kingside predominates, but this is not the result of some fundamental weakness of castling long; the reasons are of another, structural, kind. Castling on the queenside requires the development of three pieces, while in the case of castling short only two need be moved to clear the back rank. Another important point is that in order to castle on the queenside the queen has to be moved first, and the best moment for doing this in many opening occurs rather later, as moving the queen at an early stage of the game can turn out to be a lost of tempo. This is an important reason for the comparative rarity of castling on the queenside, and the trend is given further impetus by the structure of modern openings, the majority of which are directed towards a struggle over the central squares. In this the c-pawn plays an important part both in covering the d-pawn and in effecting a lateral attack; this delays the queen's development on the one hand, and also slightly weakens the queenside on the other, consequently reducing the circumstances which favor castling long.
There are quite a few situations in the openings when castling on the queenside can be usefully applied, and in some cases one can say that it in fact represents the best solution to the basic problem of building up the position. We shall now list the main factors which usually endorse the choice of long castling in a game:
1. The pawn position on the kingside has already been weakened while that on the queenside is sound; this may incline the player towards castling long (if castling on the kingside is quite impossible or is obstructed, then naturally there is no choice at all.)
The factors listed here are only intended as general hints for the player, and the particular characteristics of the actual position should be surveyed each time one makes a choice between castling moves. Black, particularly, should be careful if he intends to castle on the queenside, since experience has shown that the necessary conditions for long castling more often arise for White that for Black. When Black's long castling coincides with short castling by White one gets a case of opposite-side castled positions; this leads to an intensification of the game, which naturally favor the better developed side, and this in the majority of cases is White.
However, (There is always a "however") caution over deciding to castle on the queenside should not be overdone, since many cases arise where castling long is indicated but where the player does not do so because a prejudice about its risk deters him.
2. A player's action really does contain a direct threat to his opponent's king, but his opponent can stave off this threat at a certain price by giving up material or spoiling his position.
3. The attacker carries out an uncompromising mating attack in which he can invest even a considerable amount of material, as long as he is certain of mating in the end.
1. Attack before castling, i.e. against a king which has not yet castled, and
2. Attack against the castled king.
Attack can also be divided on the basis of so-called mating patterns; of focal points; of basic formations of pieces, files, ranks, and diagonal; of basic sacrifices; as well as by the stage, which the attack has reached. These divisions according to the spatial, material, and temporal aspects of an attack will help you to arrange your study of attacking techniques so as to reveal the part played by each factor.
2. Repairing weakness.
3. Trading pieces for endgame safety.
4. Elimination of the strong attacking piece.
5. Relieving pressure.
6. Confusing the opponent's pieces.
7. Maneuver and redeployment.
8. Breaking the attacking front.
9. Seizing a foothold in the center.
Open lines are the canals of attack. If the player with the initiative has uncontested access to these avenues, he can write his own game plan.
You should block, control or minimize the effect of the attacker's open lines. A fourth possibility is to ignore these lines completely and to try to scare up counterplay in another territory of the board. But counterplay is not always available, and, if the other side has control of key open lines, it may be felt several moves too late.
Baring the movement of pawns backward or the magical additions of new pawns to the board, defenders will have to cope with weaknesses in the mechanical way, putting pieces on the right squares to mask those weaknesses.
Most weaknesses come about from a bad pawn structure. Backward pawns, doubled pawns, many pawn islands, hanging pawns, isolated pawns, and the isolated pawn pair. Although doubled pawns and hanging pawns tend to be weak, can under the right circumstances, possess surprising strength or display other advantages. Some times a weakness results not because the pawns are doubled or isolated but because they all occupy squares of one color. In such instances the other color squares are weak and subject to enemy occupation. This weakness is accentuated when the enemy has a bishop that is able to travel on the weakened square undeterred by a bishop of your own.
Most weaknesses are caused by pawn moves. Every time a pawn moves, at least one square is weakened, forever unprotectable by a friendly pawn. Granted, some weaknesses resulting from pawn moves are irrelevant in the grand scheme, and the pawn move's virtues may outweigh its liabilities. For example, attacking chances may be gained or open lines favorably created by moving a pawn. But remember once you move a pawn it can never be moved backwards. Before you move a pawn, think also about the consequences of that move, not just the advantages.
