I think yes but no now first 0-0-0
The Process of Decision Making in Chess Volume 2: Practice positions and solutions. Position 11.1
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It is clear, that black has moved his king, so castle is not possible anymore.
With the black king cought in the centre, white would do well to quickly develop his rooks, which are now undeveloped. Best seems 0-0-0 soon to be followed by Rhe1.
The attack Ng5 lures the black king to a better field with Ke8. After that h6 will soon chase the knight away.
if it benefits because horse g5 attacks the paeon of f7 the black remains without castling will quickly bring their pieces to the center to attack the king for example tower d1 threatening discovered etc although he has e6 bishop to defend the peon but I think that white will have better
Jul 21, 2018
0
#8
Two points to be made here in response to everyone else here...
Firstly the question asks if white benefits from attacking the weakness rather than what the next move for white should be. This answer to this I think is no, as 1. Ng5 Ke8 defends against the threat while also getting some advantage from it:
1. The black king moves off an open file
2. The black king is no longer on a dark square, where in some cases it can be attacked by the dark squared bishop
3. Moves a step closer to activating his rooks, with ideas like 2. ...f6 3. exf6 gxf6 4. Bc3 Be7 where black ends up with an open g file for his rook. It is important to notice that it is more difficult to activate the rook on a8 than on h8 due to the doubled pawns on the c file.
Note that I prefer 1 ...Ke8 as a defence as opposed to 1 ...Be6 because after 1 ...Be6 2. Nxe6 fxe6 black has lost the bishop pair as well as having a worse pawn structure (which added to the doubled c pawns would be horrible for black in an endgame).
Second point is that the position in the original diagram suggests it is black to move, so the point of this question is to consider if this potential threat is something we should respond to immediately (with e.g. 1 ...h6 or 1 ...Be7). The answer to that question therefore is no, as we have seen that this threat can be dealt with. Instead, as black's main goal in this position is to catch up in development (so that he can take advantage of the bishop pair) I think black's next move should be to develop a bishop. (ideally the dark squared bishop as this prepares to move his rook to the e file.
Solve the challenge below:
Diagram 11.1- typical for the Berlin defense, black has an unprotected weak square at f7.
Challenge: does white benefit from attacking this weakness?