The Complete Guide to Attacking Chess

This guide to attacking chess highlights key attacking patterns and ingredients that can lead to mating combinations. It does not focus on mating patterns and combinations, but there is exercise training all the way through the example games, so you will also reinforce your combination and tactical skills.

The major “added value” and focus of the course is the opening and middlegame patterns and attacking “ingredients” of play that create the possibilities for mating patterns and combinations that crown earlier efforts.

The magic behind for example Alekhine’s combinations for how he created the possibilities is systematically explored to help determine “key attacking ingredients”.  For attacking players such as Rudolf Spielmann, Alekhine’s combinations were understood but just not how to get those positions.

“I can comprehend Alekhine’s combinations well enough, but where he gets his attacking chances from and how he infuses such life into the very opening – that is beyond me.” – Rudolf Spielmann

If you require a mating patterns guide, please check Kingscrushers “Art of Checkmate” which is a complementary course to this one. If you require a primer on tactical patterns, please check Kingscrusher’s “Complete guide to chess tactics”. These are complementary courses to this one. This course focuses on “how to get the attacking positions” in the first place, determining the key attacking patterns and ingredients from the Opening and into the middlegame.

The course is structured into layers taking into account both the acknowledged masters of attack and also the brilliancy games which showed other masters playing exceptionally well.

The first key “example layer” of the course made was instructive games of Alexander Alekhine who really loved tactics and combinational play and sought out key ingredients for these combinations in the opening and middlegame phase. Some of the course sections highlight these key ingredient “patterns” that are leveraged such as the “bishop without a counterpart”. Other sections of the course have been inspired by Neural Network patterns because there is solid evidence that with less calculation, these patterns can even defeat very strong and accurate traditional “AB engines”. So Neural network patterns such as “Thorn pawns” and “Bishop without a counterpart” create some of the sections.

The second key “example layer” of the course is made out of the immortal notable games of chess which have a strong attacking element to them. The ingredients of such games are dissected and these examples strengthen the section themes.

Great attacking players featured in this course include Paul Morphy, Adolf Anderssen, Wilhelm Steinitz, Emanuel Lasker, Alexander Alekhine, Boris Spassky, Bobby Fischer, Mikhail Tal, Garry Kasparov, and many more besides. In other words many of Kingscrusher’s favorite chess players of all time 🙂

This course is a work in progress because Kingscrusher is passionate about attacking chess and loves to improve his own clarifications when creating courses. The extra layers of the course give further examples to reinforce the key sections from the most notable attacking players in Chess history.  These extra layers will be added with the ongoing evolution of this course.

By the end of the course, the student should be much more aware of key attacking ingredients and “patterns” of attacking chess. These form an important part of the jigsaw needed for effective attacking chess from the opening into the middlegame resulting frequently in beautiful combinational conclusions.

Who this course is for:

• Beginner to Intermediate level players