Exchanging off pieces is one of the most obvious and best known defensive resources. With fewer pieces on the board, and especially with fewer pawns, the defender's task is lightened, the pressure on his weaknesses is lifted.
Often the danger is not simply that of a kingside attack, which may be nullified by the exchange of one pugnacious piece, but of positional pressure over a whole sector of the board. Here it is usually wise to trade off the heavy pieces as long as,
1. You don't exchange your most useful and active pieces for his passive ones, and
2. You don't allow your opponent time for an initiative as a result of the trades.
Suppose that trading everything off the board is counter-productive or impossible because of the blocked nature of the position. What you can still do is eliminate through exchanges the most dangerous opposition piece. That is of course, provided that the piece you give up is not more vital to your attacking plans.
One of the worst tasks for the defender is to survive a position under pressure. The pressure could be a massive assault of heavy pieces on the queenside or in the center, or it could be one painful pin on a vital file or rank. Pins especially are elements of pressure that cost the attacker little but are expensive for the defender to break.
Confusing here does not mean complicating the position to a degree that your opponent does not understand the situation and makes errors through bewilderment. What is meant is the confusion sown into the harmonious interplay of his pieces. The communication is cut and pieces are driven to bad squares. The attacker loses control of valuable territory. The well-oiled machine has it gears worn down.
The confusion can be created from a direct attack in a position in which he wasn't ready for this problem. Occasionally there will come a point, even late in the game, when the opponent allows you the chance to bother his pieces with a series of threats. As these pieces are driven from the mutual protection of one another the defense gains time and in some cases critical counterplay.
Maneuver is the trench warfare of chess. In simplest terms it means the movement of developed pieces to different squares, presumably better squares, behind closed lines. The ultimate effect of a maneuver, it is hoped, to maximize the power and scope of your pieces. One redeployed piece can change the nature of a game drastically as in understandable from a study of master games. And, barring the appearance of open lines, maneuver is the key to most middlegame planning. One redeployed piece can do wonders.
A more specialized tactic to round out the defensive player is the advance of pawns to break or inhibit the attacking front (and to seize a foothold in the center). This can be the most subtlest form of a defensive weapon. It can occur from early opening to early ending, and is appropriate on either flank or in the center.
By breaking the attacking front we mean the corruption of the opponent's fine pawn wedge before it gets within range of your defenses. This strategic idea can be very subtle if both sides appreciate the dangers. The incentive in most modern games is for the player to attack on the side on which he has the preponderance of material and the edge conferred by the pawn structure. To accomplish this a player has to advance some of his pawns. But if he does that he may face a kind of corrupting pawn stroke. But still a ounce of prevention can be vital to break the attacking front.
Even the newest player to the game learns quickly that an attack on the wings is best met by action in the center. Usually this takes the form of a pawn-advance, which will upset the enemy's control of the center or clear away obstructions to your counterattack in the center. A slightly different motif is the pawn-advance that simply gains valuable space before a wing attack is launched.
This central action may serve several functions. Consider first the pawn-advance that denies the opponent squares for his pieces.
Making a mating attack on a king, which had not castled, was one of the joys of chess players in the past. These days the victim of such an attack is usually some amateur playing against a stronger player who has failed to castle at the right time.
The initial position of the king before it castles contains two main weaknesses. One is that it is exposed if the e-file is opened up; the second is that the square f7 in Black' position (f2 is the corresponding weak point for White) is vulnerable, since it is covered by the king alone. It is therefor natural that the vast majority of attacks on an uncastled king exploit one of these weaknesses.
The first and most fundamental condition for an attack alone the e-file is that the opponent's king should be on that file, and that for some reason it is impossible or difficult for it to move away. If all the adjacent squares are occupied by the king's own pieces or controlled by the opponent's, its escape is absolutely impossible. However, if the player is simply being prevented from castling, but other squares are not covered, the movement of the king is only relatively restricted; in other words, it can move at the cost of losing the right to castle. Castling can also be thwarted indirectly; for instance, if the king has to guard one of the pieces which is protecting it (e.g. on e7 in Black's case).
The second condition for an attack of this kind depends on the attacker's own circumstances. First of all the e-file should be open, or at any rate be in the attacker's power to open it; the attacker should also either have a piece which can control a file (a rook or queen) on the file or be able quickly to post one on it. Besides this, he usually needs to strengthen his pressure on the e-file, for instance by doubling rooks or by attacking one of his opponent's pieces, which is on the file and protecting the king.
