Knowing how to attack is an essential part of the chess struggle. An attack can emerge for several reasons – a poor coordination of the opponent’s pieces or a weakness in his king’s shelter could be enough to launch a direct offensive. However, there are other types of attacks that arise very often and this is the situation when the kings are castled on opposite wings. In such positions, the most common method of starting an attack is by throwing the pawns at the castle in order to create weaknesses in the opponent’s pawn structure and open the lines.
When preparing an attack against the enemy king it is important to know the typical sacrifices and attacking patterns. We have already covered most of the ways to start an attack and the most common tactical ideas in our previous articles and today we will take a look at another potential target of attack – the g6/g3 square. The main purpose of this sacrifice is the complete demolition of the kingside pawn structure in order to use the newly open files and diagonals to deliver mate.
The art of exchanging pieces is one of the most important and effective tools in a chess game. Knowing what piece of yours and which one of your opponents should be taken off the board is something that one learns through experience and deep study of classical games. However, for beginners and club level players this may be a difficult task.
Checkmate is an ultimate goal of the game. Ability to deliver a checkmate is closely tied to tactics. It is a very important skill that chess players of all levels, and especially those under 2200 should focus on. The best approach studying checkmates is to carefully understand the ideas and remember the key pattern. Pattern recognition is the key concept here. It is well known that chess masters know 1000s of tactical combinations and are able to instantly identify them. Today we will learn 10 must-know checkmates.
Chess is a game of ideas, where the players have to carefully build their position and find weaknesses in the other player’s camp that will allow them to break through. It is easily understood why being able to find a good plan and working on developing certain skills, both tactical and strategic, is very important in order to improve your play.
Many of you may have read before about the principle of two weaknesses, but for beginners, it might still be a concept difficult to apply, although very easy to remember. This principle is the most important one to remember in positions when you’re trying to materialize an advantage, either material or positional.
Strategy plays a big part in a chess game. In positions where the tactical play is absent, the players with a superior strategical thinking tend to outplay their opponents. It is often seen that inexperienced players play assorted moves without any link between them; this generally leads to their defeat. It is easier to find good moves if you’re following an idea, a goal to reach.
Middlegame is one of the most important phases of the chess game. Ability to play good middlegame decides to a high extent an outcome of the game. As you probably know, most games are either won or lost in the middelgame. That’s why ability to outperform your opponent in the middlegame is very important for successful chess players. Today we will take a look at 10 greatest middlegame plays by GMs.
Chess is a difficult game to explain for beginners/club players. The complexity of the game lies in the fact that there exists a set of rules that help you reach the ultimate goal, but there are also dynamic factors which are difficult to control. During the game, we must pay attention to all of them and try to evaluate, consider and calculate which elements have the most impact on the position in question before making our move.
Very often in our chess games we face difficult decisions at certain stages of the struggle. A queen sacrifice could be one of them. More than a sacrifice, we would like to call it an unbalanced exchange of our queen for two or more enemy pieces.