King's Indian Attack

Hi guys,

I thought it would be a good idea to learn the King's Indian Attack (KIA) because I like its name and it is meant to be easier to learn for beginners like me due to it being a  system to set up a certain position rather than an exact sequence of moves. I have just looked up its entry on wikipedia and started a game against little chess partner. This will be the first specific attempt to learn an opening for me. After a few moves I have obtained the structure I was looking for but I am now stuck (see diagram below). He responded with 1... c5 sicillian but I did not write down the move order. Can anyone suggest a path to proceed?

This is what the idea of the opening is according the wiki entry:

 White's most common plan involves a central pawn push, e4-e5, leading to a central bind, kingside space, and concrete attacking chances on a kingside-castled black king. Black's resources – more queenside space for example – are not to be underestimated. In fact, this asymmetry often leads to violent middlegames and neatly constructed mating nets involving the sacrifice of multiple pieces.

Obviously I cannot play e4-e5 yet and I feel like I have a very crampt position. I was determined to play the KIA and did not play too much attention to blacks plans and threats and now I am not comfortable with my  position. My Queen and dark bishop need developed and I think I can only do this by pushing some pawns on the queenside. I'm not sure what to do with my knights at the moment. I think I need a couple of freeing moves but I think he is going to start a queenside attack soon by bringing his queen out to b6 or a5.

Can anyone recommend any books on the KIA and how to set up against common openings like the sicillian and french? 

I am a beginner and I play the KIA.  I haven't studied it in a whole lot of depth but I reccomend Yasser Seirawans book "Winning Chess Openings" (at least the final chapters where he reccomends Opening Solutions -- you can probably get all the info from reading it in the book store).

The thing that I notice with your position above is that it looks like you didn't even look at what black was playing and just followed the moves for KIA.  Since little chess partner is playing without an opening book he caught you in a pretty bad bind.  While it is a "system" you need to realize that sometimes it must be altered slightly.  YOU DO NOT NEED TO STUDY TONS OF THEORY, this is why Yasser Seirawan reccomends this opening (and the KID and Pirc).  However, you will lose a few of your first batch of games in the opening, because of many traps and binds that the KIA can fall to.  Experience will teach you how to play the KIA more adaptively.

A few tips: 

-I always play 1. Nf3.  I believe this move is more flexible than 1. e4 if you are planning on playing the Kings Indian.  Club level players are very rarely prepared for it and if you play 1. e4 you better have something other than KIA prepared if your opponent plays 1. ... e5.  KIA is a disaster if your opponent plays 1. ... e5. If you play 1. Nf6 your opponent cannot play e5 because you'll just capture.

-This goes against mainline theory but I prefer Nbc3 to Nbd2.  The specific reason for this is that black likes to pin the f3 knight.  If you had played Nc3 in the above game you could move your queen to d2In this game, this would have allowed you to move your queen out of the pin (or if you had not moved Re1).  In this position, if the knight weren't pinned, the correct play here would be: exd5 Nxd5 (if you had moved Nc3 originally he wouldn't even be able to recapture), Nxe5 (discovered attack on d5).  Black can capture your knight but you take his too, and you have won a pawn. 

-Had you not moved Nbd2 it also would have allowed you to pin his knight with your bishop on g5.

kponds wrote "The thing that I notice with your position above is that it looks like you didn't even look at what black was playing and just followed the moves for KIA", guilty as charged. It was the first time I have played this opening so I just played them quickly without thinking very much, which wasn't  good idea. At least I learned not to do that again.

I won the game anyway because little chess partner was set to easy and then I played another starting with 1. Nf3. I won this as well, but I did not achieve such a terrible position out of the opening as I actually thought about what blacks threat was. I'm looking forward to playing it against the computer on medium difficulty soon and this will help me understand it better and the tricks and traps associated with it, even if I lose a few times.

I looked at a couple of Kasparov games where he played the KIA and it looks like it can get pretty tactical quite quickly. I might try to get "Winning Chess Openings", to see if this helps my chess openings. I noticed that Nigel Davies has a chessbase DVD about the KIA and this might be worth purchasing if I ever get fritz.

Thanks for your help. 

Winning Chess Openings isn't very indepth, it's part of a larger series on all aspects of chess (I reccomend all of his books), and it's a survey of the mainlines of the most popular openings, and then at the end he recommends an opening repertoire based on KIA, KID, and Pirc, simply because they are all solid and require little study.

Yes, the KIA can get very tactical!  Though the first few moves are quiet it can lead to some very violent games.  Here's an example:

He didn't play very well (I edited out his name, I hope he doesn't find this), so this may not be a prime example, but it certainly shows how tactical a KIA can be.  I also made a mistake and should have just captured on move 2 but I was on autopilot.

One last thing:  get something else to practice against than little chess partner!  It doesn't have an opening book so it calculates from move 1, which means that it plays the same moves every time as long as you do!  Real players don't do that.  I prefer the Shredder engine, and you can get a 30 day demo of the classic version (that's what I use, I see no need to pay so much money for the non-classic version) on their website for either windows, mac, or linux. 

Here is Kasparov tackling the KIA with the black pieces. It didnt take him long to win! (a mere 25 (17 shown) against GM) 

 Enjoy!

I noticed that there are chess articles for most of the openings and the link for the KIA is http://www.chess.com/article/view/chess-openings--kings-indian-attack

Good game by Kasparov. I will put some more master games with the KIA here so I can study some of the ideas.