Attacking with multiple pieces – Chess Basics

Chess Concepts: Attacking by coordinating several pieces

What do I mean?

When in chess I talk about «Attack by coordinating several pieces» I literally mean «Attack when you have coordinated several pieces«.

It may sound stupid, but I have taught chess to several children and beginners and This is not as absurd advice as it may seem at first glance., since it is a fairly common mistake when you start learning chess.

In the top position both players were starting their game well. parts development, but the white player has suddenly seen the opportunity to jump with his knight to the g5 square, thinking that he can attack the pawn on f7.

The white player may have missed that the black king is defending this point, and now his knight on g5 may be threatened and he will have to bother defending it, causing him to lose. time in the development of other pieces.

Because it is important?

In chess, coordinating your pieces to attack is important because if at the moment of truth you are not threatening anything, your opponent can ignore your moves and continue improving their position.

I repeat that I think it's an important concept because many beginners attack by creating very unpromising threats., or directly believing that they threaten something that is defended. You have to try to avoid this, and know when you can start harassing your opponent.

How to attack and coordinate several pieces in chess?

There is a simple but incredibly effective concept in chess: count attackers and defenders.

When you have more attackers than defenders, can be a promising attack, however, if you attack with the same number of pieces that your opponent has defending, it won't be such an interesting attack. We don't even talk if you attack when your rival has more defenders than you attackers.

Returning to an example very similar to the previous position, we have the following opening:

White, instead of having taken out his knight to c3 (As we saw in the first example) has decided to take his bishop to c4; That means that now when we move our knight to g5 we do we are creating real threats, since the f7 point is now attacked by two of our pieces, and only defended by one of the opponent, who is still the king.

This example of an early attack occurs in the Italian Opening, and It is my personal recommendation If you are starting out and want to play aggressive chess and attack, for two reasons:

1. It is very common that at low levels the black player allows you to enter this variant, since starting by taking out the two knights seems very natural. In this opening his own knight on f6 will make his queen no longer defend g5, where you can jump with your knight to begin the attack.
2. In this position the only good move for black is to move his pawn to d5, blocking your bishop, but it is a very difficult defense to find at low levels.

Summary

When playing chess, if you want to attack correctly you will need to make sure that you have more pieces attacking than your opponent has defending, or else focus better on other matters, such as getting all your pieces minor parts have influence over the position, that your king is safe, or in having some control over the center of the board.

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Here ends the explanation of «Attack in chess by coordinating several pieces«.

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