Attack and Win by GM Igor Smirnov

Table of contents :
Lesson 1 – Activity (initiative) Leads to Attack
Lesson 2 – Finding Attacking Moves
Lesson 3 – OPEN UP: Uncastled King
Lesson 4 – OPEN UP: Remove Pawns of a Castling
Lesson 5 – Weak Squares, Outpost
Lesson 6 – Strong Center, Central Thrust
Lesson 7 – Time
Lesson 8 – Have More Pieces in the Attack
Lesson 9 – Practice

Citation preview

Contents Acknowledgements ........................................................................................................ 2 Instructions for the Video Course .................................................................................. 3 Lesson 1 – Activity (initiative) Leads to Attack ............................................................ 4 Lesson 2 – Finding Attacking Moves .......................................................................... 13 Lesson 3 – OPEN UP: Uncastled King........................................................................ 24 Lesson 4 – OPEN UP: Remove Pawns of a Castling .................................................. 34 Lesson 5 – Weak Squares, Outpost.............................................................................. 46 Lesson 6 – Strong Center, Central Thrust .................................................................... 54 Lesson 7 – Time ........................................................................................................... 65 Lesson 8 – Have More Pieces in the Attack ................................................................ 77 Lesson 9 – Practice ...................................................................................................... 86 Practical Part ................................................................................................................ 94 INSTRUCTIONS ..................................................................................................... 94 The Practical Part: Task 1 ............................................................................................ 96 The Practical Part: Task 2 ............................................................................................ 97 The Practical Part: Task 3 ............................................................................................ 98 The Practical Part: Task 4 ............................................................................................ 99 The Practical Part: Task 5 .......................................................................................... 100 The Practical Part: Task 6 .......................................................................................... 101 The Practical Part: Task 7 .......................................................................................... 102 The Practical Part: Task 8 .......................................................................................... 103

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Acknowledgements First, I would like to thank all those students who sent me their chess questions via email, comments on my website, etc. This course was created based on your queries. I would like to thank Angelos Kesaris for his help with the course development. I appreciate Olga Carreño’s effort in polishing the texts of the course. On top of that, let me thank the whole Remote Chess Academy team. They have made a valuable contribution to the creation of this course. Also, they are awesome people!  Thank you! Finally, all of my work is only possible due to the inspiration and support of my wife and family. Thank you for this!

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Instructions for the Video Course I would like to give you a few recommendations, which will make your study of the video lessons more effective.  Focus on the study. Turn off your mobile phone, music, TV, etc.  Stop (pause) the video lesson sometimes. When you stop the video, you can THINK about an interesting idea and digest it better. It is very important to do it.  Print the text versions of the video lessons. When you think about different ideas of the course, you will see them at the same time. It is very helpful. After the study of one video lesson, please look through its text version. Pay attention to the enhanced font –it will help you remember all the key ideas.  Write the important ideas. While studying the video lessons, you will find a lot of useful rules, principles and so on. Also, you will probably make your own conclusions. If you write them, you will remember and classify them better.  Make pauses. Your brain needs to have some free time to digest new information. Don’t try to study everything at once.  Repeat the lessons. Study the lessons several times. Of course, it is hard to remember a lot of information after a quick acquaintance. So, you need to repeat it sometimes.

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Lesson 1 – Activity (initiative) Leads to Attack Example 1 Attack is the main way to win in chess. Pretty much everyone loves to attack, and the main question really is: How can you attack effectively? I'm Igor Smirnov, International Grandmaster and a chess coach from the Remote Chess Academy. It is my great pleasure to welcome you into this course. It is designed to be a step by step tutorial which will convert you into a strong master of attack. In the very first lesson, we'll talk about the very beginning of the subject: How to initiate an attack? Very often students tell me: "I can find brilliant attacking combinations while I'm solving tactical puzzles but, somehow, I never get to this kind of positions in my real games". Or they complain that they play some sort of a boring opening and they're not sure how to begin an attack in those kinds of closed positions. Let's see how you can start an attack in any kind of game that you play. Let me share with you the strategy of attack and, after that, we will move on to the specific examples. Right now we're not talking about a specific position; of course, it's just the starting position of a chess game, but about the general strategy of attack. Let's just make some first moves. 1.e4 e5 For instance, let's focus on one piece alone, this knight on b1. How can this knight possibly attack Black? At the moment, there is clearly no way to do this just because the knight is too far away from Black's pieces and pawns. Therefore, the first task for us is to move this knight forward. Let's do this. 2.Nc3 [2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Nc3] 2...Nc6 Is there any way for us to attack with this knight? Still, there is nothing. But we can keep moving it forward 3.Nd5

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and put it in the central position on d5. From here, it already controls a wide range of squares. Half of these squares are on Black's half of the board and, therefore, we maximize the chances for this knight to take part into our attack in the future. Once again, it's still not attacking anything at the moment, but we maximize the chances for the knight to be attacking in the future. That's the very first thing that you need to care about, which is called activity: Putting your pieces on the squares where they will control the greatest amount of squares, just like the knight. In the vast majority of cases, it simply means that you need to move your pieces forward and in the center. There is another interesting thing that happens as long as you activate your pieces. They automatically start finding some small targets, just like in this current position. The knight from d5 already took aim at Black's pawn on c7. Therefore, right now, this pawn is protected by the queen; nevertheless, we may already feel that it puts a little bit of pressure on Black's position. For example, Black's queen from here on d8 cannot go away because it has to protect that pawn on c7. Therefore, we may say that the knight is already posing some unpleasant pressure on Black's position. And there is one more general thing to mention here. There is also a thing called initiative. If White plays 2.Nf3, attacking the white pawn on e5, can we really say that Attack and Win | https://chess-teacher.com

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White began his attack? Well, not really. It's just too early to talk about this. There are many ways for Black to defend that pawn easily. Therefore, it's too early to talk about an attack but, nevertheless, we call it initiative. It means that White starts creating some little problems for Black and even though there is an easy way for Black to defend; nevertheless, it just puts White in a dominant position. It means that White is leading the game; White is setting the tone for the game. White is forcing Black's responses and that is called initiative. Later on, it could translate to a more significant attack, but it begins with activity and initiative. To summarize this general strategy: initially in a game of chess, there is no way to attack really. What you can do is just care about your activity. Putting your pieces out, making them move forward (2...Nc6 3.Nc3), closer to the opponent's position, where they will attack a wide range of squares. And simultaneously, they will start creating some little first problems for Black, so that it helps you seize the initiative. As you keep doing this, gradually, it will develop into a more solid attack. Once again, the moves that I've been showing you right here are not like the real game; it was just to illustrate this general strategy. Now we will move on to the specific examples, and we will see how this general strategy can work in your practical games. Kosmadakis, Panagiotis (1661) - Kesaris, Evangelos (1879) [D00] SUMMER OPEN By A.s.o.p DIAS - A΄GROUP (6), 26.07.2019 1.d4 Nf6 2.Bf4 d5 3.e3 c5 4.c3 Nc6 5.Nd2 cxd4 6.exd4 g6 7.Be2 Bg7 8.Ngf3 0–0 9.h4 h5 10.Ne5 Nxe5 11.Bxe5 Qb6 12.Nb3 Ne4 13.Bxg7 Kxg7 Here is the first real life example. It's the game between two club level players. I want to show you very practical examples that you can easily relate to; and, therefore in this course, we will be analyzing not only the games of the world top players, but also the games of players who are at a similar level to you. All right. Here it is White's turn and here's the question. How can White begin his attack? As we discussed earlier, the general strategy suggests that first you can't start an attack out of nothing. You've got to first work on the activity of your pieces, bring them forward, centralize them. Therefore, in this position, White should have finalized his development and gradually increase the activity of his pieces. Instead, he decided to try out an immediate attacking plan.

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14.g4 He pushed his pawn forward to g4. You may notice White's intention pretty clearly. He wants to open up these lines of the kingside and, after the trade of the pawns, he certainly was going to push his pawn forward to h5 in the future, and just open the position around Black's king and start to attack there. But, as we already said, it's obvious that it will only work if you have enough activity of your pieces. In this position, if you take a look at the white pieces, most of them are still standing on the first rank; they never made a single move in this game. There is also the bishop standing on the second rank, still far away from Black's position and the knight standing on b3 on the queenside. Again, it's not correct there, it doesn't do much and it's still far away from the kingside. Therefore, if you take a look at White's pieces, you can definitely see that they're far away, they're not active, they're not advanced, they're not centralized and they do not really attack anything in Black's position. That is why such an attacking attempt as just pushing a pawn forward is doomed to fail. This is exactly what happened in the game. Black correctly played 14...Qf6

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and, all of a sudden, it turns out that now White is in trouble. The f2-pawn is being attacked. 15.f3 Ng3 moving the knight forward, attacking White's rook on h1. 16.Rh3 Qf4 In the actual game, Black played Qf4, which is not bad; but there was even a stronger continuation that Black could have played. (See the variation). [16...hxg4 continuing to open up the position. It turns out that White cannot really capture the knight. Before we go into that line, let's see what happens if White recaptures the pawn. 17.Rxg3 If White just grabs the knight with the rook... (17.fxg4 Ne4 It brings you into this threat of checkmate (Qf2#), and it's not easy for White to stop it. White's rook has to keep covering that pawn on h4, which is also attacked by Black and, therefore, White is in trouble. Let's take a step back.) 17...Qxh4 Black can continue with Qxh4 and, all of a sudden, thanks to this pin, White is just losing the game. 18.Kf2 Qh2+ White never saved the rook, the only way for White is to play 19.Rg2 g3+ 20.Kf1 Bh3–+ pinning the rook and there is no way for White to stop Qxg7 on the next move, and Black has decisive material advantage and he is continuing his attack. Therefore, in this game we have just seen how players try to attack just because they wish to do so. As in this example, White played a little bit earlier. Let me show you once again the starting position of this example (after 13...Kxg7). Here White played pawn to g4 just because he was hoping to start the attack, but he didn't know how to do it the right way. I hope that after this lesson you will have a clear understanding of how to do this. All right. Let's move on.] 17.Nc5 Nxe2 18.Qxe2 hxg4 19.Nd3 gxf3 20.Qf2 Qe4+ 0–1 Kesaris, Evangelos (1883) - Papadopoulos, Petros (2195) [E11] 27ο ΔΙΕΘΝΕΣ ΤΟΥΡΝΟΥΑ ΝΙΚΑΙΑΣ (2), 28.08.2019 Here is another game. Once again, it's a game between club level players. The white player is Kesaris; the black player is Papadopoulos. 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 e6 3.g3 d5 4.Nf3 Bb4+ 5.Bd2 Be7 6.Bg2 0–0 7.Qc2 c6 8.0–0 Nbd7 9.b3 b6 10.Bf4 Ba6 11.a4 c5 12.Nbd2 Rc8 13.dxc5 Bxc5 14.e4 dxc4 15.Nxc4 Qe7 16.Rfd1 Ng4 17.Rf1 e5 18.Bg5 Ngf6 19.Nh4 h6 20.Nf5 Qe6 21.Be3 Bxc4 22.bxc4 Bxe3 23.Nxe3 Nb8 24.a5 b5 25.Rac1 Rc5 26.Qe2 Rfc8

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In the current situation, White has noticed that there is no way for him to save his pawn on c4 because, due to this pin along the c-file. There is no way for White to do anything about that pawn and, therefore, he's going to lose it. Black is going to capture it on the next move; but White realized that since he's going to lose the pawn anyway, he needs to put his stake on attack. Before he can start attacking, he needs to activate his pieces. This is exactly what he started doing here. He played 27.Rfd1 putting his rook, which previously was passive on f1; now it's on the open file, controlling a lot of squares there. Right now, it doesn't do anything in particular for White. Just as we discussed earlier, the first thing to do is increase the activity of your pieces and, later on, it will translate into attack. 27...bxc4 Black grabbed the pawn 28.Nf5 Attack and Win | https://chess-teacher.com

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And White jumped with the knight forward to f5. Now this knight, together with the rook, already started creating some little threats for Black: White can jump on d6, either with his knight or rook and also it already creates some serious attacking opportunities for White. For example, imagine Black just ignores it and just pushes his pawn forward. (See the variation). Black did not fall into this trap. He covered the d6-square by playing 28...Ne8 And that's another thing which sometimes people underestimate. They think, well, even if I create this kind of threat, Black can defend easily. So, what's the point for White in doing this? As we discussed earlier, the point is to seize the initiative. Start from little, simple threats that your opponent can defend against, but it helps you begin dominating, so that your opponent cannot do whatever he wants to do. But he has to just play some passive moves like Ne8, simply to cover his weaknesses. [28...c3 29.Rd6. In this case, White can really go forward with the rook to d6, aiming on the next move... 29...Qe8 30.Rxf6 to destroy Black's passive position. 30...gxf6 31.Qg4+ In a variation like this, White can just move his queen forward, delivering checkmate on the next move on the g7-square. 31...Kh8 32.Qg7# It just shows that White's attack, which started seemly out of nowhere, already had a strong potential. Let's take a few steps back.] 29.Bh3 White continued playing Bh3. Now the bishop also starts controlling this long h3-c8 diagonal instead of being totally passive on g2, as it used to be. Right now, again, it does not really attack anything in particular because the bishop is actually unprotected and, anyway, White cannot remove the knight from f5. But, again, it just increases the activity. 29...Kh7 White played 30.Kg2 to support the bishop and now make it possible for the knight to go away, enabling this discovered attack with the bishop. Therefore, Black played 30...Qf6 to remove the queen from this potentially dangerous diagonal. White played 31.Ne3 attacking the rook. This is once again the example of initiative. Playing these little attacking moves that Black can defend against easily but, nevertheless, it's somewhat annoying for Black. Also, there is always a chance that your opponent will overlook Attack and Win | https://chess-teacher.com

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something. For example, if Black plays R8c7 here, which is a mistake, White will be able to jump with his knight to d5, and it's a fork. Things like that happen very often, especially in blitz games; and it happens as a result of your active game, as a result of your pieces being active. In the game, it didn't happen. Black played 31...R8c6 [31...R8c7 32.Nd5] 32.Nd5 Qg5 Here in the game, White played 33.Bf5+ which was not the best move because the bishop was already active here on h3. But the question White should have asked himself is: How could White continue increasing the activity of his pieces? If you just take a look at the different pieces that White has, and ask yourself, are all of them already active? Are all of them controlling lots of squares on the board? If you think about this, you will realize that while White has already activated the rook, the knight and the bishop, there are still two other pieces like the rook on c1 and the queen on e2 which did not take active part in the game. Therefore, it was time for White to move them to more active squares. For example, White could have played 33.Rb1. (See the variation). [33.Rb1 putting at least other rook on an open line and, at the same time, attacking Black's knight on b8. That would probably win the game right away because the only square for the knight to go away is a6 33...Na6 Here White has a wide range of lucrative options. (33...c3 34.Rxb8 c2 35.Rxe8 cxd1Q 36.Qxd1+-) 34.Bd7 White can go with the bishop to d7, with a double attack to the rook on c8 and the knight on e8, and that would already win some material. The computer even suggests first giving a check.(34.Bf5+ Kg8 35.Rb7+- Go with the rook to b7 just to maximize the activity of every white piece. And that is also a brilliant position because right now White is a pawn down. At the moment, it does not even seem like White created some attacking threats. At the same time, Black is totally defenseless because White's pieces are controlling so many squares all around the board that, basically, White has too many attacking opportunities and Black has nothing to do about it. The rook from b7 is attacking the pawn on a7, taking aim at the f7-square, the bishop is ready to jump forward (Bc8) and the knight is ready to jump forward delivering a fork (Ne7+). As you can see, it's too much for Black to handle. 35...c3 If Black just pushes his pawn forward to c3, White can jump to Ne7 right away or, even stronger, he can first play h4, forcing the queen to go back. The only square for the queen is d8 and then Ne7+ is even stronger because, in this case, it not only attacks the king and the rook, but also there is a discovered attack on the queen. 36.h4 (36.Ne7+) 36...Qd8 37.Ne7+ I'm going through these lines a little bit quickly and it might be a little bit hard to understand all the side lines and everything that is going on here, but analyzing all the side lines will take a lot of time and I don't think it's necessary. I think that the most Attack and Win | https://chess-teacher.com

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important thing for you is just to grasp this general idea, this general spirit that you need to put your pieces on the squares where they're going to control the greatest number of squares. Usually, it means to move your pieces forward to provide them with open lines and diagonals, to centralize them and, as you do this, you start controlling more and more squares on the chess board and, inevitably, it translates into the attack because, inevitably, your pieces start firing some of the opponent's pawns and pieces and his king. So, that's the way to go! Activate your pieces, bring them forward, start from some little threats which will help you seize the initiative and, later on, it will bring you to the point where your attack is unstoppable.) ; 33.Qb2!?] 33...g6 34.h4 Qxc1 35.Rxc1 gxf5 36.Qh5 Nd6 37.Ne7 Rc7 38.Nxf5 Nxf5 39.Qxf5+ Kg7 40.Rd1 R7c6 41.h5 c3 42.Qg4+ Kf6 43.Qg8 c2 44.Rd3 Rc3 45.Qh8+ Ke6 46.Rd5 Nd7 47.Qe8+ Kf6 48.Rxd7 c1Q 49.Qe7+ 1–0

