Thunderclouds from Blue Sky

Now this is an interesting game. After seeing the young Alekhine play this game, Schlechter said here is a future world champion.

http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1000606

lesson learned ?! Game 4536 Takchess-Bokla Attack on KSCASTLE Dual Bishops fpawngone 3.29.08

I play a lot of 20+6 games on the Internet. As white, the games often ends up with me attacking a Kingside Castled position. I throw a lot of material at the position. The skilled player plays a reasonable defense and waits until my attack peters out and counterattacks taking advantage of my reduced material and my pieces now out of position.

I am hoping to develop into a player who attacks in situations where the position calls for it. Here are some examples of positions from a game I recently played. This game I lost . Hopefully some lessons will stay with me.


1) White to Move: What is the best move?

A) c4 black Qmoves followed by d5.

2) White to Move: Black Rooks threatens the Queen. Where is the Best Place for the Queen?

A Qf2 setting up the battery. all other moves are marginal. Notice that Blacks pieces will take time to defend Kingside and white is ready for a lightning attack.


3)White to Move: What is the Move here and Why?


A) Nf6 !! and white is up 3 pawns . Nf6 can't be kicked by the pawn due to Qh6. This queen has it sights on Qh7 supported by bishop and Qf7 supported by rook. (A missed tactic).

Prof Fritz says (19. Ng5 {might be the shorter path}Be8 (19... hxg5 $143 20. Qh5 Be8 21. Qh7+ Kf8 22. d5 $18) (19... hxg5 20. Qh5 {2}) 20. Bh7+ Kh8 21. Rxf7 Qxg5 22. Bxg5 Bxf7 $18) 19... Ba5 $4 {Black falls apart} (19... Be7 $142 $18)

Note to self play it in Fritz.

4) My Bxh6 was a mistake what does black play here to capitalize on it?



answer .....BXf3 (removal of the guard) then gxf3 if Rxf3 then Bxa1! Blacks bishop pair is strong as well !

1 2 3 testing

http://tipsforbloggers.blogspot.com/2007/10/tips-on-pictures-in-blogger.html>





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a missed tactic white to move

a missed tactic white to move . Check out why the knight can't threaten in the variation.



http://blog.chess.com/Takchess/a-missed-tactic



I am finishing up on the Focal Point on g7 in AOA and am moving on to Focal Point on h7 games.

I found this to be an interesting game below as a study on the attack on a castled position. Not in AOA but has some of the same ideas.

http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1233225&kpage=1#reply3

Interesting enough I'm finding some of the focal point games which are heavy attacks on a castled position lead not to mate but to material and positional superiority that lead to a win.

On The Attack - Jan Timman Review

I convinced my local library to buy On the Attack by Jan Timman. It contains representative games of the Modern Masters of Attack (during the last 25 years). He made it a point to select only games where the attack is sound ( I like it anyway). The games are annotated with a few concrete variations but with alot of discription about the position, tournament, strategy and some of his personal opinions and asides . Unlike Kasparov's My Greatest Pred's, this does not read like a Fritz chart.

This book is written for players at a higher level than I but I still feel with work I can get something out of it. I look to spend some time on it when I am done my Art of Attack.

It contains 30+ complete games which run 3-5 pages each with 2-3 games of each highlighted Modern Attacking GM as well as 30+ fragments of attacks.

http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chesscollection?cid=1012326

Of particular interest to me is the Keres Attack against the Sicilian -first game Karpov-Sax. The potential of the pawn storm keeps the King in the center, it's timing and coordination of the moves, a passive knight sacrifice and a combination that springs from the position is a beautiful thing.

I feel at some point when I start understanding these games and their quirky positional play and exchange sacrifices , I will understand chess a lot better.

Honest BDK it's a good book ! You can trust me 8)

WTM- Do you see the mating net?

I missed it. It would of been a sweet win. will post the game and solution later.

Spring Fever

I am looking forward to warm sunny days. Snow is still on the ground here.

During lunch breaks in a month, I will be able to go to the park with my analysis board, lunch and The Art of Attack. A few years ago I spent many a lunch studying chess master vs chess amatuer which was quite enjoyable.

Studying Focal-Point on g7

The games are found here:

c5 Focal Points G7 pg 83V Fernandez Coria vs Capablanca, 1914 (C49) Four Knights, 19 moves, 0-1
C5 Focal Points G7 pg 83O Field vs O Tenner, 1923 (C58) Two Knights, 18 moves, 0-1
c5 Focal-points G7 pg 83Boleslavsky vs Ufimtsev, 1944 (C10) French, 26 moves, 0-1
c5 Focal Points G7 pg84K Vygodchikov vs Alekhine, 1910 (C78) Ruy Lopez, 32 moves, 0-1
C5 Focal Points G7 pg85Alekhine vs Lasker, 1934 (D67) Queen's Gambit Declined, Orthodox Defense, Bd3 line, 26 moves, 1-0

Updated notes;

I have been playing portions of these games against Fritz from Pgn files found here

http://wwwu.uni-klu.ac.at/gossimit/c/book.htm

Game Study on the attack of the Castled King

Here is a game,in keeping with my current studies.where I had a win that evaporated to a loss. My game agains LJQ. I'll take a further look to figure exactly what went wrong I was up by 6 at one point according to Fritz. I liked how this attack built except for the ending.

http://blog.chess.com/view/game-for-further-study

In this position, WTM, R7g4 wins.

Note to self play this against fritz.