From these necessary conditions it transpires that in an attack along the e-file there tends to be a chain of defense and the attack is carried out against the central unit of the chain, that is the piece protection the king. If this piece is on the square directly in front of the king (e7 or e2) the attacker may be able to mate by capturing it with his queen (or rook), i.e. by making the square into the focal point.
An attack on the e-file tends to occur most frequently at an early stage of the game.
Black's weakest square on the board before castling is f7 (f2 for White). Even in the opening stages, threats of a sacrificial assault on f7 (or f2) are common; they are usually connected with an attack on the king or even with the idea of mate, in which case the square becomes the focal-point of a mating attack on the king or even with the idea of mate, in which case the square becomes the focal-point of a mating attack.
Later on, after castling kingside, the rook protects this vulnerable square and it weakness is greatly diminished, while after castling queenside the weakness of the square has no connection with a mating attack.
The most straightforward attacks on f7 are to be seen at the beginning of certain open games, especially in the Petroff Defence and the Philidor Defense.
This situation arises when the king is either no longer able to castle or has been driven by the opponent away from the castling area.
1. Spoiling the king's castling chances, or drawing it away from the castling position.
2. The pursuit of the king across the board by checking.
3. The final mating attack in the middle of the board or on the edge.
Beginners are often advised to castle as quickly as possible. This is a useful and sensible piece of advice in the majority of instances. Certainly, less experienced players offend against this general precept extremely often, postponing castling unnecessarily and as a result suddenly finding themselves in an awkward situation by which time it is far too late to castle. A statistical survey of late castling using a; number of simultaneous games shows that a common characteristic of so called simultaneous massacres (when the master wins all or nearly all, of the games) was precisely the lateness of castling. In one simultaneous display the situation was as follows; the master had castled on eighteen of the boards and not yet on two, while his opponents had castled on three boards but no on the rest. The result: 20-0 to the master, a real massacre! This is a typical example, which indicates the disadvantages resulting from a delay in castling. In other simultaneous displays where masters had a harder task and poorer results, the statistics on castling, taken around the twelfth to fifteenth moves, on the whole showed smaller discrepancies.
1. Castling is postponed or not carried out at all, because some other action is more useful. This bight be quite simply the capture of an opponent's piece, the spoiling of his position, or indeed, an attack.
2. Castling is postponed because for the time being it is still dangerous. It is better to prepare it by removing the danger first, e.g. by exchanging the opponent's threatening pieces or by some other maneuver.
It is not hard to see the difficulties a defender encounters when his forces (especially the pawns in front of his castled king) are poorly placed and when the attacker's one aim is to fill the various holes and cracks in the weakened enemy defense with his own pieces and thus obtain an even tighter grip. It follows from this that the squares in the immediate vicinity of the king, where the drama of the mating attack usually reaches its climax, play a special role. If the attacker threatens mate or actually mates on these squares, they are mating focal-points, but if he only harries the king from them or uses them as points from which to break into the castled positions, they are called strategic or auxiliary focal-points, and in that case we speak of compound focal-points. If there are many focal-points (both mating and strategic) on squares of the same dolor, we speak of a network of weak squares.
Generally speaking every focal point is a weak square in the defender's territory and a potentially strong one for the attacker. In addition to the focal-points there are also other squares in the castling area which have a specific function, e.g. blocked squares, particularly those occupied by the defender's pawns, and also any weak squares on which the attacker can safely post his pieces.
Just as a successful combination derives essentially from the multiple effects of single moves, so attacks on the castled king are also more likely to succeed if they are built up with the assistance of threats against a number of different squares. We shall find that in many attacks of this kind the attacker tries to corner the king by creating a second or even a third focal-point.
1. The focal-points are adjacent squares of different colors (e.g. g7 and h7)
2. The focal-points are nearby squares of the same color (e.g. h7 and f7)
3. The focal-points are of the same color and make up a whole complex or network of squares (e.g. f6, g7 and h8)
When play is based on focal-points of different colors, the attack may be switched rapidly from one of the squares to the other. However, the commoner and more important cases are those in which there are two separate stages, the attack on the first focal-point being exhausted before the player transfers it decisively to the second. This transfer is often combined with a transformation of the mating pattern.