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Lesson 2 – Finding Attacking Moves Abend,Peter (2120) - Klaus,Dieter (1740) [B02] Leverkusen Bayer op 1st Leverkusen (1), 1985 Hi! Welcome into the second lesson of the course, where we're going to discover how you can find attacking moves in your real games. The beauty of this lesson is that the attacking moves are the strongest. Therefore, if you know how to find them, in general, you are able to find the strongest moves in chess. Let's start with a very interesting game which started with 1.e4 Nf6 Even though, of course, it is a very basic position, anyway, there is a first thing that I would like to highlight here. Here White played 2.e5 You may notice that, usually, you can attack only if you move your pawns or pieces to the opponent's half of the board. In the vast majority of the cases, all or almost all of the opponent's forces are situated on his half of the board. Therefore, in order to make an attacking move, you need to advance your pawn or piece there. That's the first very useful thing to remember. Let's move on. Black played 2...Nd5 Here White continued chasing the knight. He played 3.c4 Nb6 There's an interesting moment here, which I would like to highlight as well. When you're looking for attacking moves, you need to shift your focus to your opponent. That's quite an unusual thing to do because, normally, when you play chess, you think about your pieces and where you want to move them. That's the standard, usual way, I think. But it's not the best one because the attacking style of thinking suggests the opposite: Instead of thinking about your army, you need to look at the opponent's half of the board and think about how you can attack something there. As you focus your attention in that direction, you also narrow down your choices dramatically. In this position, for instance, even theoretically, there are only two moves that you can play on the opponent's half of the board, which are c5 and e6. e6 does not make any sense; you're just moving the pawn for no reason; therefore, you see that there is only one possible attacking move and that's what White did. He played 4.c5

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Black replied with 4...Nd5 5.Bc4 White continued doing the same thing, chasing the knight, creating attacking moves. 5...e6 Black protected the knight. 6.Nc3 White attacked it once again. I may bring this analogy just to illustrate this way of thinking. It's an analogy with a real life situation. Imagine you want to give a compliment to someone. It's not that you're going to stand and think: What am I going to say? No, you need to shift your focus from yourself to the other person, to the person you talk to, and notice something good in that person that you're going to bring up by making a compliment. A similar process goes here. Instead of thinking your

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plans and intentions, you need to focus on the opponent, on his half of the board, and think what kind of things you can do there to make some damage. 6...Nxc3 7.dxc3 White captured the knight. 7...Bxc5 Then Black grabbed the pawn. At this point, once again, White asked himself the same question. How can I move forward? How can I attack something in the opponent's position? Can you find the attacking move for White here? I'll give you a couple of seconds to think about it. Once again, the person who is not familiar with the attacking way of thinking would probably play something like Nf3, developing a piece, which is not bad but not the strongest option because, if you can attack, that's usually the best thing to do. That's why White played 8.Qg4 which moves a white piece forward and attacks that pawn on g7. Notice that castling does not really help. (See the variation). That's not a good option for Black and, therefore, that's not what he did. At this point, he played 8...Bf8 Here's the question for you once again. How would you attack here as White? Once again, the amount of choices you have here is really very limited. [8...0–0 9.Bh6 making use of the pin on the g-file and, therefore, Black has to move on 9...g6 and to give up the Exchange, that rook on f8. 10.Bxf8] 9.Bg5 I think this is the only move you can play, which is Bg5, attacking something, in this case, the queen. Black played 9...f6 Right now, there is another moment that I would like to specify. When you play chess, at some point there will be a position where there will be multiple choices you need to calculate. That's the moment where a lot of players struggle because they know that they need to calculate lots of different possibilities, evaluate them, visualize all these things in your head and it all sounds very complicated. But the right way to go about it is to focus your attention on the forcing moves, which are checks, captures and attacking moves. These moves force a certain specific reply from your opponent and, therefore, instead of calculating any possible reply, you will only calculate the one possible reply. For example, in this case, when Black plays f6, you need to, once again, look at the opponent's half of the board and ask yourself: All right, what are the moves that I can play there? Even more so, you need to focus on forcing moves, which are checks (for example Qh5+) and captures (for example exf6 or maybe Bxf6). These are the three moves that I would recommend you to check very quickly, Attack and Win | https://chess-teacher.com

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first of all, before anything else. Only if you notice that neither of these options is good, then you will go with some other option. 10.exf6 In this case, Black took on f6. 10...gxf6 Then, he played 11.Qh5+ which forces Black's king to move. It's a good thing for you: bring the queen forward, so it's easier for you to attack. 11...Ke7 Right now, can you find the winning continuation for White? Once again, I'll give you a couple of seconds to think about it. Of course, you are welcome to apply the same way of thinking, looking at the opponent's half of the board, thinking: What are the moves that you can play there? In particular, the forcing moves: checks, captures and attacking moves. In this case, it is both the check and the capture. White played 12.Bxf6+ Kxf6 It's not really a sacrifice because in the next move White played 13.Qh4+ And White grabs that big bold queen on d8, winning the game; and Black resigned. It was a short game and a great illustration of the way to attack. I hope that you remember these few key ideas: how you need to shift your attention to the opponent's half of the board, think how you can attack something there and pay close attention to the forcing moves. Now let's move on to the other examples, maybe a bit more complicated, and let's see how it works there. 1–0 Kalomoiris, Athanasios (1905) - Zacharakis, Antonios (1585) [C45] Nikaia - Athens (1), 26.08.2019 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.d4 exd4 4.Nxd4 Nf6 5.Nxc6 bxc6 6.e5 Qe7 7.Qe2 Nd5 8.c4 Ba6 9.f4 Nb6 10.b3 d5 11.Nd2 Qb4 12.Qf3 Bc5 13.a3 Qa5 14.Bb2 Be7

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Here is the next example. It's White to play. I think it's even a theoretical position, but nevertheless, let me ask you the same question. What are the things that you can think about here? What are the moves that you would consider here? The one thing that White noticed here is that Black's pieces on the queenside are somewhat clumsy and they're almost locked there; and therefore, White came to the idea that he may possibly try to capture one of Black's pieces. He also realized that in case White plays b4 right away... (See the variations). Therefore, instead of this, in the game, White played 15.Be2 He prepared the execution of the same idea in the next move. In the game, it actually went very well for him. [15.b4 ...trying to attack White's queen in the most straightforward way 15...Qa4 the queen can escape to the a4-square and there is no direct way for White to continue chasing Black's pieces.; 15.Bc3 Qc5 16.b4] 15...0–0 Black castled. [15...dxc4] Attack and Win | https://chess-teacher.com

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16.b4 And White continued with his plan by playing pawn to b4. 16...Bxb4 [16...Qa4 Now the queen goes to a4 but, in this case, there is a difference. This Be2 move that White played previously enabled White to play 17.Bd1 Oops! The queen is captured. Black resigned. Did everything go so great for White? And does that mean that White was correct with his choice of moves? Well, not exactly. Let's take a look at the previous position before Black castled (after 15.Be2). The only problem with the Be2 move is that it leaves Black with the freedom of choice, and Black can do whatever he wants. For example, he could have captured that pawn on c4 (dxc4) providing more free space for his queenside pieces and this whole idea of capturing then would fail for White. Of course, the position still looks fairly good for White but, anyway, he wouldn't be able to win the game immediately. Instead of Be2, was there any better way for White to execute his threat and convert his advantage into something tangible? Yes, there was. White should have played a forcing move instead: a move which is a check, a capture or an attacking move. In this case, there are no checks. As for captures, White could possibly take on d5 (cxd5), but it doesn't do much. It's just an exchange of pawns. As for the attacking moves, we already notice that the b4 move doesn't do anything right away, but White also had the Bc3 move, attacking the queen. The only move for the queen escape is Qc5. Now White can attack the queen once again with pawn to b4 and, all of a sudden, the queen is captured right in the middle of the board. That was the best way for White to win the game. You can just notice the power of the forcing moves. When you play a forcing move such as Bc3, you leave no choice for your opponent, but only to play the move which is forced; in this case, this is Qc5. That's the great power of this kind of move. That's why I always say that whenever you need to calculate variations, pay attention to the forcing moves: checks, captures and attacking moves.] 17.axb4 Qxb4 18.Bc3 Qc5 19.Rxa6 d4 20.Ne4 1–0 Topalov, Veselin (2700) - Kasparov, Garry (2775) [B86] Amsterdam Euwe Memorial Amsterdam (1), 22.03.1996 Here is a nice example: The game between Topalov and Garry Kasparov playing as Black. We'll start from move #10 and, as always, throughout this entire course, quite often, I'm not sharing with you the entire game, but only a certain fragment. If you wish to check out the entire game shown in the video, you can go to the supplementary material and find the games in pgn format where you can see the complete games. Anyway, let's go ahead with the current example. 1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 d6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 Nf6 5.Nc3 a6 6.Bc4 e6 7.Bb3 Nbd7 8.f4 Nc5 9.0–0 Ncxe4 10.Nxe4 Nxe4

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It's White to play. What do you think about this? How would you play here? I believe that for a lot of players this would be an extremely tough choice. They would start thinking about various different opportunities that White has here, but when you know the right way of thinking, things become way easier. Ask yourself. What are the moves that I can play in the opponent's half of the board that would attack something? You see that 11.f5 comes to your mind right away. That's the way for you to pressurize that pawn on e6, and it also helps you open up more lines and diagonals for your pieces. Black replied with 11...e5 Here is another moment which I think is a great differentiator between the strong players and the rest. Strong players always look for ways to attack. Even when they're under attack themselves, they still look for ways to counter attack. If you look at the games from the super tournaments, you will see counterblows, counterattacks all the Attack and Win | https://chess-teacher.com

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time; while in the games of beginner and intermediate level players, you rarely see counterblows. You should always look for attacking moves, even when you are under attack. As in this example, yes, Black attacked your knight on d4, but it does not mean you should think about this knight and where it should go. Instead, think about your way to attack. This is exactly what Topalov did by playing 12.Qh5 creating a very straightforward checkmate threat, Qxf7#. Of course, Garry Kasparov is not the one who would miss this scholar's checkmate; so, he played 12...Qe7 Here Topalov did another interesting thing. He didn't want to move his knight back, which is, again, a good strategy. You, generally speaking, don't want your pieces back. That's why he found a quite tricky way to keep the momentum and keep moving forward. First, he played 13.Qf3 attacking that knight on e4. Notice that White can't really take the knight (exd4) because, in this case, White would continue with Re1. Because of that pin, White would take the knight in the next move, continuing a very powerful attack along the efile. That's why in the game, Kasparov simply retreated by playing 13...Nc5 [13...exd4 14.Re1] 14.Nc6! Here is the trick from Topalov: He played Nc6, a move forward that might count as a shocker. But again, if you always look for ways to move forward, you also have the chance to find moves like these. The idea behind this tactics is not so complex actually. It's just if Black captures the knight... (bxc6). (See the variation). Instead, he moved the queen from the attack. He played 14...Qc7 [14...bxc6 15.Qxc6+ ...White recaptures with a double attack to Black's king and the rook. Therefore, White could win the rook in the next move and gain material advantage. That's why Kasparov did not go for that line. 15...Bd7 16.Qxa8+] 15.Bd5 Here is another brilliant move from Topalov. He played Bd5. It's basically the same idea. In case the knight is captured (bxc6), White recaptures with the bishop (Bxc6) with a double attack to Black's king and the rook. Quite a similar idea to what we have just seen on the previous move; but, anyway, the whole idea of keeping that knight there on c6 right in the middle of Black's army is somewhat very interesting. Attack and Win | https://chess-teacher.com

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Kasparov was probably angry at Topalov playing not very respectfully. He decided to trap this knight anyway. That's why he played 15...a5 The reason is to not allow this knight to escape through the b4-square. White played 16.Bg5 Another cool move because it also places your piece on the opponent's half of the board. In this case, it does not attack anything right away, even though it does create some threats. As we discussed in the beginning of this course, you need to increase the activity of your pieces, move them forward where they control a lot of squares, which in turn maximizes your chances for attack in the future, such as in the given position. Having that bishop on g5 in a very active position, and having these pieces (the c6-knight and the d5-bishop) in the center of the board; currently, White is threatening something like Bd8, even going after the queen, or maybe Nd8, which actually happened in the game. Kasparov played 16...Ra6 trying to win this knight, but the knight is not going to go away; it goes inside. White plays 17.Nd8 currently attacking the pawn on f7: a very unusual way. Rarely, we can see a situation where the f7-square of Black's is attacked by White's knight from d8. Black played 17...f6 It seemed it was the only way to save this pawn. White continued with 18.Nf7 This knight just became extremely active in this game; it should get an extra payment from the player. Black played 18...Rg8 19.Be3 Finally, White has to go back because the bishop is under attack. 19...g6 20.Ng5 The knight continues his active work and the devastation of Black's territory. This time, White enabled a discovered attack to Black's rook 20...Rg7 21.fxg6

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White captures the pawn on g6. Once again, notice the forcing moves. In this case, it is a capture. Also notice that White tries to counter attack as much as he possibly can. Instead of just thinking how to save this knight and where to move the knight –which is currently attacked–, White thinks how to counter attack. That's how he plays fxg6. Here, as you may notice, in case Black tries to capture that knight (fxg5), it's really not a good idea because White can grab that bishop on f8 (Qxf8+) with the support of the rook from f1; and it just destroys Black's position right away. White will probably win within a few moves. Kasparov didn't do this. He played 21...Rxg6 Currently, there is one last forcing move that White can play here to fix his material advantage. Can you find the move? Again, you ask yourself how you can play in the opponent's half of the board, hopefully, with a check, a capture or an attacking move. He played [21...fxg5 22.Qxf8+] 22.Bf7+ attacking the king and the rook there on g6; therefore, Black has to give up some material. In the game, Kasparov decided to give up the queen 22...Qxf7 23.Nxf7+- Kxf7 for two of White's minor pieces, but certainly that gave White material advantage, and here it's already a winning position for White, certainly. 24.Bxc5 He first took away that knight from c5 because it also opens up the d-file for his rook. 24...dxc5 25.Rad1 So, he played there. Kasparov played 25...Be7 Topalov continued playing attacking moves. Once again, how would you play here as White? As you know, we need to move forward, hopefully with some sort of attack. Therefore, the moves that you may need to think about are Qd5+; it's one move to consider. Another move to consider is: 26.Rd5 which is what Topalov did. Actually, it is a threat, even though it doesn't look like a threat, but it is because White is threatening Rxe5, taking advantage of the pin. [26.Qd5+] 26...Bg4 27.Qe4 Kg7

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Here there was a move that Topalov missed to find, which would probably win the game right away. It's quite an unusual move. Anyway, if you look at the opponent's half of the board and think about the attacking moves you can play there, you definitely need to consider moves such as Rxe5 or Rxc5, or the other one which actually could work is Rd8. (See the variation). 28.Rfd1 [28.Rd8. It's not actually a sacrifice because in case Black captures the rook 28...Bxd8 White can take it back right away. The good thing about this rook is that it helps White penetrate into Black's position. Therefore, in the next move, the rook can go either to b8, capture that pawn on b7; or maybe to e8, attack the bishop; and in addition to White's material advantage, White could even start a very straightforward attack of Black's pawn, pieces and the king ultimately. In case Black captures the rook, which is Black's most obvious thing to do, White has the following move: 29.Qxb7+ grabbing the pawn with a check and, in the next move, White will also collect that additional material, the rook on a6. This was the way for White to completely destroy Black's position, to win this b7-pawn along the way, and Kasparov would probably resign right away. It was a great game by Topalov with a couple of very instructive moments. Notice how he always tried to move forward, how he always tried to play forcing moves, and how he tried to counter attack whenever possible. That's the way for you to go about finding attacking moves.] 28...Bxd1 29.Rxd1 Re6 30.Qf5 Kf7 31.Re1 b6 32.h4 Rg7 33.Kf1 Bd6 34.Kf2 Bc7 35.Kf3 Ke7 36.Re4 Kf7 37.Rg4 Re7 38.Ke4 Rxg4+ 39.Qxg4 Bd8 40.a4 Kf8 41.c3 Rg7 42.Qc8 Ke8 43.Qe6+ Kf8 44.g4 Rf7 45.h5 Rg7 46.h6 Rg6 47.Qd5 Be7 48.Kf5 Rxh6 49.Qb7 e4 50.Qb8+ Kf7 51.Qxb6 e3 52.Qe6+ Ke8 53.Qxe3 Rg6 54.Qe4 Rg5+ 55.Kf4 Kd7 56.Qb7+ Ke6 57.Qc8+ Kf7 58.Qc7 h5 59.gxh5 Rxh5 60.Qxa5 Bd6+ 61.Ke4 f5+ 62.Kd5 Be7 63.Qc7 Rh6 64.a5 Rd6+ 65.Ke5 Rf6 66.Qc8 1–0

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Lesson 3 – OPEN UP: Uncastled King Faerman, Igor (2230) - Afek, Yochanan (2390) [B31] ISR Israel (1), 1996 How can you attack right in an opening stage? In most of the cases, the main task for an opening is to develop your pieces; sometimes we can go for an attack right away. 1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5 g6 4.Bxc6 bxc6 5.0–0 Bg7 6.Re1 e5 7.d3 d6 8.a3 Be6 9.Ng5 Bd7 10.b4 cxb4 11.axb4 a5 12.bxa5 Rxa5 13.Rxa5 Qxa5 14.Na3 Bg4 15.f3 Bd7 16.Nc4 Qc7

For example, let's take a look at this position from a game between two master level players. It's White to play now. You may notice one thing here. Black delayed the development of his kingside pieces; and therefore, his king is still in the center of the board. Whenever you notice this kind of pattern, when the opponent's king is in the center, it always makes sense for you to try to find a way to start an attack, especially if you are ahead in development. But how can you do it practically? If White tries to attack in the most obvious, immediate way by playing Ba3, attacking that pawn on d6, Attack and Win | https://chess-teacher.com