(4570) Takchess (1394) - LJQ (1666) [A01]
Rated game, 20m + 0s Main Playing Hall, 09.03.2008
[Fritz 10 (30s)]
A01: Nimzowitsch-Larsen Opening 1.e4 d6 2.b3 Nf6 3.Nc3 e5 4.Bb2 c6 5.d4 Nbd7 6.Nf3 Be7 7.Bd3 Qc7 8.Qe2 0–0 9.0–0–0 a6 10.h4 h6 11.Rhg1 Kh8 12.g4 exd4 13.Nxd4 Ne5 14.Nf5 Bxf5 15.exf5 Nxd3+ 16.Rxd3 d5 17.g5 Ng8 18.gxh6 Nxh6 19.Nxd5 cxd5 20.Bxg7+ Kh7 21.Qh5 Qf4+ 22.Kb1 Rg8 23.Rdg3 Bxh4 24.Rg6 Rxg7 25.Rxg7+ Kh8 26.Rxf7 Rg8 27.Rh7+ Kxh7 0–1

Chapter 5 - Focal-Points

This chapter deals with the troubles a defenders has in protecting a castled position especially one whose pawns in front of the king are poorly placed.

V. has very specific language which I find confusing:

The final resting point of the mated king is the mating square.

The square from which the attackers threatens or delivers mate from is the mating focal-point .

The square and attacker harries the King from or uses it to break into the pawn structure is the strategic or auxilary focal-point.

If there are many squares both auxilary and mating focal points of the same color there is a network of weak squares .

Generally speaking every focal-point is a weak square for the defensive side and a potential strong square for the attacker .

This chapter discusses attacks against various focal-points: The focal-point g7,the focal-point h7,the auxilary focal-point f7, complex focal-points.

This,my friends, is the start of the deep stuff.............

The Subtle differences between the focal-point on g7 versus the focal-point on h7

The h7 fp is more frequent due to the d3 being a natural square to post whites bishop and the ease of getting the knight to g5 compared to f5 or h5.

However attacks on g7 are more deadly as the queen can mate on g7 easier due to the kings possible escape square on f8 (with h7).

Also a weakness on h7 brings with it a weakness on only one other square g6 while a weakness on g7 brings with it a weakness on f6 and h6.

Playing g6 provides a greater weakening than h6. However the pawn on h7 is harder to defend since g7 can be defended by a bishop on either f6 or f8.

Historical perspective

A Historical perspective on the Attack on the Castled King Chpter 3


V. singles out a few players who advanced the attack on the Castled King after Morphy:
Chigorin, Pillsbury and Dr. Tarrash and to the highest degree Alekhine .

Vukovic thought Chigorin illustrated the power of piece sacrifice in such positions. Tarrasch believed that the power of rapid development and control of the center were necessary to attack the castled king . Pillsbury created a kind of synthesis of Attacking play with the endgame and position play of Steinitz and Lasker.

Alekhine attacking play with his maximizing the attacking threat with the appropriate level of commitment is one of the major theme of the book.

I will skip over Mating Patterns chapter on my blog and go directly into Focal-Points. There is a lot to this chapter.

C3 continued::Attack on the Castled King

The basic elements on the attack on the castled King (My notes from the Art of Attack in Chess)



Attack on the Castled King is the most important to study since they occur so frequently. The structure of the Castled King is positional in nature: a group of pieces having one or more fairly permanent features. One can further say it is passivity d stems from a certain immobility of the pieces. ( a finachettoed bishop may be an exception to this )



This passive nature derives from the lack of mobility of the king and is indirectly transferred to the pieces and pawns around it. Pawn weaken their position if they move and this weakness entails from reduced options from its advance. A pawn moved to h3 loses it's control over g3. Even pieces associated with a castle position lose some of their mobility functionality : A Knight on f6 needing to protect h7. or spatially due to difficulties involved in their centralization.



The structure and degree of weakness of the opponents castled position influences how the pieces attack it. Attacks range from lightning assaults to purely positional maneuvers, uncompromising charges to cautious preparations in which the attacker just flirts with the attack in order to restrict the opponents options.

Now here is an interesting point that had not occurred to me:

The positive feature of a castled position is that it is always a decentralized one. That as a rule any attack on it requires a greater or lesser decentralization of the attacker pieces. This is a basic contradiction for the main positional rule for normal play is one should be centralized (control the center), The risk of attacking the castled the king derives from if the attack stalls or fails then the attackers pieces are out of position which often leads to good counterplay for the defender.

Chptr 3 cont- on Castling and attacking the Castled Position in General

Chapter 3 notes continued--

The Correct Moment to Castle

Many Simuls Massacres feature the opponents not castling but the beginners advice to castle early has many exceptions.

Here are some reasons to forgo or delay castling.

1) Castling is postponed or not done at all because some other action is more useful such as : capture of a piece, spoiling of opponents position, or launching an attack.

2) Castling is postponed for the time being because it is dangerous

3) Castling is postponed even though one can castle on the kingside but would prefer the queenside. Examples are if you want to castle queenside so you can attack a kingside position or at times you wait until the opponent castles so you can castle on the same side for stability.

4) Castling may be postpone or forgone when the center is permanently blocked. Often at this point the king is safer in the center.

5) Castling is not necessary because the endgame is not far off in which case you want the king in the center. Often when Queens are swapped.

It is still a good thing when one is justified in not being castled to have a quick exit by castling if necessary (just in case)

Knight Sac on F5 against KS Fianchetto: Thanks Trans!

Vukovic in chapter 9 of the Art of Attack spoke about the thematic Knight f5 sacrifice which is common in attacks on the Kingside fianchetto positions. The blogger Dave Transformation http://dk-transformation.blogspot.com/ kindly sent me a series of games where the knight is posted on f5 against the fianchetto many which are sacrifices I have posted a collection of these games here Game Collection: Nf5 sac against the kingside castled fianchetto .

This is the ending position of the second game in this collection Black (btm) has no saving move.