Principles of Attack, Part 2

In my last blog post, we covered the when part of attack. The second section of attack is the how.

There are two ways to play chess. A position may call for static play, for a slow strategic buildup in a superior strategic position. The tension and the pressure is increased until the opponent cannot bear it anymore and death by strangulation (or often by suicide--the opponent cannot bear it anymore!) occurs.

A position may also call for dynamic play. If you have made some permanent positional concession (for instance, if your opponent has more space or you are down material), you have to act fast and have to launch counterplay before your opponent can stabilize the position.

This also holds true for attack. Sometimes, you have all the time in the world to bring your pieces over to the place where you are attacking and have the time to improve your position to the utmost. That is what I call a static attack.

As in the whole game of chess, there is also dynamic attack. Say I've sacrificed a bishop for two pawns to expose the opponent's king. I need to act extremely, extremely fast to attack the opponent's king before the opponent can regroup their forces and defend, and so win thanks to their superior material. This is a dynamic attack.

Today, I have for you an example of static attack. The famous 19th century player Pillsbury played the Pillsbury Variation, (I wonder why it was called that?) which calls for a static attack on the black king. Pillsbury played extremely well (except for one little blind spot) and reeled in the full point against one of the best players of the day, Siegbert Tarrasch.

Note how Pillsbury slowly but surely improved the position of all his pieces by manuevering his pieces in. He followed the principle of Attackers vs. Defenders, which states that you must have more attackers than the opponent defenders while attacking. I hope you will do the same in your games.

Come back tomorrow for an example of dynamic attack!