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Black can cover it very easily by playing c5, and you can see that it doesn't bring anything to White. What should White do instead? On one hand, it seems like everything is in White's favor. He's ahead in development, his king is in the center and everything looks good. But how can you start attacking here? The first rule suggests here that you need to open up the position, especially in the center because that's the only way how you can start attacking directly. Otherwise, as you may notice, Black's king is protected by a lot of the pawns that stand in front of him –by the way, both Black's pawns and White's pawns–; and therefore, it prevents White's pieces from going after the king. That's why the first thing to do is clear the roadblock, which you can do by pushing your pawns forward and opening more lines. In the game, White played 17.f4 which does make sense, in light of what we have just said; but even better was to play pawn to d4. (See the variation). [17.Ba3 c5; 17.d4. We mainly want to open the position in the center. It is a pawn sacrifice, but it is well worth it. 17...exd4. In case Black captures the pawn, White should continue the strategy of opening more and more lines by playing 18.e5. And now, you can already notice that White's pieces start taking aim at Black's king. 18...dxe5. If Black takes that pawn, what else can he do? White can already take one of his pawns back by playing 19.Qxd4. It is not a queen sacrifice because Black's e5pawn is under this pin. It cannot capture White's queen. And therefore, you may notice that Black is already somewhat in trouble. White is threatening Nd6+, which will also attack not only the king but that pawn on f7. Simultaneously, White even wants to simply take back that pawn on e5 which would open up the e-file to fire against Black's king. Black is just losing. As you can see, White managed to obtain a winning position so easily within just two pawn moves, which opened up the position. For example, if Black plays 19...Ne7 to cover his king somehow, White can continue with 20.Nd6+ to make sure that the king has to move and has to stay in the center. You certainly don't want the king to escape by castling. After Black plays 20...Kf8 White can just remove his queen from the attack by playing 21.Qc4, and now, the f7square by three of White's pieces, by both knights and the queen. And, therefore, inevitably, it's going to be captured in the next move, and either Black's king will be checkmated or White will gain significant material advantage. That's why that was the way for White to win the game, just by opening up the position. A few key takeaways: Whenever you notice that the opponent's king got delayed with castling, you should always look for ways to attack. The way to do it is to open up the position, mainly by playing pawn moves in the center.] 17...f6 18.fxe5 fxe5 19.d4 h6 20.dxe5 hxg5 21.Nxd6+ Kd8 22.Bxg5+ Ne7 23.Nf7+ Ke8 24.Nd6+ Kd8 25.Nf7+ Ke8 26.Nxh8 Bxh8 27.Bf6 Bxf6 28.exf6 Nc8 29.Qd2 Qd6 30.Qxd6 Nxd6 31.e5 Nb5 32.e6 Bc8 33.e7 Nc7 34.Rb1 1–0 Donev, Ivo Hristov (2420) - Michaelsen, Nils (2440) [B25] Bundesliga 9697 Germany, 02.02.1997

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Here is another game between Donev and Michaelsen, again both master level players. 1.e4 c5 2.Nc3 Nc6 3.g3 g6 4.Bg2 Bg7 5.d3 d6 6.f4 Rb8 7.Nf3 b5 8.0–0 b4 9.Nd5 e6 10.Ne3 Nge7 11.a3 a5 12.axb4 axb4

It's White to play. The position looks quite standard and Black only needs to castle his king and the position will be about equal, normal. White decided to take his chance and try attacking the centralized king. In order to begin the attack, as we already know, you need to open up the lines first; you need to open up the lines in the center. That is why White played 13.f5 It is a sacrifice of pawn because Black can take the pawn, 13...exf5 which he did. Attack and Win | https://chess-teacher.com

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14.exf5 Nxf5 15.Nxf5 Bxf5 After these exchanges, it seems that Black won the pawn for nothing. Was it that White miscalculated something? No, he had an idea in mind. He had the idea to open up lines. Now, he can take advantage of the situation by playing 16.Re1+! which certainly was impossible before because there were a lot of pawns in the center, but now he can start chasing the king. Let me also highlight that it's an intuitive sacrifice. There is no way for White to calculate all the consequences till the end. But you usually can be sure that this kind of sacrifices is all right for one major reason. Whenever you can force your opponent to leave his king in the center, that would force your opponent to play somewhat without the rook because without castling it's extremely difficult to bring the rook into play. And therefore, if you force this kind of situation, your opponent will be unable to use the rook in the game. That's why it does make sense to sacrifice a pawn, sometimes even a piece, because you somewhat deactivate the opponent's rook at the same time. Anyway, let's see what happened next. Black covered his king by playing 16...Be6 White continued attacking. Of course, after sacrifices, we want to go forward and attack. This is what we already discussed in the previous lesson. You want to go to the opponent's half of the board and attack something. White played 17.Ng5 taking aim at the bishop and also a discovered attack of the knight. Black played 17...Ne5 to further close the e-file. 18.Nxe6 fxe6 White traded off one of the minor pieces there and here he made another intuitive sacrifice. He played 19.Rxe5! The point of this move is, once again, to try by all means to force Black's king to stay in the center. White wants to deliver that check, Bc6+, but currently the square is under the control of the knight. Therefore, White is willing to eliminate the knight, even at the cost of the rook, because in the next move, it helps him to play Bc6+ 19...dxe5 20.Bc6+

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forcing the king to stay in the center. Again, I don't analyze all the lines here; there are multiple options, but you can notice the general pattern of how things continue here. 20...Kf8 21.Qf3+ Qf6 22.Qe4 It's interesting that there is no straightforward attack against Black's king but, nevertheless, there are a lot of threats that White may execute in the nearest future. For example, White can play Be3, attacking that pawn on c5; also White's rook is ready to go either to f1 in the future or somewhere across the board to a7. All in all, there are a lot of different attacking ideas that White may execute. Black played 22...Kg8 And this is exactly what we talked about. Even though Black manages to bring his king to a safer place, at the same time, the rook on h8 is currently totally locked. Even though Black has overall material advantage, if you assume that this rook is out of the game, and if we calculate the pieces that are active in reality; then we will assume that White even has an extra piece in the game somewhat. Both players have a queen and a rook in the game, but also White has two bishops in the game versus Black's single bishop. Therefore, it's almost like White has an extra piece in reality. Let's see what happened next. White played 23.Be3 attacking that pawn on c5. Black protected it by playing 23...Qe7 White played 24.Ra5 to attack it once again. Now, there is already no way for Black to protect it; so, he played 24...h5 He tried somehow to activate his rook, and maybe even bring his king to h7. 25.Bxc5 Anyway, White firstly collected the pawn. 25...Qd8 attacking the rook, 26.Ra7 So, the rook goes forward and Black played Attack and Win | https://chess-teacher.com

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26...Kh7 For a moment, it may seem like Black somewhat finally brought his king to safety, but it's only an illusion of safety because White continued with 27.Qxe5 using the pin. It's fairly obvious that White's attack is extremely strong. In fact, here Black played 27...Rg8 At this point, White could just win the game right away by playing Bd4, simply reinforcing the attack against the h7-bishop. (See the variation). 28.Be4 Notice that it is pinned; therefore, the bishop cannot go away, it has to cover the king. Right now, White just wants to grab the bishop with the rook and win the game. If Black plays [28.Bd4 Qf8 to protect the bishop, then White can also play 29.Be4 bringing the bishop into play and, now he's threatening to play Qxh5, using the fact that the pawn on g6 is under the pin. 29...Kh8 Even if Black moves the king away, 30.Bxg6 White still grabs the pawn. Black can take the queen but, frankly, he's defenseless anyway. 30...Bxe5 If he takes the queen, White delivers 31.Rh7# A pretty cool game, with a lot of interesting variations and sacrifices. Here you may notice this one general pattern. Let me show you the position of this game a couple of moves ago, after 23.Be3. The general pattern is that if you are able to keep your opponent's king in the center, it will simultaneously force him to almost play without a rook. That is why it's a very powerful thing for you to do. You can achieve it by playing pawn moves in the center to open up the position and start attacking the opponent's king directly.] 28...Kh8 29.Bxg6 Qd5 30.Qxd5 exd5 31.Kg2 h4 32.Bd4 Rbc8 33.c3 bxc3 34.bxc3 hxg3 35.hxg3 Rc6 36.Bf5 Rh6 37.Be3 Rh5 38.Bg6 Re5 39.Bf4 Re2+ 40.Kf3 Rc2 41.Rd7 Rf8 42.Rxd5 Bxc3 43.d4 Rh2 44.Ke4 Kg7 45.Bf5 Rf7 46.Be5+ Kf8 47.g4 Rh1 48.Rd8+ Ke7 49.Rb8 Ra1 50.Kd3 Ba5 51.Kc2 Rf1 52.Rb5 Bd8 53.Bg3 Rh1 54.Bf4 Rg1 55.Bg5+ Ke8 56.Bg6 Rxg4 57.Bxf7+ Kxf7 58.Bxd8 Rxd4 59.Bb6 Rd7 60.Kc3 Ke6 61.Bd4 Rd5 62.Rb8 Rh5 63.Rb6+ Kf5 64.Kd3 Rh3+ 65.Be3 Rh4 66.Rb5+ Ke6 67.Bd4 Rh1 68.Kc4 Rc1+ 69.Bc3 Rd1 70.Re5+ Kd6 71.Re4 Rc1 72.Re2 Kd7 73.Kd4 Rd1+ 74.Kc5 Rc1 75.Re3 Rh1 76.Kd5 Rh5+ 77.Be5 Rh1 78.Ra3 Rd1+ 79.Bd4 Rc1 80.Ra2 Rd1 81.Ra7+ Ke8 82.Ke5 Re1+ 83.Kf6 Kd8 84.Be5 Rc1 85.Ke6 Kc8 86.Bd6 Rc2 87.Kd5 Kd8 88.Be5 Kc8 89.Bf4 Rc3 90.Bd6 Rc2 91.Bc5 Kd8 92.Kc6 Ke8 93.Re7+ Kd8 94.Rf7 Re2 95.Rf1 Re6+ 96.Bd6 Re2 97.Rf8+ Re8 98.Rf7 Re2 99.Bb4 Re6+ 100.Bd6 Re2 101.Rf1 Re3 102.Ra1 Rc3+ 103.Bc5 Ke8 104.Rf1 1–0 Dussol, Pierre - Huguet, Bernard [B87] FRA-ch48 Championat Vittel (2), 19.08.1973

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1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 d6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 Nf6 5.Nc3 e6 6.Bc4 a6 7.0–0 b5 8.Bb3 Bb7 9.Re1 Nbd7 10.Bg5 Nc5

Here is one more example between Dussol and Huguet. It's White to play. The one thing you may notice here is that firstly Black's king is in the center. Secondly, White is ahead in development. White has already developed all his minor pieces and castled, while for Black there is still a lot of work to be done there to finalize his development. At the same time, White needs to hurry up because Black only needs to play Be7, then castle his king, and he will be just all right. That's why White desperately needs to open up the lines in the center as soon as possible. With that in mind, he played 11.Bd5! He's inviting Black to grab that bishop because... (See the variations). Let's see what else White can do here. In the actual game, after White played Bd5, White decided to avoid opening up the lines and he played 11...Qc7 Attack and Win | https://chess-teacher.com

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However, now White can continue his attack with no sacrifices. [11...exd5 12.exd5+ ...it will help White to open the e-file and start attacking Black's king. Now Black is already somewhat in trouble. He played 12...Be7 trying to cover the king. (12...Kd7 If Black instead plays Kd7, then Black saves an extra piece, but at the cost of leaving his king exposed and extremely vulnerable in the center of the board. White can continue by playing 13.b4 attacking the knight because it really does not have many squares to go to. 13...Na4 It can only go to a4, 14.Nxa4 bxa4 which will help White break Black's pawn structure. At this point, there are different things that White can do. For example, he can play a positional move 15.c4 protecting his center and, at the same time, preparing Qxa4, which would continue to attack Black's king; and he would also collect the pawn on a4. Therefore, everything seems to be extremely great for White.) 13.Nf5 In the most natural way, White plays Nf5 and he takes this e7-bishop back right in the next move. There is no way for Black to protect it.] 12.Bxf6 He simply, first of all, took that knight on f6 because it helped him break Black's pawn structure. 12...gxf6 13.Qf3 Then he continued with Qf3, attacking that pawn on f6. 13...Bg7 Here White continued to attack. He played 14.b4 Notice that White tries to attack by his every move. That's another great strategy and another common theme for almost all the attacking kind of positions because you need to attack as quickly as possible. You need to launch your attack as soon as you can because you leave no time for your opponent to bring up reserves; for instance the rooks, or to hide his king. Black played 14...Na4 15.Ncxb5 And here White used a little combination. It's not truly a sacrifice because White can collect some material back within the next moves. 15...axb5 16.Nxb5 After White recaptures, Black plays 16...Qb6 because the queen was attacked. White can play 17.Bxb7 Attack and Win | https://chess-teacher.com

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That's the point of White's combination. The bishop may not be taken. In this case (Qxb7), White will play Nxd6+ with a double attack to Black's king and queen. In this case, White will win the material thanks to this fork and, therefore, Black may not take the bishop which just helped White to win two pawns for nothing. Black played 17...Rb8 [17...Qxb7 18.Nxd6+ Ke7 19.Nxb7] 18.e5 Here White made another cool move. He continued his strategy of playing in the center, opening up the lines by playing e5. That's another cool theme. White somewhat reduced the threat of Nxd6+ and also prepared possibly some check with Bc6+, which will happen in case White grabs the knight (Qxb5), for instance. In this case Bc6+ will win the queen. Even though it may seem like a sudden tactics, in reality, it's not because it followed White's strategy to keep Black's king in the center, to open up the lines in the center and to start an attack. This is exactly what he's doing with his every move. 18...fxe5 Black decided to take that pawn on e5, but [18...Qxb5 19.Bc6+] 19.Bc6+ now White can play Bc6+ 19...Ke7 forcing the king to move. Again, at the moment, it may seem like Black's king is covered very nicely by his pawns, but that's what we know we should destroy. Whenever you want to attack the opponent's king, you need to remove this pawn shield around the king. Usually, you can do this by playing pawn moves, which would trade off the pawns and sometimes, with the help of a sacrifice, like in this case, he played 20.Nxd6! sacrificing the knight, but inviting Black's king to do a very dangerous walk. 20...Kxd6 21.Rad1+ Once again, after opening the lines, White may start attacking the king directly. 21...Kc7 22.Qxf7+ Black resigned because after

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22...Kxc6 23.Qd7# It was a very good game where White illustrated all the main rules of attack in the opening. First of all, you need to notice when your opponent delayed his development a little bit, when his king is still in the center. In this case, you need to try to open up the position, which you can do with the help of pawn moves or sometimes, sacrifices. Lastly, you need to attack as soon as possible and as quickly as possible because this does now leave your opponent with any free time to bring up his rook from h8, or sometimes the queenside rook as well, to help his king. That's how you can help yourself to have more pieces in the attack than the defenders that your opponent can use. That was the lesson about launching your attack in the early stage of the game, in an opening. I hope that it helped, and I'll talk to you in the next lesson where we'll talk about attacking the king which has already castled. 1–0

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Lesson 4 – OPEN UP: Remove Pawns of a Castling Poupalos, Nikolaos (1667) - Kalomoiris, Athanasios (1905) [B90] Nikaia-Athens (3), 05.09.2019 How to attack the castled king? That's exactly what you're going to learn in this lesson. Without further ado, let's start with the first example, where we will discover a few most important ideas about the attack. 1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 d6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 Nf6 5.Nc3 a6 6.Be3 e5 7.Nb3 Be6 8.f4 Ng4 9.Bd2 Qb6 10.Qe2 exf4 11.Bxf4 Nd7 12.h3 Nge5 13.0–0–0 Be7 14.g4 0–0 15.Kb1 Rac8 16.Nd5 Bxd5 17.exd5 Rfe8 18.Qg2 Nc4 19.Bxc4 Rxc4 20.Bc1 Rec8 21.Rd2 a5 22.Qg1 Qc7 23.Nd4 Rc5 24.Qg2 g6

Let's take a look at this position. It's a game between two club players, and it is White to play. We can see the opposite side's castling; and White starts the pawn assault, which is a somewhat standard idea because, just like we need to open up the position to attack the centralized king, we should do the same while trying to attack the king, which has already castled. We also need to, first of all, somehow remove those pawns Attack and Win | https://chess-teacher.com

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(f7, g6 and h7), at least some of them that cover the king, so we can get right into it. That's what White started doing by pushing the pawn to 25.g5 a4 Black tried doing something similar on the queenside. [25...Bf8 26.h4 Bg7] 26.h4 Qa5 27.h5 White continued with his plan. 27...Rxd5 Even though Black managed to grab the pawn on d5, 28.hxg6 It didn't really help because White opened up the h-file. 28...fxg6 Now, once the h-file is open, White is ready to start the opponent's king directly, which he did by playing 29.Qh3 All of a sudden, Black resigns because he just realizes that there is no way to protect his king and, at the same time, the queen is also attacking a bunch of squares and pieces along this h3-c8 diagonal; and therefore, there's just no way for Black to survive; so, he resigned. Even though it may seem like a very trivial example of a pawn assault against the opponent's king, there is one thing that I would like to highlight here, which is also a very important thing that a lot of people miss to understand. Let's take a look at the starting position of this example once again (After 24...g6). Let me take those few moves back. Let's think about this. Why is it that White's attack, started by the g5 move went so successfully and so easily? It happened due to the fact that most of Black's pieces are concentrated on the queenside of the board. Therefore, if we focus the attention on the kingside, we will notice that the opponent's king has almost no defenders. Maybe only the bishop on e7 is somewhat close to the king and, at least to some extent, maybe controlling some squares around; but that's the only defender. If you look at White's position, once he started pushing his pawn forward, we can see that his queen took part in the attack, his rook took part in the attack, and even the other pieces, such as the knight, are also standing very close to the king. The knight can go there very quickly. The rook on d2 is also ready. Within just one move (Rdh2), it can be transferred somewhere to the kingside along this attack. It means that, with the exception of the bishop on c1, all of White's pieces are ready to take part in the assault, while most of Black's pieces are situated on the queenside. Attack and Win | https://chess-teacher.com

