That arch assassin Nigel Short has declared, “Chess is ruthless: you've got to be prepared to kill people.” If it's good enough for Nigel, it's good enough for me and this manual is designed to help you to find your weapons and to learn how to use them. But a word of caution—we really would prefer it if you kept your killing to the chess board.

Weapons Training

Before an a Assassin makes a hit s/he has to know what weapons areavailable and how to use them. If you're not familiar with the basic weapons (pins, forks, skewers, double attacks and so on) you can learn what they are and how to use them at Chess Tactics for Amateurs. For advanced training you should use the chess.com Tactics Trainer.

Terminate with Extreme Prejudice

All chess players know how to finish a game but, as our experience grows, we learn ever more ways to apply the basic patterns. Batgirl, who would make an excellent Assassin if she was so disposed, has collected twenty-three advanced mates on her blog. For the viewer's convenience they're set on three different pages and range from the very well known, to the obscure. To find them, visit Le blog de la Batgirl and select them from the list in the right hand column under the heading Checkmates.

Ambush

When you go out on a mission always remember that your target will be armed, and so you don't want to put yourself in a situation where he might beat you to the kill. The best way to do that is to lay an ambush—and in chess terms, that means knowing the traps that apply in your favourite openings.

When my kids were learning to play chess I taught them only three or four traps because the type of traps I knew mostly wasted time and could be easily countered by a half-way savvy player. Rather, I taught them those traps that could reasonably be expected to crop up in normal opening play.

If you would like to learn a great number of exceptionally useful traps you need only go as far as Le blog de la Batgirl (again) and this time click on Traps in the right hand column. It's well worth the visit.

If I wanted to make money selling a chess method that was guaranteed to improve your rating, I could do a lot worse than recommend Batgirl's collection of mating positions and traps. Do yourself a favour and get over there.

Blitzkrieg

Blitzkrieg is the term used to describe lightning attacks in warfare and as such has loaned its name to Blitz or Lightning Chess. But one of the facets of blitzkrieg, particularly in tank warfare, was the tactic of bursting through the enemy front line and pushing forward without regard to your flank.

In this game 10 year-old Joshua Waitzkin (of Searching for Bobby Fischer fame) was playing IM Edward Frumkin when Frumkin played 24...Nb2 attacking Waitzkin's rook. Rather than move the rook, Waitzkin removed his other rook with 25.Re3, abandoning the attacked rook to its fate. Perhaps Frumkin didn't see what Waitzkin planned, or perhaps he just didn't take such a small boy seriously enough, because he captured the now unprotected rook—and World War III broke out on the king-side. This was blitzkrieg with no quarter given and after Waitzkin followed up with a queen sacrifice on move 26 he had a forced mate in six. Spectacular stuff!

Here comes the cavalry!

History is full of heroic cavalry charges and one of the most famous—the Battle for Beersheba during World War I—caught the Turkish defenders completely by surprise. Why? Because their attackers weren't cavalry at all but mounted infantry who just didn't use that sort of tactic.

On the chess board the knight is adept at catching the enemy by surprise, especially when he manages to get some covering fire from his artillery. And if one knight is dangerous, two working together can be deadly. In the following position they have all the covering fire they need. White doesn't stand a chance!

The Kamikaze and the Dive Bomber

Most people don't know that Chicken Yakitori was the name of the only surviving Japanese Kamikaze pilot. He was smarter than the others—he was chicken! Yakitori-san notwithstanding, there comes a time when a kamikaze attack can win a battle, albeit at some cost to the pilot. But when Reuben Fine said, “Discovered check is the dive bomber of the chessboard,” he had something else in mind and it was the enemy who was going to suffer loss.

Here's a combination of the two. White's d3 rook, his Rising-Sun headband wrapped about his forehead, hurls himself at black's bishop. His life is forfeit but he knows that a Divine Wind is blowing across the chess board. See what happens when the Stuka on b3 gets to release its deadly load.

(This position actually cropped up on move 25 of a game between Geza Maroczy and Rudolf Charousek at Nuremburg in 1896 but, unfortunately, it was black's turn to move. He played 25...Rad8 removing the threat but in the complications that followed Maroczy won a pawn and, eventually, the game.

Storming the Fortress

There have been many siege engines throughout history and all have been more-or-less successful at breaching castle defences. Of course, sometimes brute force wasn't enough and the attackers resorted to guile—and no tactic is more famous than the wooden horse of Troy.

There's a thematic bishop sacrifice against the h7 square that has been used so often, and with so many variations, that it is known as the Greek Gift. There are a couple of complex and spectacular illustrations of the it in Loomis's chess.com blog. As Loomis pointed out, “Even when the sacrifice is not perfectly sound it is tricky to refute.”

Here's an elementary example:

Boiling Oil

Perhaps those armies which besieged castles held the initiative, but sometimes that wasn't enough because the castle, by its very structure and location, should be well equipped to fight off such an attack. It was a brave attacker who would scramble up a ladder when the defenders were pouring boiling oil over him.

When the castled king is under attack we need to improvise some boiling oil of our own. Check out the next position.

White begins with 1.Bxh7 expecting 1...g6, leaving the bishop with no retreat but Black has his vats of oil bubbling away over an open fire and prepares to pour it on White's unsuspecting head.

ARTILLERY

In war, artillery is used to soften up the enemy before an invasion; in chess the artillery pieces are the rooks and the queen and, when they combine, they are exceedingly powerful. They come into their own when there are fewer enemy mortars on the board to harass them.

In the following position, White threatens to capture a knight but Black thinks he sees a way out.

That completes Volume I of the Assassins' Manual.

Maybe I'll write Volume II when I return from vacation.

Banzai!

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