Attacking Properly Vol. 4 - the king placed on the opposite wing

I assume that, at this point, the most dedicated readers of this blog already know the fundamental rules regarding the attack on the opponent's king. If you are here for the first time (either because you got lost on Chess.com or just started a new account), you might want to start your journey to learning how to attack properly starting from volumes 1-3 of this course. This should help you to understand the basics. 

For illustrative purposes, I have already shown you how to successfully attack the king in the center. Still, I can imagine some of you saying: "All of this is nice, but how can I apply those principles if my opponent is smart enough to castle?". 

To simplify the matters: use the same technique. To complicate them: some amendments might prove to be necessary. In particular, it is vital to understand that a castled king is (in great majority of cases) much safer than a king blithely occuping the central squares. Therefore, a successful attack requires an access to the opponent's king. The best by test method assumes using your pawns to break the pawn formation surrounding the opponent's king, and effectively opening files which could be used by major pieces later in the process. Please note that the most effective way of doing that often requires sacrificing a pawn or two! After all, as Francois-Andre Danican Philidor would say:

Pawns are the soul of the game.

Ok, back to business. This time I would like to show you a game played between two former world champions. You might have seen GM Boris Spassky in action in the Spassky-Avtonomov game, already. This time you are about to witness his memorable win against "the Iron" GM Tigran Petrosian.

Please pay special attention to the way GM Spassky managed to open the kingside with a classical pawn sacrifice and how skillfully he grew his initiative. Feel free to pause the video before each of White's moves and try to figure them out on your own - this is a great training method.

As mentioned in the clip, I advise you to take a look at a more detailed analysis as well.

The most important piece of advice when it comes down to attacking the king on the opposite flank is:

1. Follow the general attacking principles, i.e. 1) open files and diagonals, 2) invite all of your "friends" (pieces) to the "party" (attack) and 3) create threats.
2. Remember that the player, who gets access to the opponent's king first, has a much better chance of winning the game.
3. Using pawns is a much faster (and cheaper) way to break through the enemy's pawn formation around the king.
4. In many situations it makes a lot of sense to sacrifice pawns to open files for the major pieces.

Make sure to come to one of my streams on Twitch^* to suggest a new topic for a post and give me that precious sub on YouTube .

*Next English stream on Sunday, June 14, 2020 8:30 PM Central European Time