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That's an extremely important idea to realize. In order for your attack to be successful, you need to have greater concentration of your pieces against the opponent's king, greater compared to the quantity of defenders. That is why this attack went out so easily for White. Also, this is exactly the fact that Black underestimated. Otherwise, he would have started bringing up more reserves. For instance, if Black had at least brought this bishop closer to the king (Bf8), and then, had transferred it to g7; then everything would have been just ok for Black, and Black would be just fine here. But, as Black failed to realize the simple truth that the king needs some defenders, he lost the game. With that being said, let's move on to the next example. 1–0 Alekhine, Alexander - Rubinstein, Akiba [D64] Karlsbad Karlsbad (1), 30.04.1923 Here is another game between Alekhine and Rubinstein, two famous players of the past. 1.d4 d5 2.c4 e6 3.Nf3 Nf6 4.Nc3 Be7 5.Bg5 Nbd7 6.e3 0–0 7.Rc1 c6 8.Qc2 a6 9.a4 Re8 10.Bd3 dxc4 11.Bxc4 Nd5 12.Bf4 Nxf4 13.exf4 c5 14.dxc5 Qc7 15.0–0 Qxf4 16.Ne4 Nxc5 17.Nxc5 Bxc5 18.Bd3 b6 19.Bxh7+ Kh8 20.Be4 Ra7 21.b4 Bf8 22.Qc6 Rd7

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It's White to play. Right now, it does not really seem like White has any real chances to attack the opponent's king. And yet, there is one thing that you may pay attention to, which is also a very important factor. It is the fact that Black does not have that pawn on h7. Whenever you notice that the opponent's castling is weakened, that one pawn is moved forward or is absent, like in this example, it always gives you the sign that you may try to take advantage of these weaknesses. But, first of all, in order for your attack to be successful, you need to have greater activity; you need to have greater concentration on the kingside compared to the amount of the opponent's. That's what we should care about first of all. With that being said, White played 23.g3 trying to kick away that queen from f4. Black noticed that there is also his pawn on b6, which is hanging; therefore, he moved the queen away to protect that pawn, which was probably a wrong decision because 23...Qb8

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He moved the queen too far away from the kingside. Anyway, that's what he did. Now, White continues bringing more pieces towards the opponent's king. He played 24.Ng5 We have said earlier that you need to have greater concentration of your pieces on the kingside, a greater quantity of your pieces around the opponent's king compared to the amount of the defender's. That's why you need to bring more and more pieces closer to the opponent's king before you can start creating some real threats. This is exactly the idea behind the Ng5 move. In this particular example, surprisingly, this move also creates a straightforward threat. White is threatening to take that pawn on f7, and even though the pawn is protected by the rook from d7. If the rook is moving away, then White can grab that other rook on e8. That's the threat that White created by playing Ng5, but the main idea was actually just to bring the knight closer to the opponent's king. In order to prevent Nxf7+ from happening, Black plays 24...Red8 Here White found a way to deliver a straightforward checkmate in a few moves. He played 25.Bg6 The idea of this move is to vacate the e4-square for the queen, where it can be transferred to h4, to the kingside. 25...Qe5 [25...fxg6 Simultaneously, this Bg6 sacrifice also further blockades the king because now Black's pawn from g7 cannot move, and so the king on h8 is stuck there; it cannot really move. Therefore, White can simply play 26.Qe4. And he is just winning because he can bring the queen to h7 either by the h4-square or perhaps after taking the pawn on g6 and Black is defenseless. That's also a good example of White's attack being successful. It also seemed like everything went so seamlessly for White. I hope that you can understand why that is so. First of all, once again, you can see the greater concentration of attackers. White has both the knight and the queen in the attack, while Black only has the bishop on f8, which doesn't do much anyway. Secondly, there are some weaknesses around Black's king, in particular, due to the fact that there was no pawn on h7. That's another clear sign that you may try to find attacking moves and they may succeed. All right. Let's move on to the next example.] 26.Nxf7+ Rxf7 27.Bxf7 Qf5 28.Rfd1 Rxd1+ 29.Rxd1 Qxf7 30.Qxc8 Kh7 31.Qxa6 Qf3 32.Qd3+ 1–0 Knaak,Rainer (2520) - Malich,Burkhard (2535) [E55] Halle DSV Halle (10), 16.11.1978 Here is one more example: the game between two Grandmasters, Knaak versus Malich.

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1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 e6 3.Nc3 Bb4 4.e3 0–0 5.Bd3 d5 6.Nf3 c5 7.0–0 dxc4 8.Bxc4 Nbd7 9.Qe2 a6 10.a4 cxd4 11.exd4 Nb6 12.Bd3 Nbd5 13.Bd2 Ba5 14.Rac1 Bd7 15.Nxd5 exd5 16.Bg5 h6 17.Bh4 Bg4 18.Qe3 Bb6 19.Ne5 Bc8

It is White to play. What do you think about this position? Is there any way for White to attack? Or is there even a chance for White to attack? Or should White do something else instead? I would say that in this position there are options actually. White may just continue playing in the center and play something like Rfe1, and that would certainly be a very good alternative. However, there are some signs that White's attack on the kingside may be successful. In particular, it is due to the fact that White has a number of pieces looking towards Black's king; and therefore, that's already a pretty good assault group that White may use in order to start the attack. The second factor, the second sign, is the fact that Black's pawn is on the h6-square. Whenever any pawn in the opponent's castling is moved or absent, it creates some holes that you can use to penetrate into or you can use this h6-pawn to sacrifice a piece against it, and to destroy the opponent's castling this way. In this particular case, White played 20.Bb1 Attack and Win | https://chess-teacher.com

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using a very typical idea of creating a battery along this b1–h7 diagonal, putting the queen in front of the bishop (Qd3), and there, with the support of the bishop, this queen can penetrate into that weak h7-square, delivering a checkmate simultaneously. Let's see how it went out. Black played 20...Qd6 21.Kh1 Here White played a preparatory move. 21...Re8 22.Qd3 Now he is ready to eliminate the knight first with the bishop, and then to jump with this queen forward. Ne4 does not work for Black to close this diagonal because White can simply play f3. That was the idea of White's preparatory Kh1 move. He wanted to remove the king from this potentially dangerous b6-g1 diagonal. Ne4 does not work. Otherwise, what else can he do? In fact, Black is already defenseless. He played 22...Bd8 somehow trying to protect that knight. [22...Ne4 23.f3] 23.Bxf6 But it didn't really help. White just eliminated the knight which was defending the h7square. 23...Bxf6 24.Qh7+ Now White is ready to penetrate into the opponent's camp and start a straightforward attack on the opponent's king. Black played 24...Kf8 Here comes the next question. How can White possibly continue his attack? White can give a check to h8, but the king goes away; and there is no straightforward continuation. That's why White used another common idea which we already discussed earlier, the idea that you can destroy a pawn shield around the opponent's king by making a sacrifice. White played 25.Nxf7 Kxf7 This combination actually wins by force because White can continue chasing the king by playing 26.Bg6+ Ke7 The king goes away. 27.Bxe8 Attack and Win | https://chess-teacher.com

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White takes the rook. 27...Kxe8 28.Qg8+ There is no way for Black's king to survive. White is ready to attack it with the queen and two rooks. Notice that Black's rook and the bishop are still on their initial positions and cannot really help. 28...Qf8 29.Rfe1+ Now again, Black's king cannot move away because the queen will be lost on f8. Black tried playing 29...Be7 But now White made the final sacrifice which wins the game right away. Can you see the sacrifice? It's 30.Rxe7+ Kxe7 followed by 31.Re1+ Now, if the king goes away, White will simply grab the queen on f8; and therefore, White wins the game. Black resigned. It was also a very cool game which illustrated a number of ideas of attack, starting from trading pieces around the opponent's king, also using weaknesses to penetrate into the opponent's position and, finally, sacrificing material to destroy the pawn shield around the opponent's king. 31...Be6 32.Qxe6+ 1–0 Yemelin, Vasily (2460) - Nepomniashchy, Mikhail I (2480) [B87] St Petersburg-ch St Petersburg (5), 1996 Here is the final game of this lesson between Yemelin and Nepomniashchy; both Grandmasters. 1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 d6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 Nf6 5.Nc3 a6 6.Bc4 e6 7.Bb3 b5 8.Bg5 Be7 9.Qf3 Qb6 10.0–0–0 0–0 11.Be3 Qb7

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It's White to play. White moved his pawn forward to 12.g4 The idea is pretty straightforward. He wants to push the pawn forward to g5. It's a dual idea. 12...Nc6 13.g5 The idea is that, first of all, it kicks away the knight from f6. As we already know, in order for your attack to be successful, you need to have more pieces around the opponent's king. That's why eliminating one of the defenders is surely a good idea. The second thing is that in order to start a straightforward attack, we need to do something against those pawns which cover the king (f7, g7 and h7). You can do only two things: Either you can push your pawns, exchange them or sacrifice them and open up the line this way; or you can sacrifice your piece against one of these pawns to eliminate them. Basically, it's only two options to unwrap the position of the opponent's king. Here White used this pawn assault.

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13...Nxd4 14.Bxd4 Nd7 Currently, the pawn on g5 is being attacked by the bishop but, in a way, it's not a big problem for White. He played 15.Qh5 bringing one more piece closer to the opponent's king. It's always a good idea to bring your queen closer to the opponent's king because the queen is actually the best attacking piece. Because it controls so many squares, it is such a powerful piece, that it can actually deliver a checkmate. In the majority of the cases, the checkmate is delivered by the queen. That's why, it always makes sense to try to involve it into your attack. 15...Nc5 By the way, what do you think about this move? Is it good, bad or average? What do you think? It's interesting that we discussed earlier that, in order for your attack to be successful, you need to have more pieces around the opponent's king. You may notice that Black voluntarily moved the knight away, further to the queenside, away from Black's king. So, this is certainly a big mistake. It's clear that White is trying to attack; and therefore, Black should try to bring more pieces to the defense, not moving them away. Therefore, Nc5 is definitely a mistake, and it's played by Nepomniashchy, a strong grandmaster. You can see that when you understand these general strategies, everything becomes so clear to you: what you should do and what you should not do. White continued with 16.Rhg1 Again, he brings one more piece into the attack and it actually creates a bunch of various attacking opportunities. Even one of them is not really a threat, but just a cool thing that I would like to show you. Let's say White plays a5. (See the variation). Black instead played 16...Re8 [16...a5 Potentially, not right now, in some variations, White may play the following cool move 17.Qh6 attacking the g7-square, with the idea that 17...gxh6 If Black recaptures 18.gxh6+ White will actually recapture with the pawn, and boom! It's a checkmate, all of a sudden :-). Again, it's a thing that White should be doing right now. Here Black cannot defend. It's one of the ideas that White may use, giving how powerful White's position already is. 18...Bg5+ 19.Rxg5#] 17.Rg3 Now the threat is very straightforward to play Rh3, and then, to take that pawn on h7 with the queen (Qxh7+). All of a sudden, you can see that Black is already in a big trouble just because White has so many pieces on the kingside and Black has almost nothing. 17...Nxb3+ 18.axb3 e5

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Black's idea is that now the h3-square is unavailable for White's rook and he tries to somehow close the position, but White found another way to get to Black's king. He played 19.Nd5 The idea is to jump with this knight forward onto f6 in the next move, force Black to take and open up the g-file, so that White can attack the king. As we discussed earlier, there are two ways to remove the pawns: either use your pawns or sacrifice your piece. Here White prepares this Nf6+ sacrifice. Black tried to prevent it by playing 19...g6 [19...exd4 20.Nf6+ Bxf6 21.gxf6 g6 22.Qh6] 20.Qh6 White moved the queen forward to h6. Certainly, Black cannot really take the bishop (exd4) because, in this case, White's idea works out very easily. (See the variation). This knight has to be taken; pawn takes the bishop and Qg7 is unavoidable. Black cannot really do this. See what he did instead. He played 20...Kh8 Black is desperately trying to somehow hold his position, but now White found a cool way to win the game. 21.Bxe5+ He first sacrificed the bishop. In a moment, we'll see the idea behind it. 21...dxe5 22.Nf6 Then he jumped to f6 anyway. 22...Bxf6 23.gxf6 The point is that, after this exchange –which is forced–, Black plays 23...Rg8 trying to cover this vital g7-square. Now White can win the game. Can you find the winning continuation? I'll give you a few seconds to think about it. After White's next move, Black resigned, if you guessed it. The move is 24.Rd8 Congratulations if you found it! It deflects the rook from g8; therefore, Black cannot stop Qg7 in the next move, which will be played no matter what. That was, by the

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way, the reason for White's sacrifice of the bishop on e5; it just enables to open up the d-file, so that White can play Rd8 at this point. That was another great game that illustrated, basically, all the typical ideas of attacking the opponent's castling. I hope that knowing these strategies will now be right there for you to know when to start an attack and how you can do this. Again, as always, keep in mind the key idea that you need to have a greater concentration of the pieces around the opponent's king. You need to have greater activity, and only then, your attack will be successful. 1–0

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Lesson 5 – Weak Squares, Outpost Kesaris, Evangelos (1879) - Pavlis, Antonios (1672) [A57] SUMMER OPEN By A.s.o.p DIAS - A΄GROUP (5), 21.07.2019 Hi! In this lesson, we'll talk about one of the main and the easiest ways to start an attack, which is the way to create and exploit weaknesses in the opponent's position. 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 c5 3.d5 b5 4.Qc2 bxc4 5.e4 d6 6.Bxc4 g6 7.Nf3 Bg7 8.0–0 0–0 9.Re1 Nbd7 10.h3 Rb8 11.Nc3 Nb6 12.Bf1 Bb7 13.Bg5 h6 14.Bh4 Nh5 15.g4 Nf6 16.Rad1 Qc8 17.Bg3 h5 18.g5 Nfd7 19.e5 dxe5 20.Nxe5 Nxe5 21.Bxe5 Bxe5 22.Rxe5 Ba6 23.Bxa6 Qxa6 24.Rxe7 Nc4

As we discussed earlier, one of the main ways to attack is to move your pieces forward to the opponent's half of the board and take or attack something there. But there is a problem here. Usually, the vast majority of squares in the opponent's half of the board are covered by his pieces. Therefore, how can you do this? Well, you need to find those holes which you can utilize to penetrate into the opponent's position, which are pawns and squares which are not protected by other pawns. We usually talk Attack and Win | https://chess-teacher.com

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about the sixth and fifth ranks when it comes to Black's position. For White, it would be the fourth and the third rank. But if we're playing White, we'll pay attention to the fifth and the sixth rank. If you can notice there pawns or squares which are not protected by other pawns of the opponent, it means that your piece can be located there, and it's probably a good thing to do. For instance, if we focus on the kingside alone, you may notice those holes: the h6-square and the f6-square. An additional advantage of White here is that there is that pawn on g5 that controls those squares. Therefore, if White were able to put his pieces there, he would not only be able to be located there temporarily, but even more so, he would be able to stay there for a long time and contribute to White's attack long term. That was the thing that White could have done in this position. He could have and should have played Ne4. (See the variation). 25.b3 [25.Ne4, aiming to place this knight onto f6, which would create a very strong attack in conjunction with White's queen, which may go forward to c3 to further attack Black's king. Actually, it would just win the game. Imagine Black plays 25...Nxb2 26.Nf6+ Kg7 (26...Kh8 27.Qxg6 fxg6 28.Rh7#) 27.Qc3 White can just continue with Qc3, the queen takes aim at Black's king and Black has no defense against this discovered check, followed by a checkmate. That's how powerful the usage of weak squares is. It allows you to bring your piece right inside of the opponent's camp, close to his pieces, pawns and king; and it creates a massive attack there. 27...Nxd1 Can you see the checkmate for White here? White just needs to jump with his knight from f6 somewhere to create the double check. It could be Ne8+ or Nxh5+. Actually, both ways work. 28.Ne8+ (28.Nxh5+ Now Black's king is under the check from the knight and the queen; therefore, it has to move somewhere. 28...Kh7 29.Qg7# And White will just play Qg7#. That's the way White can checkmate here. There was also another sideline which was also fairly cool. Instead of playing Kh7, Black could possibly play Kh8. (See the 26...Kh8 variation). In this case, there was another way to win for White. It's the move Qxg6. Boom! All of a sudden, White sacrifices the whole queen. The idea is that, after the queen is captured, White can deliver this nice checkmate Rh7#. It might be a great finish for this game. As you can see, once again, this knight from f6 played the decisive role in White's attack. That was the idea. In order to start an attack, you need to bring pieces into the opponent's half of the board. In order to do so, you need to pay attention to the opponent's weak squares, which you can use to penetrate into the opponent's camp. Let's see how it works in some other examples.) ] 25...Nd6 26.Ne4 Nxe4 27.Rxe4 Rb6 28.Qe2 Qc8 29.d6 Qf5 30.Qe3 Kh7 31.Re5 Qc2 32.Qd2 Qxd2 33.Rxd2 Rd8 34.d7 Rb7 35.Red5 Rc7 36.Kg2 c4 37.bxc4 Rxc4 38.Kf3 Kg7 39.R5d4 Rc5 40.Ke4 Kf8 41.Rd5 Rc4+ 42.R5d4 Rc5 43.f4 Rc3 44.Ke5 Rc6 45.Rd6 Rc5+ 46.R6d5 Rc6 47.f5 gxf5 48.Kxf5 Kg7 49.a4 Rc3 50.h4 Rc4 51.R2d4 Rc6 52.Rd6 Rc5+ 53.Ke4 Rc7 54.a5 Rc5 55.a6 Rc7 56.Kf4 Kh7 57.g6+ fxg6 58.Kg5 Rf8 59.R6d5 Rc3 60.Rg4 Rcf3 61.d8Q R3f5+ 62.Rxf5 Rxf5# 0–1

