Attack and risk-taking

Sometimes we go for too much, too soon, rushing our pieces towards the enemy king only to fall short. As a result, we lose material with an incorrect sacrifice, or we get our pieces displaced to bad squares after the failed assault. Other times, our attack is just too slow, and our opponent creates quicker and more dangerous threats. Where lies the correct balance? How to attack the king at the right pace?

Some of the greatest players of the past can teach us a lot on this subject. As Vukovic said in his great book The Art of Attack in Chess, Alekhine had a very singular ability to build strong attacks against the king with very natural moves. Thus, very often he won games in this manner, without taking major positional risks.

This should be our primary goal if we want to launch successful attacks against the king: to mount the maximum of pressure with the lesser degree of commitment. Here are a couple of examples from Alekhine himself:

Instead of immediately going for an attack, Alekhine made use of his positional advantage to provoke weaknesses on the kingside. After that, the enemy king was much more vulnerable, and the attack developed smoothly.

In the next game, he systematically built a powerful attack against an elite opponent...in the match for the World Championship!

A surprisingly one-sided affaire for such a high level game! Against weaker opposition, our hero often transformed an acquired positional superiority in a powerful attack:

In all the examples above, Alekhine managed to attack the castled king at minimum risk, exploiting his advantage to make the assault easier. There are times, though, when there is a need to proceed more energetically. This is typical in cases where the advantage is of a temporary character, like being ahead in development. Alekhine had a fine intuition to assess the pace required to attack in those cases too:

The games of Alekhine are arguably a great source to learn about the strategy of the attack against the king.