This sacrifice is the oldest and most explored of all the sacrifices involved in the attack on the castled king and also because it provides particularly good illustrations of the role of h7 and f7 as mating and secondary focal-points.
White must firstly have a queen a bishop and a knight. The light squared bishop must be able to reach h7 in order to force the tempo of the attack, though it is not essential that it should put Black in check or take a pawn in so doing. The knight should be within easy and safe reach of the square g5, and the queen within reach of h5, though in some cases it is enough for it get to some other square in the h-file.
As far as Black's position is concerned there should be two pawns standing intact at f7 and f7 (g7 may on rare occasions be occupied; by a bishop instead of a pawn) the h-pawn should be on h7 (on h5 in exceptional cases) but may be that there is no h-pawn at all. The position of Black's queen on d8 and a rook on f8 points to, but does not absolutely guarantee, the correctness of the sacrifice. What is more important is that Black's knight should not be able to reach f6 and that neither his queen nor bishop should be able to occupy the h7-b1 diagonal unharmed.
An action in the vicinity of the castled king can be carried out by any of the pieces, but the long-range ones, the queen, rook and bishop are the most effective. They can attack from a distance along the ranks, files and diagonals. The line concerned has to be captured, i.e. one's own long-range piece has to be placed on it, confrontation by the opponent's corresponding pieces has to be over come, and the line has to be cleared of all enemy influence. Outposts lie on such lines; batteries and pins take place along them. In a mating attack the line may finally witness the execution, i.e. checkmate.
Of all the long-ranged actions, the most important in attacking the castled king is the vertical one on the open file. It is important because it is easier to clear a file than a rank, and it is useful because being placed on an open file is the best way for a rook to be employed.
1. The file is already open from one end to the other or to an opposing piece and all that is needed is for the rook to be brought on to it.
2. The rook is posted in front of one of its own pawns(e.g. the king's rook is maneuvered via e1 and e3 to h3 in front of the pawn on h2).
3. The pawn in front of the rook advances and is sacrificed to open up the file.
4. The pawn in front of the rook leaves the file by making a capture
The further operations of the rooks on the file are similar to those, which take place when control is assumed of any line (constructing outposts, clearing, capturing pieces, squares, and focal-points, etc.
Of the various formations on the h-file the most important in practice is undoubtedly that with a rook on h1 and pawn on h4. It is a good representative example of battery attacks with rook and pawn, which are created when the pawn captures an opposing piece and thereby opens up the file for the rook. This situation is often engineered by placing another attacking piece on the square covered by the pawn, creating threats, which induce or oblige the opponent to take it. There are two other methods of exploiting the formation of rook and pawn, one is to simply advance the pawn, the other involves switching the rook on to another file (e.g. with rook on h1 and pawns at h4 and g2, moving the rook to h3 and then to g3).
The queen is undoubtedly the most important piece in the attack on the castled king and indeed without it such an attack rarely comes into consideration. Admittedly, it is not impossible to undertake a direct attack without the queen, but the necessary conditions for it cannot easily be created.
The queen's great mobility, its main characteristic, is a useful factor in the attack on the castled king, but its effectiveness at short range is even more striking. If it is in occupation of the focal-point g7, the kink on g8 has every square taken from it; moreover, if it is protected on that focal-point and the focal-point itself has been cleared of the influence of the opposing pieces, then the king is mated. The queen is, as it were, made for focal-points, and particularly for play on compound focal-points. Therefore, the queen's chief strategy in an attack on the castled king consists in playing on the focal-points and discovering ways in which to attack as effectively as possible at close range. Thus the queen, which in an endgame on an open board feel such an aversion towards the opponent's king that it will not allow it nearer than two paces away, is filled in attack with some kind of dark desire and dreams only of how it can steal into the castled dwelling and there fold the king in a close and deadly embrace.
The reverse side of the queen's positive characteristics is its great material value; this means that the queen is not lightly sacrificed and is not as a rule given up for smaller gains, such as preventing castling or clearing a focal-point. However, there are a number of different kinds of queen sacrifice, which occur in the attack on the castled king; these can be reduced in the main to two fairly sharply differentiated types: the case where the sacrifice forces mate, check upon check, as it were and the case where it produces a great positional weakness on the opposing side.