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Bangiev, Alexander (2400) - Panzer, Peter (2345) [B48] Oberliga Nord W 9697 Germany (6.1), 10.1996 Here is the next example: the game between Bangiev and Panzer. 1.e4 c5 2.Nc3 e6 3.Nf3 Nc6 4.d4 cxd4 5.Nxd4 Qc7 6.Be3 a6 7.Bd3 Nf6 8.0– 0 Ne5 9.h3 d6 10.f4 Ned7 11.g4 Nc5 12.g5 Nfd7 13.Qe1 b5 14.b4 Nxd3 15.cxd3 Bb7 16.Rc1 Qd8

It's White to play here. You may think about this for a moment. How would you play here as White? Here we can see that White is certainly ahead in development, he has already developed all of his pieces, and even began some pawn assault on the kingside; while Black still needs to finalize the development of his pieces, and especially, to hide his king. But the problem here is how can White begin his attack? We know that we need to move forward, hopefully to the opponent's half of the board; but we cannot do this with our pieces right away because all the squares in the opponent's half of the board are covered by his pawns. And therefore, we need to create some weaknesses first. That's why White played

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17.f5 Of course, it also helps White potentially open up the lines, which is another rule of attack which we already know. Black actually favored White by playing 17...exf5 which somewhat helps White open up more lines. Black should have probably play pawn to e5, trying to keep the position closed. We just can see that people don't really understand these rules of attack very well. When you attack, you try to open the lines. When you defend, you should keep them closed. [17...e5] 18.Nd5 Anyway, after that, White has some great ideas on how to continue his attack. Now he has this new weak d5-square, which he can use to jump with his knight forward, and from there, the knight can possibly attack something. The other knight from b3 also can jump forward to another weak square, a5, and also put some pressure into Black's position. Therefore, Black's position will still be uncomfortable but, at least, he is still in the game. In the actual game, Black took the pawn on f5 and White straightaway played Nd5. White could have also captured the pawn with the knight, that would also be fine; but here White creates the threat of Nc7+, which is a very strong threat; and therefore, White went for this more powerful idea. Black played 18...Rc8 to protect the c7-square. 19.Rxc8 Qxc8 White traded off the rooks. 20.Nxf5 And he took this pawn back. Now you can see this ideal situation for White where both of his knights are located on these strong squares. It is also called an outpost square, where certain piece, such as a knight, is standing on an open or semi-open file on the opponent's half of the board and it is protected by your pawn; such as in this case, this knight on f5. This kind of outpost is an extremely strong theme because, once again, it can stay there for a long time, it's not that easy for the opponent to somehow exchange it or push back this knight. At the same time, because the knight is situated in the opponent's half of the board, it does create a lot of potential threats there, around the opponent's wide range of squares. In the game, Black played 20...h6 I don't really know why. White played 21.Qf2 taking aim at Black's f7-square. 21...Bxd5 Attack and Win | https://chess-teacher.com

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Black traded one of the knights. 22.exd5 But White's position is still strong. He played 22...g6 trying to push the other knight away, but here there are a lot of ways for White to win. He played 23.Bd4 which is winning. I guess a more straightforward way would be to jump with the knight to g7, Ng7+ because it allows White to use this battery right away. (See the variation). [23.Ng7+ Bxg7 24.Qxf7+ Kd8 25.Qxg7 And White is winning. He's attacking the rook. He can also even capture the pawn (gxh6) and promote his new queen if he wishes to do so. Here everything is just too good for White. Black's king cannot escape to the queenside because White can also attack it from there and from c1 as well. There are just too many threats for Black to survive here. In this example, we have seen how White cleverly created weaknesses first, and then occupied those weaknesses with his knight. That was the way for him to start going into the opponent's half of the board using those weaknesses, and for White, using the outpost which provides you with a strong position for one of your pieces.] 23...Rh7 24.Ng7+ Bxg7 25.Qxf7+ Kd8 26.Bxg7 1–0 Bogoljubow - Botvinnik [E14] Nottingham Wijk aan Zee, 1936 This is the game between Bogoljubow and Botvinnik, two famous players of the past. 1.d4 Nf6 2.Nf3 b6 3.e3 c5 4.c4 Bb7 5.Nc3 cxd4 6.exd4 e6 7.Bd3 Be7 8.0–0 0–0 9.b3 d5 10.Be3

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Currently, it's Black to play. Can you notice any weak squares in White's position? You need to focus our attention on the third and fourth ranks, and ask yourself, what are the pawns or squares which are not protected by other pawns? If you think about this, you can see a number of them: a3, b4, c3, possibly the d3 with the bishop –but it's probably hard to attack it–, the d4-pawn –that is possibly weak– and the e4-square. As you can see, there are a lot of weaknesses out there that Black may use sooner or later. Of course, it's most important to try to occupy weak squares, if possible, because it will have the greatest power. That's what Black did right away by playing 10...Ne4 He placed the knight onto White's weak square, which is simultaneously White's strong square for the knight, and it already starts creating some little threats like attacking this knight on c3. Of course, White can protect the knight very easily, but that's the point of the initiative. When you start some little threats, and even though your opponent certainly can defend, anyway, you start leading the game. You start putting the pressure and, in the future, you will be able to develop a more significant attack. White played

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11.Rc1 to protect the knight. Black finalized his development by playing 11...Nd7 12.Qe2 Rc8 Right now, both players finalized their development. 13.Rfd1 f5 Here White played another typical move, pawn to f5. This is a very useful structure to remember. When you have that knight in the center, supported by the two pawns from d5 and f5, it makes this knight on e4 extremely powerful because there is certainly no easy way for White to get rid of that knight. Even if White takes the knight (Bxe4), it helps you move one of your pawns forward, which would also create some problems for White and, simultaneously, it will help you gain more space and will open up more lines for your pieces. In the game, White played 14.Bf4 And now, using this strong knight on e4, this outpost, Black decided to start an attack on the kingside. He played 14...g5 Usually, moving the pawns of your castling is a very dangerous idea because it can possibly expose your king. But it is fine to do that if you have a strong position in the center. It's one of the classics of chess strategy: If you have a strong position in the center, it usually means that you will be safe on the flanks as well. That's exactly what happens right here. Due to this strong knight on e4, supported by Black's pawn chain in the center, Black may, and should, even start his attack on the kingside because there is no way for White's pieces to go forward. This e4-knight just dominates over everything. 15.Be5 g4 16.Ne1 We have also this idea of defense: when you move your g-pawn forward, it helps you keep away that knight from f3, which is usually one of the main defenders of the opponent's king. 16...Nxe5 Here Black took the bishop, which was a very powerful piece. Here there was a very cool variation, in case White recaptures. (See the variation). 17.Bxe4 [17.dxe5, which is the most natural thing to do. Black, all of a sudden, can start a straightforward attack. Even though it may seem for a moment that Black does not have many pieces close to White's position, apart from this knight; nevertheless, Attack and Win | https://chess-teacher.com

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Black's position is so powerful that he already can play 17...Nxf2, eliminate one of the pawns of White's castling and begin his attack. What's the idea? 18.Qxf2. If White takes with the queen, then everything is pretty simple. (18.Kxf2. A more complex line is taking this knight with the king. In this case, Black still plays 18...Bc5+. Certainly, Black would like to take advantage of the fact that White's king is exposed now. After 19.Kf1 which is the only logical move, Black plays 19...Qg5 bringing the queen into the attack. We discussed earlier that it's always a good idea to bring your queen into the attack; it can actually deliver a checkmate. Now Black's idea is to play Qf4+, attacking the king. The opponent's king is already under the fire of both of Black's bishops, potentially; and now Black is also bringing the queen. Therefore, this attack is already so strong. In fact, White has no defense. If White plays 20.Nc2 to provide an escape path for the king, there are actually a bunch of things that Black can do. There are several winning continuations. The one that I like the most, the most active one, is to keep pushing the pawns forward to open up more lines, following this principle of attack that, first of all, you attack by your every move; and, secondly, you try to open up more lines. Black here can play 20...g3, trying to destroy the position further of White's pawns around White's king. 21.hxg3. If he takes, White can, instead of recapturing, play 21...f4, Black does not want to take the pawn right away because he also wants to bring his rook into the attack. Now, almost all of Black's pieces are taking part in the party :-). White is certainly defenseless. If he tries 22.g4 to keep the lines closed, Black can, first of all, push this pawn forward to 22...f3 23.gxf3 Qxg4 After the pawn is taken, Black can continue with Qxg4. The pawn is pinned and now really all of Black's heavy pieces are taking part into the attack. Black is threatening Qg1#, Rxf3+ is also coming; so yes, White is absolutely defenseless here. In this game, we have seen how Black having that strong knight on e4 a few moves ago, has dominated over the entire situation. Let me show you that position once again for a moment. Let's look at this position. Thanks to this so strong, monstrous knight on e4, Black managed to dominate. That's a very useful thing to remember. If you can have this kind of outpost, if you can put your piece on a weak square on the opponent's camp, which is, at the same time, protected by your pawns; it gives you a super strong position long term. That's one of the ways to begin your attack because you can penetrate into the opponent's position without any sacrifices, just by putting your piece on a strong square.) 18...Bc5 Black will reply with Bc5, winning the queen due to the pin. That is certainly winning for Black; it was easy.] 17...dxe4 18.dxe5 Qc7 19.Nb5 Qxe5 20.Rd7 Bg5 21.Rcd1 Bc6 22.Rxa7 Rcd8 23.a4 Rxd1 24.Qxd1 Rd8 25.Qc2 Bd2 0–1

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Lesson 6 – Strong Center, Central Thrust Boensch, Uwe (2525) - Maiwald, Jens Uwe (2490) [B08] EU-Cup final Budapest (4), 1996 In this video, I'd like to share with you the idea of playing in the center and how your activity in the center can consolidate your attack all over the board, including the kingside. I feel that it's one of the concepts that people don't fully understand. Most of them have heard that it's good to play in the center, but they don't always realize exactly how it's going to help them checkmate the opponent's king. Let's find out. 1.d4 g6 2.e4 Bg7 3.Nf3 d6 4.Be2 Nf6 5.Nc3 0–0 6.0–0 c6 7.Re1 Nbd7 8.Bf4 Nh5 9.Bg5 h6 10.Be3 Nhf6 11.h3 Qc7 12.a4 Kh7 13.a5 b5

Here is the position from the European Championship between Boensch and Maiwald. It's White to play. What do you think about it? Is there any way for White to attack the opponent's king? It would be fairly difficult to do so. As you can see, most of White's pieces are quite far away from the kingside, and the king is also wellprotected by the surrounding pieces. Trying to open up the position there would Attack and Win | https://chess-teacher.com

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require a massive effort because pushing your pawns would also weaken your king, and it's not easy to sacrifice pieces for those pawns doesn't look like a feasible option. All in all, it seems like it's no clear way how White can possibly attack that king. But if we just think in general, how can White attack in this position? We know that the idea is to look at the opponent's half of the board and ask yourself, how can I move my forces there to attack or take something? With that in mind, you may come to this move, 14.e5 which is indeed the way to begin your attack in the center. Here you may notice an interesting thing. White may do this thanks to his advantage in the center. White has two pawns (d4 and e4), while Black has none of his pawns in the central squares (d5 and e5), which provides White with this advantage in the center. The good thing about it is that anytime White wants to launch his attack, he may just push one of his pawns forward. This will help him make this important shift from White's territory of the board to Black's territory, which is the mark of the beginning of your attack. The great thing for White is that he doesn't even have to sacrifice pieces or pawns or create some pawn assault, and take a lot of time to prepare it. No, White can begin his attack with just one move, and it happens thanks to his advantage in the center. That's why it's so important for you to try to have the advantage in the center. In this position, White actually played e5 right away. And it's a good thing because it pushes the f6-knight away. 14...dxe5 15.dxe5 Here, Black can actually take the pawn (Nxe5). (See the variation). Instead, at this point, Black just moved his knight back to g8, 15...Ng8 which is certainly an accomplishment for White. Pushing your opponent's pieces away, backwards, is always a good thing for you. [15...Nxe5. It will help White open up even more lines. 16.Nxe5. He can first take this knight 16...Qxe5 And then he can play 17.Bf3. Now, all of a sudden, there are so many threats. There is the c6-pawn under attack, there is also some potential discovered attack against the black queen, the white bishop can take on h6 or a7; there are so many opportunities. And it happened because, in order to begin your attack, you need to open up the position first, which is exactly what happens right here. That's why Black did not want to go into a position like this.] 16.e6 White continued by playing e6, sacrificing a pawn, but it only destroys Black's pawn structure, creating lots of weaknesses that White can attack later on. 16...fxe6 17.Bd3

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Now this bishop takes aim possibly at the weak g6-pawn and, somewhat, to Black's king. 17...Bf6 18.Be4 Notice that thanks to White's central pawns which White had there in the past, which then he sacrificed, he somewhat also has more free space to maneuver his pieces. While most of Black's pieces are just situated in the last ranks, for White it's much easier to operate and to move his pieces forward. Currently, with his last Be4 move, he prepares the tactical Nxb5 shot, winning the pawn and taking advantage of the pin. In order to prevent this, Black decided to eliminate the knight. He played 18...Bxc3 which turned out to be a sudden mistake because Black, for a moment, moved his bishop away from the kingside, and White decided to take advantage of this opportunity right away. 19.Ng5+ He jumped. It actually wins the game right away. 19...hxg5 20.Qh5+ White has the great move, Qh5+. Since the pawn is pinned by White's e4-bishop, by White's light-squared bishop, Black cannot really take the queen or, otherwise, his king will be checkmated. 20...Kg7 21.Qxg6+ Kh8 22.Qh7# This game just shows how you can begin attacking the center whenever you wish to do so, in case you have an advantage in the center. From then onwards, you can attack all over the board. Whether you wish to attack the opponent's pawns or even to shift your attack to the king, anyway, it's important to have this thing in mind. It's always a great thing to have a strong center; it's going to facilitate your attack a lot. 1–0 Grioriadis, Mixail (2191) - Fountas, Petros (1832) [B08] 27ο ΔΙΕΘΝΕΣ ΤΟΥΡΝΟΥΑ ΝΙΚΑΙΑΣ (8), 26.08.2019 1.d4 Nf6 2.Nf3 g6 3.Bf4 Bg7 4.Nc3 0–0 5.e4 d6 6.Qd2 Nbd7 7.0–0–0 c6

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Here is another game. How can White attack here? A lot of players would focus their attention on the kingside solely, and they would only think about pushing the h-pawn forward and placing the bishop there on h6, and try to checkmate the opponent's king this way. Even though it is a possible plan, it's usually easily, stronger to attack in the center. The center has a dominant power in the game. The centralized pieces are the most powerful. If you have the domination, it means that you will win for sure sooner or later, one way or the other. That is why White played 8.e5 Remember the previous game we have just watched. It's a similar idea. White crossed the half of the board by pushing his central pawn forward to e5, attacking the knight, and starting to create some problems for Black. In case Black takes the pawn (dxe5) , this will probably just help White because White recaptures; and Black still has to move this knight away, while it also helps White somewhat start pressuring Black along the d-file. That's why in the real game, instead of taking the pawn, 8...Ne8

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Black just moved his knight back right away. Notice that by pushing the pawn to e5, White also attacked that pawn on d6, which is attacked simultaneously by the pawn and the bishop. That's why the knight had to go backwards to protect it. [8...dxe5 9.dxe5] 9.Ne4 White continued his attack by playing Ne4. Thanks to White's advantage in the center, it also gives White more space. He has his active bishop on f4 and his active knight on e4, which already started attacking Black, while Black's pieces are crammed; they have to stand in the last rank. White played 9...Qc7 to protect the pawn, but there White found an interesting tactical opportunity. First of all, 10.exd6 he took the pawn 10...exd6 11.Nxd6 and, all of a sudden, he took the pawn anyway because 11...Nxd6 after Black recaptures, White can play 12.Qb4 taking advantage of the pin, White can win this pawn. Basically, in the next move, White will play Bxd6, winning the knight; and he just won a pawn. There was a long game after that, the game between two club level players, and they made a lot of mistakes down the road. The game was drawn. The point is that, at this moment, White certainly has the advantage. It again shows you how easily you can begin an attack in the center. Finally, sometimes people wonder, why to attack pawns if the purpose of the chess game is to checkmate the opponent's king? The answer is pretty straightforward. It's not always possible to checkmate the opponent's king right away. Often it's a lot more achievable to, first of all, capture some material, pawns or pieces, and then, having this advantage, having a greater army than your opponent has, then begin the decisive attack. 12...c5 13.dxc5 a5 14.Qa3 Nc4 15.Bxc7 Nxa3 16.Bd6 Bh6+ 17.Nd2 Rd8 18.f4 Nxc2 19.Kxc2 Nxc5 20.Bxc5 Bf5+ 21.Ne4 Bxe4+ 22.Bd3 Bxd3+ 23.Rxd3 Rxd3 24.Kxd3 Bxf4 25.Bd4 b5 26.Bf6 Ra6 27.Bc3 f5 28.a3 a4 29.Kd4 Rc6 30.Kd5 Rc4 31.h4 Bg3 32.h5 Kf7 33.Rh3 f4 34.hxg6+ Kxg6 35.Rh1 h5 36.Rd1 Kf5 37.Rd4 Rxd4+ 38.Bxd4 Bh4 39.Kc6 Bf6 40.Bf2 Bxb2 41.Kxb5 Bxa3 42.Kxa4 Bc1 43.Kb3 Be3 44.Be1 Ke4 45.Kc2 Kd4 46.Bc3+ Kc4 47.Bf6 Bf2 48.Kd2 Bd4 49.Bd8 Kd5 50.Kd3 ½–½ Attack and Win | https://chess-teacher.com

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Sutovsky, Emil (2565) - Van Wely, Loek (2605) [B85] Tilburg Fontys Tilburg (5), 16.10.1996 Here is the game between Sutovsky and Van Wely. 1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 d6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 Nf6 5.Nc3 a6 6.Be2 e6 7.f4 Be7 8.Be3 0– 0 9.0–0 Qc7 10.g4 b5 11.g5 Nfd7

It's White's turn here. In this position, it was fairly interesting to notice how White's space advantage, in particular, his strong position in the center, allows him to bring his pieces to the kingside so quickly. He started by playing 12.Bd3 which is usually a powerful position for the bishop for attacking the kingside because it starts looking towards Black's king. 12...Re8 13.Qh5 Attack and Win | https://chess-teacher.com

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Here just pay attention to the fact how easy it was for White to bring his queen so close to the opponent's king. For instance, if Black tried to somehow bring his queen closer to the king to protect it, there is just no way, right? Because White controls so many squares on the chessboard, and because Black is lacking space for his maneuvers, he has a very hard time bringing his queenside pieces to help his king. Anyway, let's see what happened next. Black played 13...g6 trying to keep the queen away. 14.Qh4 b4 15.Nce2 Anyway, b4 did not really help Black too much because this c2-knight actually got closer to the kingside. In the future, it can possibly take part into the attack there; so, maybe, it was not good for Black to play b4. 15...Bb7 16.Rf3 Now he's going to play Rh3, and then checkmate Black's king there (Qxh7#). Again, a kind of maneuver like this is only possible due to the fact that White has so much space. 16...h5 17.Ng3 Now he's going to play Rh3, and then checkmate Black's king there (Qxh7#). Again, a kind of maneuver like this is only possible due to the fact that White has so much space. 17...Bf8 He's desperately trying to bring at least some pieces closer to his king but, in fact, this bishop is the only piece he can really bring out easily. 18.Nxh5 gxh5 White sacrificed the knight to open up the position there 19.Qxh5 to remove the cover of Black's king. 19...Bg7 Here there were different ways for White to continue. He pushed the pawn to 20.f5!

