Attacking the King Made Easy

The book draws from a collection of many positions that the author has used in years of chess coaching.

Attacking the King is highly important. It may win the game by checkmate or lead to a decisive gain of material.

Middlegame attacks can be divided into 3 main types:

• Attack on the uncastled king.
• Attack on the same side castled king.
• Attack on the opposite side castled king.

The book covers back rank attacks, pawn storms, piece sacrifices and much more.

White starts by preparing to open the h-file.

1.h5 Nxh5

White sacrifices the exchange to open the g-file.

1.Rxh5! gxh5 2.Qg5

Qxg7# cannot be prevented.

Diagrams

There are over 1200 large clear color chess diagrams. In all positions White moves first and White is playing up the board.

There are different ways you can read this book.

• You can treat the positions as puzzles. You can choose the move you would play and move to the next diagram to check whether you are correct or not.
• You can simply enjoy playing through through the positions, becoming familiar with a wide range of mating patterns as you do so. You can quickly flip forwards (or backwards) through the sequence of moves in each position.
• You can combine both approaches. For example, during a first reading you could play through the positions. On a second reading you could see how many you can solve from the starting position.

The second most powerful move after check is a mate threat. One section consists of positions in which attacking moves consist of checks and/or mate threats.