There are various kinds of operations on the part of the rook, the bishop, and the knight on lines and focal points, and no further illustrations of the use of these pieces in an attack on the castled king need be given. Only one special case remains to be dealt with, and that is the attack on the castled king carried out by the heavy pieces (queen and rooks) alone. The main feature of this kind of attack can be summed up as the task of overcoming the clumsiness of the rooks. The attacker must aim to make his own rooks active and force his opponent's into passivity. A rook's mobility depends essentially on its ability to switch its control suddenly from one file to another and in particular, from a file to a rank. The rook must have corresponding strong squares at it disposal.
Certain combinative elements are present in the case of every sacrifice, although these sacrifices may be of widely diverging types. However, the typical sacrifice in the castling area is the one, which is closely influenced by the special characteristics of that area, namely the castled king and the pawns in front of it. The typical sacrifice either changes the structure of the pawns, or aims to draw the king on to a square where it can be attacked, or else helps to create a focal point. We have already given a example of focal points, particularly in the case of the classic bishop sacrifice. Here our principal interest is the pawn structure and the possibility of altering it by means of a sacrifice. A sacrifice can either simply annihilate one of the pawns in front of the king, or it can deflect the pawn on to another file, or finally it can cause it to be blocked.
The main use of the sacrifice in the attack on the castled king is to eliminate the pawns in the castling area.
We have already referred to the annihilation of the pawns in front of the castled king as the most important or at any rate predominant result of sacrificial operations. It would be more exact to say that the destruction of these pawns is the most common combinative element of sacrifices in the castling area. Most players tend to pay more attention to the material aspect than to the temporal one, but the most decisive consequence of the destruction of pawns is that the departed pawns can no longer affect the game. This is a permanent positional factor by means of which many combinations are sustained, even when all may not have been in order on the temporal side. It is very important to spot the opportunities for making a destructive sacrifice, and in many positions the attacker is shown the way by simply calculating what would happen if his opponent were not to have a certain pawn.
Equally inconvenient is the other aspect of the pawn's negative characteristics: in advancing, it weakens the squares which it leaves behind it, and if the attack does not succeed serious positional weaknesses may become evident in the attacker's position. The irreversibility of pawn moves may also head to a general blockade, which in turn produces a rigid position and complicates the attack. However, the pawn still has one more positive characteristic which can on some occasions help the attacker the promotion of the pawn into a piece on the opponent's back rank may be the attacker's last trump at the critical stage of the attack.
2. It serves to create combinative elements in attack (e.g. in the formation or attacking the opponent's pieces or opening up files).
3. It forms part of an attacking formation (e.g. in the formation with a rook on h1 and a pawn on h4 or as a support to a piece on a focal point).
4. A particular example of such an attacking formation, which should be mentioned, is the pawn center; as a rule, this serves either generally to confine the opponent or to provide the basis for an attack on the castled king.
5. The pawn advances independently on the flank in order to drive an enemy piece away or to take control of a square. An advance of this kind is usually called a bayonet attack.
6. Two or three attacking wing pawns advance against the opponent's castled position in a frontal formation (a pawn avalanche or roller).
7. The pawn moves up into the castling area as a straightforward attacking unit against the enemy king.
8. The pawn advances into the castling area (with or without an attack on the king) in order to be promoted, after which it can carry on the attack in its new role.
h4: it makes up a set formation in conjunction with a rook on h1 (point 3); this is followed by g4, and we have a frontal formation (point 6)
h5: it threatens to open up the h-file by capturing an enemy pawn at g6 (potentially under point 2); Black therefore counters by blocking the position with ...g5, but as a result weakens the pawn structure in front of his king (point 1)
h6: it acts as a support for an attack against the focal point g7 (point 3)
h7+: Black has warded off the threats on g7, but now the pawn turns to direct attack (point 7)
h8 Queen: The pawn promotes to a queen and carries on the attack (point 8).
2. A central pawn blockade prevents or limits counterattacks and so makes a pawn attack on the castled king easier. (Checkout how to blockade in the page The Art of Defense, in Cat 4).
Blockade. Conceptualized and popularized by Aron Nimzovich (1886 - 1935), it refers to the tying down or immobilization of an enemy pawn by placing a piece, particularly a Knight, directly in front of it.
3. One should always examine whether a promising attack can be made by the pieces alone, and if it can, it would be a dam good idea to leave the pawns at home.