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Again, I hope that, by now, this kind of move already seems so natural for you. When you attack, you need to move forward, you need to open up the position by pushing your pawns forward, and this is exactly what White is doing here. 20...exf5 21.Nxf5 Black recaptured, which helped White bring the knight also closer to the king. 21...Nf8 22.Nxg7 Another common idea for your attack is to eliminate defenders. Usually, especially if your opponent has very few defenders, if you just eliminate one of them, then the opponent simply becomes defenseless, such as in this position. The king is mainly protected by the bishop and the knight; and therefore, if you can eliminate one of those pieces, really the king will become so lonely, and it doesn't help him survive for too long. 22...Kxg7 23.Bd4+ Re5 Black tried to cover the diagonal by playing Re5. Even though White could take the rook, but as he can do it anyway, at anytime, he played 24.Raf1 instead, threatening Rxf7+, and Black is defenseless. He simply resigned at this point. It seems like White's attack was so quick and so easy. Well, it was actually true. It happened due to the fact that it was so easy for White to bring all of his pieces into the attack, while for Black it took a lot longer to try to somehow regroup his pieces to bring them closer to the king. Those pieces on the queenside are somewhat off the game; they don't really help Black at all. That's another great advantage of having a strong center that provides you the space that you need to maneuver your pieces and to bring them closer to the opponent's king whenever you decide to begin your attack. 1–0 Korneev, Oleg (2565) - Dyachkov, Sergej (2515) [B04] RUS-ch Elista (6), 1996 Here is the final game of this lesson between Korneev and Dyachkov, two grandmasters. 1.e4 Nf6 2.e5 Nd5 3.d4 d6 4.Nf3 Nc6 5.c4 Nb6 6.e6 fxe6 7.Nc3 g6 8.h4 Bg7 9.Be3 e5 10.d5 Nb4 11.a3 Na6 12.h5 Bf5 13.hxg6 hxg6 14.Rxh8+ Bxh8

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It's White to play, and he started his attack. Whenever you need to start your attack, you need to look at the opponent's half of the board and think how you can play there and hopefully, take or attack something there. In this case, there is no way for White to immediately capture something which would him advantage; so, he just played forward 15.Ng5 This knight comes closer to the opponent's king; potentially, it may go to e6, immediately or after, first of all, eliminating that bishop from f5 sometime in the future. Even more so, it's possibly to prepare White's pawn to the g4 move, which also pushes the bishop all the way back to d7. That's why Black played 15...Qc8 trying to prevent this g4 move from happening, but White played 16.Be2

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and now this g4 move is unavoidable. Black tried playing 16...c6 to create at least some space for his pieces but, nevertheless, White played 17.g4 continuing his plan. 17...Bd7 The bishop has to go all the way back. Now with 18.Qd3± White can start a direct attack to the opponent's king. There is here an interesting thing you may notice. If you just look at the overall position, you may notice that White's center, White's strong position in the center and, in particular, that pawn on d5, serves as a nail that fixates White's advantage, or as a separator because it somewhat blocks Black's pieces. All of these Black's pieces that are stuck on the queenside extremely want to be delivered somewhere to the kingside, for instance; and it is because the center is blocked by White's pawn chain. Because these pawns are advanced, they provide enough free space for White to maneuver his pieces wherever he wants and, in particular, to also bring his queen forward. Black tried 18...Kd8 to escape with his king and White played another good move, 19.c5 When we want to attack a centralized king, we need to open up the lines. That's exactly what White is doing right here by pushing his pawn forward to c5. And yes, it's already time to resign. Let's say Black takes with the knight (Nxc5). (See the variation). 19...e4 [19...Nxc5 20.Bxc5 White can just trade off the knight first and, then, there are actually a lot of opportunities for White to continue his attack. I guess one of the simplest options would be simply 20...dxc5 21.d6 to push his pawn forward to d6, continuing the same strategy of opening more and more lines against Black's king. 21...exd6 22.Qxd6 He's creating these little threats of Nf7 and Ne6+; he can certainly bring the rook to d1 and, yes, it's time to resign for Black really. In this position, there are so many threats that White has where Black is absolutely defenseless. This game also showed you those huge typical ideas that help you start your attack in the center and, then, provide you with a couple of options. Anytime you want, you can push your central pawn forward, which will help you open up more lines and start attacking your opponent. Also, it provides you with more free space to regroup your pieces to Attack and Win | https://chess-teacher.com

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bring them closer to the opponent's king; while, at the same time, it blocks the opponent's pieces out and it makes it very difficult for him to bring out his reserves to support his king. This was the main strategy for you to attack in the center, and from there onwards, you can continue attacking there, or you can shift your attack to the kingside. I hope that, by now, it became clear to you why this is so important to play in the center, why all the opening tutorials tell you: control the center, play in the center. It's because there are so many advantages that it can provide you down the road and it can help you facilitate your attack in the future.] 20.Ncxe4 Nxd5 21.cxd6 Be6 22.0–0–0 Qd7 23.Rh1 Be5 24.f4 Nxf4 25.Bxf4 Bxf4+ 26.Kb1 exd6 27.Rh7 Qe8 28.Nxd6 Bxd6 29.Qxd6+ Bd7 30.Rxd7+ Qxd7 31.Ne6+ 1–0

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Lesson 7 – Time Erenburg, Sergey (2629) - Stripunsky, Alexander (2566) [D07] USA tt ICC INT (3), 19.09.2012 Hi again! How have you been doing? I hope that everything is great. I do hope that you've enjoyed the course thus far. Let's move on to the next subject, which is one of the main rules of the attack. It's all about the time. Let's take a look at the first example and we'll see it more specifically. 1.d4 d5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.c4 Bg4 4.Nc3 e6 5.cxd5 exd5 6.Bf4 Bd6 7.Qd2 Nge7 8.0–0–0 0–0 9.h3 Bf5 10.g4 Be4 11.Nxe4 dxe4 12.Ne5 Ng6 13.e3 Ncxe5 14.dxe5 Bxe5 15.Qc2 Qf6

In this position, it was White to play. Because the white bishop on f4 has been attacked, White decided 16.Bxe5 Attack and Win | https://chess-teacher.com

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to take it on e5. What do you think about it? What kind of move would you play here? It's pretty obvious that Black has to recapture and he can recapture by the queen or by the knight. There is one common mistake that most people make. In situations like those, they just focus solely on their position and their pieces; and they think which move suits best for them. But it's always important to keep in mind the general picture. If you just forget for a second about this bishop and just think about the position in more general strategic terms, you may notice a couple of things. One of them is that White is a little bit behind in development; he still has his bishop on f1, undeveloped; so, White still needs to take time to develop that bishop. Also, right now, Black is a pawn up; and therefore, it will probably take time for White to capture that pawn back, if he can, which is another move that he will have to spend before developing his bishop or instead of developing it. Anyway, it means that Black is ahead in development, which may give you an idea that you may wish to start an attack, and you need to do it quickly. Imagine Black decided to take on e5 with the queen, which may seem like the most natural choice to just protect that pawn on e4. Let's say Black recaptures (Qxe5). Now White has the time to develop the bishop; for instance, he can play Bg2, attacking that pawn on e4. Black would need to protect it now somehow, maybe play Re8. White can continue with something like Rd4 to keep attacking that pawn and everything is just ok for White. Let's take a few steps back and see what White could have done instead. In the actual game, he played. 16...Nxe5 White took on e5 with the knight. His idea is to give up the pawn [16...Qxe5] 17.Qxe4 because now White can capture it, but instead, he played 17...Rad8 to try to bring his pieces into the game as quickly as possible, trying to take advantage of White's underdeveloped bishop. Now White is somewhat in trouble because he needs to develop his bishop but, at the same time, Black is also threatening that pawn on f2 (Qxf2). For instance, if White plays Be2, even though it might seem like Black's queen from f6 is there to protect the knight, in fact, he can take on f2 (Qxf2) because it will also attack the bishop. This way Black wins the pawn. Therefore, this is an unfavorable variation for White. Instead, White decided to save the pawn; so 18.Rxd8 [18.Be2 Qxf2] 18...Rxd8 He first exchanged the rooks, then played 19.f4 Attack and Win | https://chess-teacher.com

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Certainly, White hoped for White's knight to go away, then White will develop his light-squared bishop and have an approximately equal position. Is there anything better that Black can play here? Again, that's the factor of time in the attack, which says that, when you're attacking, you should try to do it quickly before your opponent has the time to regroup, to bring up more pieces into the defense, to finalize his development or do anything like that. That's why while attacking, always ask yourself, how can I attack now? How can I force my opponent to defend instead of doing something that he wants? For example, in this position, are there any attacking moves that Black can play? If you think this way, you may find the following move, 19...Qd6! Now, Black is threatening to go forward with the queen either to d1 or maybe to d2 and create some problems for White's king. Therefore, White has no time to develop his bishop; he has to protect his king. He played 20.Qc2 Nc6 Now Black moved the knight back because, in this case, it also creates the threat of Nb4, which would additionally attack the queen and the pawn on a2. Therefore, it's not just to retreat; it also somewhat prepares an attack. White played 21.Bc4 also trying to finalize his development. Black, once again, kept attacking by playing 21...Na5 Right now, Black wants to grab that bishop; this would deflect White's queen, which will have to recapture and, after that, Black's queen can go inside Qd2 and make some bad work there :-). It's too bad for White. White played 22.Be2 to save the bishop; and Black found another attacking move: 22...Qe6± This time, it's a double attack to White's pawn on e3 and the pawn on a2. There is no way for White to protect both of these pawns simultaneously; therefore, White will lose one of them and, within several next moves, White loses the game as well. As usual, if you want to see the entire game, you may go to the supplementary materials. There you can find all these games in full, in pgn format. For now, we'll stop here because Black already got a decisive advantage at this point. It was a nice illustration of this rule that you should not just think about, which move is natural for me to play? Evaluate the general situation, and if you think that there are some reasons for you to believe that, you can start attacking; then you may need to rush into the attack, and do it as quickly as possible.

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23.Rd1 Qxe3+ 24.Kb1 Rxd1+ 25.Qxd1 g6 26.f5 Kg7 27.fxg6 hxg6 28.h4 b6 29.h5 Nc6 30.hxg6 Nd4 31.Bc4 fxg6 32.a3 c5 33.Bd5 Qe5 34.Qh1 b5 35.Be4 a5 36.Bd3 c4 37.Qe4 Qxe4 0–1 Gonsiorovsky, V - Alekhine, Alexander [C24] Odessa blindfold Odessa, 12.1918 Here is another example, the game between Gonsiorovsky and Alekhine, who was the third world chess champion 1.e4 e5 2.Bc4 Nf6 3.d3 c6 4.Qe2 That's already the first move, which is the second best option. In an opening, we need to develop minor pieces first, not the queen. 4...Be7 5.f4

Once again, it may seem like an attacking move, and a lot of amateur players love playing like that; but in reality, once again, White is ignoring the development of his Attack and Win | https://chess-teacher.com

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minor pieces, which is a mistake. Therefore, whenever you play your game and you see that your opponent makes a wrong move or a second best move, it means that you should not be scared about his attacking attempts. Quite the contrary, you need to find a way to rush into the attack and to make your opponent regret about his mistakes. That's why Black played 5...d5 attacking the bishop. White wants to start counter attacking. 6.exd5 White captured the pawn. Right now, if Black recaptures here (cxd5), then White will play Bb5+, and then, possibly, take the pawn on d5. Instead, Black decided to play 6...exf4 to take that pawn on f4. By the way, notice that it is actually a pawn sacrifice because, instead of just taking the pawn on f4, White can now... (See the variation). That didn't seem like a very good thing for White; therefore, White just played 7.Bxf4 took the pawn on f4. [7.dxc6 ...take the pawn here 7...Nxc6 8.Bxf4 and then, take back the pawn on f4. In this position, White is a pawn up. However, Black gained some tempos for the development of his pieces; and therefore, now he's ahead in development. Just like we discussed earlier, now he can start playing some attacking moves right away. For instance, he can play 8...Nd4 attacking the queen and the pawn. That's already a bit unpleasant for White. Later on, Black will certainly castle, place his rook on e8 and will try attacking White there.] 7...0–0 And Black castled. Once again, you may notice that, instead of collecting the pawn back, Black tried to always finalize his development, first and foremost. 8.Nd2 cxd5 At this point, Black finally recaptures the pawn because, anyway, he needs to develop the knight somehow. 9.Bb3 Here there was another interesting moment. Black could have certainly played Nc6, and that's definitely a normal option. But when you are ahead in development, when you wish to attack, you need to try to create threats as soon as you can. For that single reason, Nc6, even though it's a perfectly fine move, it may not be the best one. If you ask yourself, how can I attack right away? You will come to some other moves that you may consider. For instance, Bg4, attacking the queen, one interesting option. Another one was played by Alekhine, Attack and Win | https://chess-teacher.com

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9...a5! threatening to capture the bishop after a4. White played [9...Nc6; 9...Bg4] 10.c3 a4 but Black still kept pushing the bishop away. 11.Bc2 After the bishop retreated back, Black continued with 11...a3 destroying Black's pawn structure. Whenever you can create some weaknesses in the opponent's pawn structure, you create some targets for your attack in the future; therefore, it's a great thing to do. White replied with 12.b3 Now, how can Black attack here? Again, Bg4 is still an option. Another one is 12...Re8 which creates the threat of a discovered attack. It actually happens in the next move because it's hard for White to stop it anyway. He needs to remove either his queen or king from this dangerous e-line, 13.0–0–0 which he did by castling queenside; but now Black can make the discovered attack anyway. He plays 13...Bb4! which is an attack of the queen but, at the same time, Black wants to grab the pawn. 14.Qf2 White retreated with the queen. 14...Bxc3 Black captured the pawn and, certainly, that's a very great thing for Black. You can see that the bishop is now close to White's king and it does create some threats for Black in the future. White played 15.Bg5

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trying to pin the knight. 15...Nc6 Here Black continued developing his piece. Again, it's not just development because this knight is really ready to take part into the attack (Nb4), attack the bishop, the pawn and create some serious threats for White. White played 16.Ngf3 He finalized his development. But, of course, the cost for that was too high. He had to expose his king, weaken his position on the queenside, created a bunch of weaknesses; and therefore, White has a strong potential for the attack. At this point, probably the easiest thing for Black was to play Nb4 and start a very strong attack right away; but instead, Alekhine found an interesting tactical trick which he decided to play. It's a quite fun variation to watch which happened in the game. He played 16...d4 We can notice his idea in the next move. [16...Nb4] 17.Rhe1 Bb2+ 18.Kb1 Nd5 19.Rxe8+ [19.Bxd8 Nc3#] 19...Qxe8 How can White stop the Nc3# now? He played 20.Ne4 but Black certainly has the way to continue his attack. Can you see the winning continuation? I'll give you a few seconds to think about it. Black can eliminate the defender of the c3-square by playing 20...Qxe4 and he insists on playing Nc3#. White, once again, tried to protect that square by playing 21.Bd2 Here Alekhine played another fun move, 21...Qe3 Black still noticed that White cannot really move that bishop away from d2 due to this Nc3# threat; and therefore, he really made another move forward with the queen, creating some stronger pressure against White's position. White played

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22.Re1 And it just really shows how important it is to always be careful in chess because Black is certain that he almost won the game already. Everything is in Black's favor, but if Black just makes one careless move, Qxf2, just thinking that White is desperate and loses his queen, there will be this back rank checkmate (Re8#). Annoying losses like that happen all the time, especially in the Internet blitz games. That's why I always recommend that you never forget to make the anti-blunder check. Before playing your move on the board, ask yourself, are there any attacking moves that my opponent can play? It just helps you prevent this kind of disasters that sometimes we all face, unfortunately. Alekhine certainly noticed that, and he just played 22...Bf5 Another cool move. He just continued developing his pieces in spite of the fact that his queen is under attack because he knows that he's going checkmate White very soon. [22...Qxf2 23.Re8#] 23.Rxe3 dxe3 24.Qf1 exd2 Once again, Black renews the threat of Nc3#. White played 25.Bd1 trying to prepare this escape square for the king (c2). 25...Ncb4 Black covered that square as well. 26.Qe2 Nc3# And, finally, Black delivered that beautiful checkmate with Nc3#. A great game by Alekhine. But even more so, it was a great example of the fact that, whenever you notice, in an opening or in any stage of the game, that your opponent plays second best moves or something that seems a little bit weird or wrong to you, always look for ways to punish your opponent for that mistake. The way to do this is to start attacking. Try to create threats so that your opponent has no time to cover his position and to eliminate the negative consequences of the mistakes that he made. Doing so will help you win brilliant games just like this. 0–1 Conquest, Stuart (2585) - Hracek, Zbynek (2625) [D05] Bundesliga 9697 Germany, 1996 There we go with the final game of this lesson between Conquest and Hracek, two grandmasters. 1.d4 Nf6 2.Nf3 e6 3.e3 c5 4.Bd3 Nc6 5.0–0 d5 6.b3 Bd6 7.Bb2 Qe7 8.c4 0–0 9.Nc3 cxd4 10.exd4 dxc4 11.bxc4 Ba3 12.Rb1 Bxb2 13.Rxb2 Rd8 14.Re1 b6

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It's White to play. What do you think about this position? How would you play here as White? Imagine it is your game. Which are the moves that seem more natural to you here? We can see that White has finalized the development already while Black still needs to take his time to play Bb7 and, ideally speaking, also Rc8 to bring all of his pieces into play, while White has already developed all of his pieces. Therefore, it is definitely the time for White to begin his attack. When you need to start attacking, you need to focus your attention on the opponent's half of the board and ask yourself, how can you place your pieces or pawns there and take or attack something there? If you ask yourself this question, how can I move forward to the opponent's half of the board? You will easily find the following move, 15.d5 It attacks the knight. Black cannot recapture because the pawn is pinned. Black plays 15...Na5

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In this position, White noticed that if he just takes there on e6 (dxe6), it doesn't provide much to White because Black can simply recapture. At the same time, there is a bit of unpleasant opposition of Black's rook versus White's bishop and queen. 16.Qb1 Therefore, White decided to remove the queen from this line. It's not the only move that White could have played here, but it's one of the decent options. At the same time, White is also creating this battery, the queen plus the bishop that starts pressuring Black's kingside. Black played [16.dxe6] 16...Qd6 He's also doing the same thing, removing the queen from the pin. Once again, how can I attack here? If you think about this, what kind of moves can you find here? There are a number of them: Nb5, attacking the queen; Ng5, attacking the pawn on h7; maybe dxe6 because it's a forcing move. So, these are the main moves that you need to consider. Maybe Ne4 as well, not on Black's half of the board, but still a forcing move. Again, as you can see, when you know the right principles for finding attacking moves, everything becomes very easy for you. You don't have to think about all the potential moves that White can play because you know what to focus on. In the game, White chose to play 17.Ng5 attacking the pawn on h7 because it's now attacked by White's knight, the bishop and the queen. Black played [17.Nb5; 17.dxe6; 17.Ne4] 17...g6 Here White found that he can finally take on e6 and start destroying Black's position. 18.dxe6 Qxd3 Black recaptured on d3. Maybe he feels he's hoping to win the piece, but there is a problem for Black here, that White can push his pawn forward to 19.e7 and there is no easy way for Black to stop that pawn. Black cannot just move the rook to e8 because the rook needs to keep protecting the queen; otherwise, it will simply be captured. In case Black wants to trade off the queens (Qxb1) in between and then, remove the rook, White certainly doesn't have to recapture right away. He can first grab that rook on d8 with check (exd8Q+), and only then, capture back the queen, which would just give White a significant material advantage. So, that's not an option for Black either. That's why Black just played 19...Rd7

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Now, certainly White can play e8Q+ right away, trying to promote the new queen; but this pawn will be taken by the knight (Nxe8). White first decided to eliminate the knight by playing [19...Re8 20.Qxd3; 19...Qxb1 20.exd8Q+ Kg7 21.Rbxb1] 20.Nd5 hoping to eliminate the knight from f6, and then, just promote a whole new queen. At the same time, Black's queen on d3 is still hanging. Therefore, Black is already in a big trouble. He played [20.e8Q+ Nxe8] 20...Rxd5 trying to somehow cope with all of the problems that he's facing. White continued with 21.e8Q+ Nxe8 22.Rxe8+ Kg7 23.cxd5 Qxd5 I will not analyze all the side lines here; there are many. But you can just notice the general idea. The general idea is that White is trying to attack by his every move since the time he noticed that he's ahead in development, that he completed his development while Black didn't. He realized that it's time to rush into the attack. And therefore, with his every move he's trying to create certain problems for Black. Even right now, Black has just attacked the knight on g5; but White doesn't want to simply retreat with the knight, he wants to keep attacking. If White just retreated the knight (Nf3), Black would have time to move his bishop forward, maybe to b7 (Bb7). At the same time, that would also create the checkmating threat and would finalize the development, and everything will become not easy for White. Therefore, White doesn't want that. White doesn't want to give any free time to Black; so, he plays 24.Rb5 protecting the knight and, at the same time, attacking the queen. [24.Nf3 Bb7 25.Rxa8 Bxa8] 24...Qd6 The queen has to go back; and here White, once again, asks himself: How can I attack here? He felt that he can check with 25.Qa1+ f6 26.Ne4 attacking the queen. 26...Qc6 The queen retreated to c6. At this point. 27.Nxf6

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White just took the pawn on f6. Again, White is always looking for forcing moves and he wants to eliminate the pawn's cover of Black's king; so, he can start attacking right away. What can Black do here? If he takes that knight on f6 (Qxf6)... (See the variation). 27...Kf7 [27...Qxf6 ...It really doesn't work because White can play 28.Re7+ and in the next move, grab the queen. Black's queen cannot take the rook because it's pinned; Black's king is behind. In this variation, Black is losing. 27...Qxb5. Here is a beautiful checkmate that White can deliver, starting with 28.Ng8+. It's a check with the white queen. 28...Kf7. The king has to go to f7, the only square. 29.Qf6+. Then, the white queen joined the party. 29...Kxe8 is forced and then 30.Qe7#. And that's a brilliant continuation, a brilliant finish of this game, where White just noticed that Black is underdeveloped. Notice that Black never had the time to finalize his development because White kept attacking by his every move. It's a very powerful strategy. The black player is a strong grandmaster, around 2600+ rated, but you can see that he lost the game without finalizing his development even just because White's attack was so strong and, most importantly, so quick.] 28.Rg5 h6 29.Rh8 hxg5 30.Rh7+ Ke6 31.Qe1+ 1–0

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Lesson 8 – Have More Pieces in the Attack Hermann, Thomas - Schoenthier, Frank [A08] Leverkusen Bayer Open–01 Leverkusen (1), 14.06.1985 How to evaluate positions while attacking? It's one of the very common questions. While you're in the attack, you need to calculate various different positions. Therefore, you need to be able to somehow evaluate them, evaluate the quality of different moves, so that you know whether it's time to start attacking or not, whether a certain attacking idea is good or bad. How can you do this? We're going to find out very soon. 1.e4 e6 2.d3 c5 3.Nd2 Nc6 4.Ngf3 g6 5.g3 Bg7 6.Bg2 Nge7 7.0–0 d5 8.Re1 h6 9.a3 a5 10.Qe2 b6 11.exd5 exd5 12.Rb1 Ra7 13.Nf1 0–0 14.Ne3 Nf5 15.Nxf5 Bxf5 16.Be3 Kh7 17.Nh4 Be6 18.c3 Qd7 19.f4 a4 20.Bf3 d4 21.Bd2 Na5 22.g4 Bf6 23.Nxg6 Kxg6 24.f5+ Bxf5 25.gxf5+ Kh7

Here is the first example, a game between Hermann and Schoenthier. It's White to play. What do you think about this position? Is it favorable for White or for Black, or Attack and Win | https://chess-teacher.com

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maybe it's an equal or unclear position? What do you think? Initially, it may seem like the position is unclear, or maybe approximately equal because the material is equal; but in reality, White is already winning. Still, it would take some effort to prove this reality, to convert it into a win, but White's position is winning. Why is that so? It is because White has the possibility to perform a crushing attack on the kingside. Why is that so? It is because we can see that there is this rook on a7, which is stuck on the queenside and the knight there on a5, which is also stuck on the queenside. After 26.Be4 we can see that even Black's queen is somewhat blocked out of the kingside. It's very hard for Black to bring it there. Therefore, if we just look at the kingside alone, we see that Black's king is exposed and, even more so, it does not really have many defenders because, as we discussed earlier, the queen, the rook and the knight cannot really help the king. While White can easily bring more pieces into his attack, he can bring the queen, the rook to g1 and the other rook to g1, if necessary, in the future. For White it is very easy to bring more pieces into the attack, but Black has a hard time bringing up the defenses. Therefore, we may already conclude that this attack is going to be successful. Let's see what happened next. Black played 26...Nb3 trying to exchange one of White's bishops, but it's a very important piece in White's attack. It looks at Black's h6-pawn; so, White decides to save the bishop. He plays 27.Bf4 Now he has the strong threat of Qh5. Basically, aiming to take (Qxh6) in the next move. 27...Rg8+ 28.Kh1 By the way, you may wonder, how about White's king? We said that Black's king is exposed, but White's king is exposed as well. Well, fair enough; but the problem for Black is that he cannot bring his pieces to the kingside. That's the only problem. He cannot checkmate White's king just with one rook from g8. As for the other pieces, it's hard to bring them closer. 28...Qd8 29.Rg1 Rxg1+ 30.Rxg1 Black traded the rooks. Basically, White still has this very straightforward threat of Qh5, no matter what Black does. For Black, it's actually impossible to stop it. 30...Qf8 31.Qh5 Again, you may notice that it's an interesting situation. It's Black to play but, basically, he cannot stop White's attack. White has a number of attacking options. In the game, he played 31...c4 Attack and Win | https://chess-teacher.com

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He's just somehow desperately trying to deflect White from his attack but, in reality, White has so many attacking opportunities. In the game, he played 32.Rg6 which won the game. Even easier was Be5. (See the variation). [32.Be5 trying to remove this bishop from f6 and make it possible for White to push the pawn forward 32...Bxe5 33.f6+ Kh8 34.Qf5 Now Black is defenseless against Qh7#. Once again, notice that in the final position, still Black has that rook on a7 and the knight on b3, which cannot help Black's king; and that is the reason why White's attack was so powerful. As you can see, if you understand these general strategies, it becomes easier for you to evaluate positions. It becomes easier to know when to attack and when it's too early to do this because you don't have to calculate all the variations. You just know, based on the analysis of the resources, whether your attack is going to be successful or not.] 32...fxg6 33.fxg6+ Kh8 34.Bxh6 Qc5 35.Bd5 1–0

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Fink, A - Alekhine, A [C44] Pasadena, 1932 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.c3 d5 4.Qa4 Nf6 5.Nxe5 Bd6 6.Nxc6 bxc6 7.e5 Bxe5 8.d4 Bd6

The next game is between Fink and Alekhine. It's White to play. In this position, White decided to grab the pawn, he played 9.Qxc6+ What do you think about this move? Is it one of the good options for White or is it a bad one? In fact, it's a really bad one. Let's think about this for a moment. If you just look at the overall position, you may notice that almost all of White's pieces are still in their initial positions. Instead of developing them, White takes the time to grab the pawn. The price for this is too high because the activity of your pieces is actually the main factor in chess. Therefore, spending this time to grab a little pawn is definitely a very big mistake. Sometimes, people don't realize that even if you cannot calculate the variations and somehow prove mathematically with the calculations that Black is Attack and Win | https://chess-teacher.com

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winning here, anyway, moves like Qxc6+, strategically, already puts White on the brink of disaster. Anyway, let's see what happened next. 9...Bd7 10.Qa6 0–0 In this position, it's already an ideal situation for Black where almost all of his pieces are already active, while for White it's only the queen which is in the game. 11.Be2 White tried to somehow develop the bishop. 11...Re8 also putting some pressure along the e-file. 12.Nd2 Rb8 Now he's creating the threat of Bb5, taking advantage of the pin. In this position, White somehow played 13.a4 I'm not totally sure why White didn't want to castle instead. It's probably a mistake. He played a4 to stop Black from playing Bb5. [13.0–0] 13...Qe7 Once again, notice that right now it's just an absolutely perfect situation with all of his pieces being active, very active in the game. As for White, he tried to develop two of his minor pieces. They're still extremely passive and, of course, the centralized king is a major problem for White. He played 14.Nf1 because, otherwise, there is no way to develop this dark-squared bishop; but now Black can win the game right away. Can you find the winning move for Black here? It's 14...Bb5 It closes, interrupts this connection between White's bishop and the queen. 15.axb5 Qxe2# delivering checkmate. It's just a quick example that shows you that sometimes, even without calculating variations too much, you can already see that a certain move is definitely wrong, and you can do this simply by evaluating the quantity of pieces that you have in the game, the quantity of pieces that are active. Certainly, the main conclusion is that you should always care about the activity of your pieces in the first Attack and Win | https://chess-teacher.com

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place. This factor is more important than weak squares, the center, the safety of your king, or anything else. The activity of your pieces is the most dominant factor in chess overall. 0–1 Bezold, Michael (2500) - Waitzkin, Joshua (2440) [A12] Mermaid Beach Club Bermuda (3), 1997 1.b3 d5 2.Bb2 c6 3.e3 Nf6 4.c4 Bf5 5.Nf3 e6 6.Be2 Nbd7 7.Nh4 Bg6 8.Nc3 Bd6 9.g3 e5 10.cxd5 Nxd5 11.0–0 N7f6 12.Nxd5 Nxd5 13.d3 Qe7 14.Bf3 0–0–0 15.a3 Bc7 16.Bg2 Nf6 17.Nxg6 hxg6 18.Qe2 Rh5 19.b4 Qd7 20.Rfd1 Rdh8 21.h3

The last example in this lesson is the game between Bezold and Waitzkin. It's Black to play. In this position, there is an opportunity for Black to sacrifice an Exchange here on h3, even though the consequences are very unclear. Let's take a look at what may happen if Black tries to start an attack by the sacrifice. 21...Rxh3 22.Bxh3 Qxh3

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Right now, he's threatening Qh1+, but it's certainly not that easy because White can play 23.Qf3 to cover that square. What can Black do now? If Black just plays Qh2+, White's king simply retreats to f1 and there is no continuation for Black's attack. Otherwise, it's not very clear what Black can do here. It may seem like the sacrifice just does not work for Black because, again, there is no forcing continuation for Black's attack. But there is one general idea that you may use. You may calculate the quantity of pieces on the kingside, on the side of your attack. If you focus your attention on the kingside alone and simply calculate the quantity of pieces there, you can see that Black has three pieces: the queen, the rook and the knight versus White's single queen, which means that on the side of your attack, you have a decisive advantage in the forces. That is a clear sign that your attack should probably be successful. This is a very simple method; you're free to use it in all of your games, in all your calculations. Before starting your attack on the kingside or the queenside, you must just compare the quantity of pieces of yours and your opponent's on this area of the board. Black just continued by playing 23...Ng4 bringing the knight closer to the area of the attack. [23...Qh2+ 24.Kf1] 24.Qg2 trying to kick away Black's queen. 24...Qh5 Black retreated. 25.Rac1 It may seem like there is nothing that Black can do here, but he played 25...Nh2 Again, in order to attack, we just need to move forward and bring our pieces closer to the opponent's king. The idea of Black here is that if White just tries doing something like b5 or any other move, Black has a pretty interesting checkmating idea. He's going to play Qe2 to cover that f1–square, so that White's king cannot escape there; and then, in the next move, play Nf3+. As it's almost a checkmate, White would have to give up his queen. It's a quite interesting checkmating position, and again, it only happens because Black has so much more pieces on the kingside. Notice on this and the previous moves, that instead of b5, White decided to play 26.g4 giving the pawn. [26.b5 Qe2] Attack and Win | https://chess-teacher.com

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26...Nxg4 Black just captured it. 27.b5 Black simply came back to his initial idea. He played 27...Nh2 28.bxc6 It may seem like White is succeeding on the queenside, but Black just rewinds his plan persistently. He played 28...Qe2 Even though White grabbed a pawn on the queenside, there is actually nothing he can do against Black's very simple threat Nf3#. 29.cxb7+ Kb8 30.Bxe5 In the game, White took that bishop on e5 to somehow deflect Black, but it's also quite instructive how Black always ignores White's moves; he does not react to them. He just continues realizing his plan. He played 30...Nf3+ 31.Qxf3 White had to give up the queen. 31...Qxf3 32.Bxc7+ It seems like White has a little bit of a success on the queenside, but it's certainly a very little one because 32...Kxb7 Black just grabbed a pawn and has the queen; so, Black is still ahead in material and Black's king is really in safety. He can always go back to a8, if necessary; so, there is nothing that White can do really. White played 33.Bh2 because otherwise, Qh1 was a threat. Black continued by playing 33...Qh3 34.Rc7+ In this position, White gave the final check. 34...Ka8

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Black retreated to a8 and White resigned. Black is going to play Qxh2 in the next move and 35.Bg3 If the bishop goes away somewhere, Black just goes 35...Qh1# It was a pretty interesting game and it was interesting in a couple of senses. First of all, it's interesting to see how Black was persistent in realizing his plan. He simply always ignored White's attacking ideas. He was trying to persist in his own plan and he succeeded. The second thing is the idea of evaluating the quantity of pieces of yours and of your opponent's on the area of your attack. If you notice that you have advantage, it probably means that your attack is going to be successful. This can save you a lot of time and effort because you don't have to calculate a lot of very complex variations. You just need to have this general strategic understanding, and this will help you navigate through these variations very easily because you know which kind of positions should be in your favor. I hope that it helped to know this idea of how you can evaluate before the attack. It's also one of the ways for you to simplify your process for finding the right moves. That being said, I hope you enjoyed the lesson, and I look forward to see you in the final lesson of this video course, in the next one. 0–1