4. As a rule, it is difficult for pawn assaults to succeed against unweakened castled positions, since the possibilities of blockade are very great. A preliminary action by the pieces is necessary to produce a weakening of the castled position or to remove the possibility of a later blockade when the pawns advance.
5. Every blockade in the castling area radically changes the character of the position, for it affects the activity of individual pieces and teh whole nature of the play, which follows.
6. One's own pawns usually constitute a great obstacle to one's rooks; if a position is characterized by the opponent's weakness on the files, the rooks are important pieces and pawns have no business on these files, except when their advance actually helps to clear a file. Rooks can be particularly usefully deployed on the third rank, if it is clear of pawns.
7. A pawn storm generally increases the risk of an inferior endgame. If other elements in the position are also weighted against an endgame, the added risk entailed in an attack on the castled king is acceptable. However, (there is always a however) if the player has the necessary conditions for a good endgame, he must make certain that his assault with the pawns will be successful, for other wise it represents a real risk.
8. A player who already has an advanced pawn facing his opponent's castled position but which somehow gets in his way (e.g. a pawn on f5) must contemplate advancing the adjacent pawn, so that the lone pawn can be made an active component of an avalanche. Every advanced pawn presents a pretext for an avalanche and draws its neighbor towards it. This is least so in the case of an advanced h-pawn and most so if the pawn is on f5.
9. Attacks on the castled king in general, and those using pawns in particular, should always be judged on the basis of an assessment of the position as a whole. The placing of the pieces, the situation in the center and on the other side of the board, positional strengths and weaknesses, how far the position is blocked, the prospects for the endgame, all these come into the reckoning which an experienced player must make before deciding to use his pawns in an attack on the castled king.
10. Cautious before opening his attack, the player must be incisive, consistent, and merciless once he has set out on his attacking course. For an insufficiently justified attack is not helped by belated doubts, but only by resourcefulness in the struggle to provide one'' opponent with the most difficult task possible.
Castled positions of this kind have their own particular good and bad sides; these will be examined on the basis of Black's kingside fianchetto position, which occurs in the Dragon Variation of the Sicilian, and the King's Indian and Grunfeld defenses.
The good aspect of the position is, above all, its considerable capacity to resist attack along the diagonal b1-h7, thanks to the pawn formation, f7, g6 and h7; nor are the squares f6 and h6 too weak, for they are covered by the bishop on g7. The bishop is also well concealed against attacks and possibilities of exchange, while in many cases the defense is assisted by its ability to cover not only the square f6 and h6 but also the possible mating square h8. Finally, the fianchettoed position is also suited for those operations in which the g-pawn disappears, as in the following well-known maneuver: Black plays ...f5, and then, on White's reply exf5 he coolly continues ...gxf5, with the aim of strengthening his position in the center. Without the bishop on g7 such play would be risky because of the opening of the g-file, but it often succeeds with the fianchettoed bishop, since the bishop defends Black's king on the g-file about as well as a pawn does.
The weak aspect of the fianchettoed position lies in the fact that the position of the g-pawn at g6 simplifies the attacker's task in opening up the h-file by the advance of his h-pawn; there is also a danger that the fianchettoed bishop may be exchanged either for its opposite number or some other enemy unit. Without the bishop the castled position becomes weak and vulnerable and the squares previously covered by the bishop from a typically weak network.
Naturally, an attack on the fianchettoed king position is generally directed against these weak spots, and consequently, the assault by the h-pawn and actions aimed at the exchange of the fianchettoed bishop are the principal weapons in the attack against such a position.
2. The opponent's force (pieces or pawns, or both) are favorably placed for an attack on the short castled position, but unfavorably for one on the long castled position.
3. The kingside is not sufficiently developed, while on the queenside the back rank is already clear. If this is the case when the situation demands castling as soon a possible, then castling takes place on the queenside.
4. One's opponent has castled on the kingside, and the weaknesses in his castled position can only be properly exploited by means of an assault by one or more pawns. If in such a case castling on the queenside is readily available and there are no other factors militating against it, one castles long rather than short. An assault by the h-pawn with the aim of opening up the h-file for the rook is often the answer to a fianchettoed king position, and in this case too castling on the queenside is indicated.
5. A rapid deployment of the rook on the d-file gains an important tempo or some other advantage, and in such a case castling long can afford an excellent solution.
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