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Lesson 9 – Practice Anand, Viswanathan (2735) - Karpov, Anatoly (2775) [D21] Las Palmas Las Palmas (7), 17.12.1996 Hi and congratulations for reaching the last video lesson of this course! Right now, it is time to summarize everything that you have learned and to see how you can apply all this information in your practical games. This general scheme shows how you can think during your chess games in order to be able to find proper attacking moves. It all starts from fighting for the activity, the very first fundamental thing. You cannot start an attack when your pieces are not active. That's why, first and foremost, in any chess game that you play, your first task is to place your pieces on the most active squares. In other words, you need to find those squares where your pieces will attack the greatest quantity of squares on the chessboard. Once this task is done and you see that your pieces are active, it is time to think about starting the real attack, which brings us to the next item, to moving to the opponent's territory. Here I say "his territory" just for simplicity, of course, it could be "her territory" if you are playing against a woman. Anyway, once your activity is high enough, it is time to take a move forward to the opponent's half of the board, so that you can actually start attacking the opponent's forces. There are three major ways of how this can be done. It starts from attacking moves. Attacking moves are simply the moves that attack something, or capture something or deliver a check. Finding attacking moves is really easy if you keep in mind this general question. If you ask yourself, how can I move something forward onto the opponent's half of the board and attack something? When you ask yourself this question, when you think this way, finding attacking moves becomes super easy and natural to you. Another idea that may help you invade the opponent's territory is to exploit the opponent's weaknesses, which are the squares that are not protected by the opponent's pawns. Weak squares are those holes that you can use in order to place your pieces there without any real opposition or without sacrificing anything. The opponent's weak squares often become so strong squares for your pieces because you can take your piece there, and it can stand there for a long time and harass your opponent. The final method that may help you cross the half of the board and invade the opponent's camp is to use central thrust. This strategy implies that you always need to fight for the center. It's always a great strategy, no matter what your plan is, to try to centralize your pieces, put your pawns in the center and try to have certain advantage over your opponent on the central squares. Once you have this kind of advantage, you can always choose the right moment to move your central pawn forward, and to launch your attack this way. This is the general scheme that shows you how you can think in order to find strong attacking moves. Now let's see how you can apply this general information for playing practical games. We'll analyze the game between Anand and Karpov, obviously two of the very top level players in the chess world, and we'll see how it works in the real life. Attack and Win | https://chess-teacher.com

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1.Nf3 d5 2.d4 e6 Here is the classical Queen's Gambit. I don't comment on the first moves too much because these are just theoretical moves. Both players are simply developing their pieces. 3.c4 dxc4 4.e4 b5 5.a4 c6 6.axb5 cxb5 7.b3 Bb7 8.bxc4 Bxe4 9.cxb5 Nf6 10.Be2 Be7 11.0–0 0–0

Let's start from here. It's still somewhat an opening position. It's White to play. How would you play here as White? Obviously, first your goal is to bring your pieces into play, to make them active. In this position, White can combine his natural development. 12.Nc3 with attack. The bishop is a bit more valuable than a knight, in general; and therefore, you may consider this move to be an attacking move.

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12...Bb7 Therefore, Karpov retreated with his bishop. Here is another interesting position to think about. In this case, it would be natural for White to finalize his development and develop his dark-squared bishop somewhere, maybe to f4, for example; and it's definitely a good move. But the thing that Anand played is even stronger. He asked himself this question, how can I start putting my pieces on the opponent's half of the board and possibly create some problems? That's how he found the move 13.Ne5 This move puts the knight on a strong square. Remember, not so long ago, we talked about this method to invade the opponent's half of the board: Find squares that are not protected by opponent's pawns. That's how Anand noticed that he can place his knight here, and possibly it can jump to c6 in the future. This way, this knight prevents Black from making the most natural developing move, Nbd7 (see the variation), to finalize Black's development because he can jump with his knight there (Nc6); and it's already very unpleasant for Black. Currently, his queen and bishop are attacked. If Black trades off the knight, it helps Black have this strong advanced pawn, which will always limit Black's pieces. They'll have to take care of this pawn, to blockade it; and therefore, Black did not go for this variation. Instead, he decided that he needed to prevent this threat somehow and he played [13.Bf4] 13...a6 We may already notice that this is the beginning of a situation when White seizes the initiative. Now White starts to play the leading role in the game, and Black starts to respond, to react to White's threats. Black just played. Would you capture that pawn or would you do anything else? Capturing is a move that you need to calculate, sometimes, you simply grab your opponent's material for nothing. In general, to take is a mistake. It's, in general, to increase the pressure, not to relieve the tension. If you relieve the tension, you make things easier for your opponent. That is why Anand asked himself once again the same question, how can I move one of my pieces forward in order to put more pressure on my opponent in order to attack something? [13...Nbd7 14.Nc6 Bxc6 15.bxc6] 14.Bf3 That's how he came to the Bf3 move. He puts the pressure along this f3-a8 diagonal. Therefore, indirectly, he also increases his pressure on the queenside overall, the pressure that he has by his rook and the pawn from b5. All in all, he starts pressurizing Black's queenside. Karpov played [14.bxa6] 14...Nd5 trying to close this diagonal. This move also attacks White's knight on c3; and therefore, White has to do something about it. Just protecting the knight is a decent alternative, even though it would be a little bit passive. That's why White doesn't want to spend his time just protecting his knight, playing a defensive move.

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15.Nxd5 That's why he simply capture Black's knight on d5. 15...exd5 Here is another similar moment to the one we already discussed. Currently, the pawn on b5 is under attack; Black is going to capture it. Of course, White can just trade off the pawn, that's what a lot of players do automatically in this kind of situations, but it's actually not the best thing to do for the reasons that we have already discussed. It would simplify the life for Black to relieve the pressure and will make it easier for Black to find his next moves. Instead, White decided to keep up the pressure and play 16.Rb1 That's the way for him to put pressure now across the b-file and indirectly, start attacking Black's bishop there. Notice that in case Black takes the pawn there (bxa6), White recaptures by the rook (Rxb6); and now this rook is extremely active: it attacks the bishop and even this pawn on d5 somehow indirectly. For example, Black cannot play Ba6 because the rook will indeed take this pawn on d5, attacking Black's queen. In the game, Karpov decided to play another move. He played [16.bxa6] 16...Qb6 Once again, Black is threatening now to simply grab that pawn on b5. What should White do here? Anand decided to keep up the same strategy, to keep up the pressure, to increase the pressure. He played [16...axb5 17.Rxb5 Ba6 18.Rxd5] 17.Be2 to protect this pawn once again. I think that perhaps it might have been even better to use the queen for the same purpose because the bishop already stands actively on f3; so, perhaps it might have been better for White to play something like Qd3, not only protecting the pawn on b5, but also involving one more piece into the game. But, anyway, what White did in the actual game, Be2, makes some sense as well. 17...axb5 18.Rxb5 Qc7 How would you play here? What do you think? Of course, in most of these positions, there are several good moves. Therefore, it's not that there's just one possible solution like in tactical drills. Anyway, it's important that you just notice the general idea. The general idea is that once you notice that you have advantage in activity, it's time for you to start thinking about attacking moves. That is why, ideally speaking, you don't just want to improve the position of your pieces but, simultaneously, you want to keep attacking. That is why White played 19.Bf4 developing the bishop and, at the same time, preparing a discovered attack on Black's queen; for example, with a move like Ng6, with a discovered attack on the queen, and Attack and Win | https://chess-teacher.com

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also the knight is going to attack the rook on f8. That's why Black has to defend himself and how? He played 19...Bd6 to close this diagonal. Here White found another very interesting move. He played 20.Bd3 He decided to prepare some attack on the kingside. Do you know the reason for that? It is because Anand noticed that a lot of Black's pieces are on the queenside. If you remember, a couple of lessons ago, we discussed that it's a very useful strategy to notice how many pieces your opponent has on the kingside and on the queenside. In this case, it's absolutely clear that the vast majority of Black's pieces, almost all of them, except this one rook on f8, are on the queenside, which gives White the idea that his attack on the kingside must be successful. With that in mind, Anand played Bd3, concentrating more pieces of White's against the opponent's king. Black played 20...Ba6 He probably thought that White was going to capture the pawn on d5 (Rxd5), which was a perfectly good move; but White decided to try out something else. He prepared a shocker by playing 21.Bxh7+! He sacrificed the bishop in order to expose the opponent's king. One of the main principles of an attack is that you need to open up the position first. And you can do this either by pushing your pawns forward and trading them off or by doing a sacrifice, just like White did in this case. The idea is to expose the opponent's king, removing the pawn shield, so that you can attack it directly afterwards. [21.Rxd5!?] 21...Kxh7 22.Qh5+ Kg8 23.Rb3 The white rook went back to b3, preparing the Rh3 move, which will then prepare the checkmate on h8. These kinds of sacrifices are hard to calculate till the end because there are a lot of different moves that Black can play here. I don't think that White really calculated all the possible consequences till the end. But when you understand the general rules of the attack, they just may give you a hint when your sacrifice may be sound and when it should not work. In this case, the first thing that we already discussed is that the majority of Black's pieces are stuck on the queenside. The second thing which may give White a hint that it is time to attack is that you should attack quickly when you have advantage in activity. Advantage in activity is a temporary thing. Currently, White is ahead in development, but if Black plays Nd7, he also finalizes his development. After that, it's going to be harder for White to attack. Therefore, you need to take advantage of a favorable opportunity, and try to rush into the attack. That's another reason why White decided to sacrifice his bishop to start his attack. Anyway, let's see what happened next.

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23...Bxe5 Karpov decided to exchange the knight, one of White's attacking pieces. White played 24.Rh3 threatening checkmate on h8. Therefore, Black has to stop it somehow. He played 24...f6 preparing an escape square for his king. 25.dxe5 White recaptured back the bishop. Interestingly, he's now preparing this pawn to move forward to e6 to take away that final f7-square from the king and, after that, deliver checkmate. To prevent it, Black played 25...Qe7 26.Qh7+ Kf7 27.Rg3 Now once the black king is exposed, it's pretty easy for White to play attacking moves; they're natural. Right now, he's going to take on g7. 27...Ke8 Therefore, Black has to retreat. 28.Rxg7 White took that pawn. Black played 28...Qe6 29.exf6 Another interesting moment is that, even though the white rook is under attack, as you can see, White certainly only thinks about attack. He doesn't want to defend unless he's absolutely forced to. That's the right strategy, I would say, in all kind of positions. Attacking moves are the strongest, in general, in chess. Therefore, even when the opponent attacks you, it always makes sense to spend a few seconds asking yourself, can you counter attack? And only if the answer is no, only then, you start thinking about your defensive measures. White took the pawn on f6, preparing Re7. It's a very strong threat; therefore, Black has to stop it somehow. He played 29...Nc6 At this point, White finally removed his rook from the attack and he played 30.Ra1 which not only brings White's least active piece into the game, but it also pins the bishop; and therefore, it creates some additional problems for Black. Black played Attack and Win | https://chess-teacher.com

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30...Kd8 31.h4 Maybe it's not the strongest way to continue White's attack; but again, White just wants to be on the safe side and make sure that he never gets this back rank mate after something like Qe1, and he just removes his rook from the first rank somehow. That's why he played h4. Black played 31...Bb7 attacking White's rook on a1. In general, when you attack, you should avoid the exchange of pieces unless it gives you a certain advantage. 32.Rc1 Ba6 33.Ra1 Bb7 34.Rd1 That's why, instead of trading off the rooks, White played Rd1, placing this rook on the opposite position to Black's king, therefore, creating some additional attacking opportunities. Currently, by the way, Black's bishop on b7 is hanging. White is attacking it from any possible angle. That's why Black played 34...Ba6 to remove this bishop from the attack. Here comes 35.Qb1 A little bit strange-looking move, but there is a very straightforward idea. White plans to attack Black's king from the b6-square and, basically, Black is defenseless. He played 35...Rxf6 White could have played Qb6 certainly. He just played 36.Bg5 to grab the rook as well. Now, because there are so many threats –Qb6 is still coming–, Black just resigned. It was a great game by Anand, which also showed all the main rules of attack. Now you know all the main principles of attack and you know how you should think in order to find attacking moves in your games. If you train this skill for a little bit, you will certainly become a very strong attacking player, and this is my wish to you. I'm absolutely sure you can do this and, in order to help you do it, there is also the practical part, where you can go through some tasks and practice your newly-acquired skill. If you want to bring your skill to the next level, I would certainly recommend that you go there and do these practical tasks because any skill needs to be trained before you can really start using it. But anyway, even after just watching these videos, you Attack and Win | https://chess-teacher.com

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certainly develop your attacking skill to a whole new level. It has been my great pleasure serving you through these video lessons and I hope that you enjoyed them. I look forward to see you or rather to interact with you for the practical part and, of course, in case you have any questions, you're always welcome to go to our website – chess-teacher.com– or to our YouTube channel, and place your comments there. Whenever I have the time, I will try to help you there. If you have any questions, do this, otherwise just go ahead to the practical part and crush it. Then, go crush your opponents! Enjoy your day. All the best and I'll see you in the practical part. 1–0

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Practical Part INSTRUCTIONS The video lessons of the course, “Attack and Win”, give you a lot of useful knowledge. It’s highly recommended that you watch these video lessons SEVERAL TIMES. This will help you digest and automate the skills that separate the amateurs from the pros. Now it is necessary to put the knowledge received into practice. This practical addition to the course will help you do so. I am giving you the training program which accurately explains exactly what you should do. Remember, you MUST train and automate these skills (especially your thinking process) before you can use them in real games. What will this practical part give you?  You will understand the ideas of the course better.  You will remember the ideas of the course better.  And the main thing: you will start putting the course’s ideas into practice. Thus, you will acquire these practical skills fully. The practical course contains eight tasks. Each of them is in a different folder. A separate instruction accompanies each task. You should carry out all of these tasks consistently (from 1st to 8th), following the corresponding instructions. NOTES: In each task, you will see that it is White’s or Black’s turn. Remember that you should focus on the quality of your training, not on the quantity of work performed. Do not use computer engines while performing these tasks. In order to train your skills, you should think for yourself. If something is not clear to you –watch the video lessons once again. Even if any task seems simple to you –I strongly recommend that you perform it seriously. The chess games are in *.pgn format. Any chess program can open this. You should think about every single position for not less than 3 minutes and not more than 15 minutes. In most tasks, you will need to find the next move in a given position. Then you will study the answer. While looking at the answer, I recommend you to go over the whole game (not only the first move). These games are very instructive and you can find a lot of useful ideas in them.

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Now you should start performing the tasks: 1. Read the instruction (from the relevant file) for a certain task. 2. Go to the folder with chess games/puzzles. 3. Go to the folder with chess games/tasks. While performing these tasks, you will encounter a lot of positions where you need to find the following move. Please take note of the main purpose of such training: you should THINK about it, APPLY the general ideas (from the video lessons) and UNDERSTAND more deeply how these ideas work practically. These ideas can help you find the answers to the puzzle positions. While you often need to find the best move in a certain position, your main goal is NOT simply to detect the right answer. Your objective is to train your correct system of thinking. Please don’t be upset if you can’t find the solution to all tasks: after all, “no pain, no gain!” The HARDER and SMARTER your training, the GREATER your progress! Good luck! GM Igor Smirnov

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The Practical Part: Task 1 The first part of the practical course is about activity. Activity is a key element of a chess game. In this task, you can train your skills on how to get an active position. Open the file “Task-1” and try to find the best move in the position. Then, open the file “Answer-1” and check the solution and the game.

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The Practical Part: Task 2 The next task of the practical part is about attacking moves. Attacking moves are very important because they can win time and help you achieve an active position. Try to make attacking moves all the time in order to force your opponent to defend. Open the file “Task-2” and try to find the best move in the position. Then, open the file “Answer-2” and check the solution and the game.

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The Practical Part: Task 3 The next task of the practical part is about open up: uncastled king. Often your opponents will find other good moves rather than castling, and this means that his king will stay in the center for a longer time. This means that you will have the opportunity to attack him. First, you need to open the central lines, and then to perform the attack. Test your skills in the examples. Open the file “Task-3” and try to find the best move in the position. Then, open the file “Answer-3” and check the solution and the game.

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The Practical Part: Task 4 The next task of the practical part is about open up: castled king. The castle is the most frequent special move that we use in chess. Mainly, we make it in order to protect the king; however, this doesn’t mean that the king is untouchable… In this training session, you’ll find illustrative games on how to attack the enemy king which castles. Open the file “Task-4” and try to find the best move in the position. Then, open the file “Answer-4” and check the solution and the game.

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The Practical Part: Task 5 The next task of the practical part is about the outpost. The outpost is a strategic element that you should learn and apply during your games. Find a strong square, protected by a pawn, and try to conquer it with your pieces. Open the file “Task-5” and try to find the best move in the position. Then, open the file “Answer-5” and check the solution and the game.

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The Practical Part: Task 6 The next task of the practical part is about the center. Control the center, and you’ll control the game. It’s very important to control the center with your pawns and pieces. In this fragment, you’ll find plenty of illustrative positions. Open the file “Task-6” and try to find the best move in the position. Then, open the file “Answer-6” and check the solution and the game.

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The Practical Part: Task 7 The next task of the practical part is about time. Chess is time, as Fischer used to say. You have your plan and your opponent has his own. For that reason, you should be fast and try to perform your plans as soon as possible. Open the file “Task-7” and try to find the best move in the position. Then, open the file “Answer-7” and check the solution and the game.

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The Practical Part: Task 8 The next task of the practical part is about a stronger army. If you like to be successful, you need to create a stronger army. Try to put more pieces in one area of the board in order to prevail. Open the file “Task-8” and try to find the best move in the position. Then, open the file “Answer-8” and check the solution and the game.

Thank you very much for studying this course. We’ll be in touch, and we’ll talk again in the next course. With every good wish, GM Igor Smirnov

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