Hi there.
In this lecture, I'm going to talk about my own passion and drivers for attacking chess.
Well, first of all, my nickname, King's Crusher, does kind of imply I like crushing kings, and
I'm trying to play up to that nickname.
So there's that influence.
I don't want to kind of disappoint people following me on YouTube or Twitch, especially when I did
lots and lots of live commentary games.
I like them to be attacking and interesting and exciting.
So there's a kind of bias there actually, not just to rack up points in a solid positional manner,
but to try and make more spectacular games.
There's a bias, I guess I have to admit to, to to being, you know, trying to play interesting chess.
Yeah.
So it's kind of art form, sharing it on social media.
I've loved tactics and combinations.
Even from an early age.
I was able to do some beautiful tactics and stuff early on.
I have been more excited than usual for attacking ingredients for king attacks and combinations, so
crushing kings.
So yes, that kind of game, the attacking game, I it just fills me with greater joy than looking at
grinding games in general.
And my favorite attacking players includes players like Morphy Alekhine Tell Bobby Fischer he could
play great attacking chess as well as being a universal player.
Kasparov, though heavily, I looked at Kasparov games and at one point I was just just even without
annotations, I was playing through them and trying to get something from them.
So Kasparov, though it's good to look at similar examples, though Kasparov himself was studying Alekhine
It's good to actually go to the simpler examples first, and that's true of many other subjects and
domains.
It's good to make sure you reinforce your basic understanding foundation before trying to look at more
advanced stuff.
Otherwise you're setting yourself up for potential disappointment.
You'll get barriers, and if you had done the groundwork more thoroughly, you know you wouldn't have
so many bottlenecks later in understanding more advanced stuff.
So the general idea of this course, yeah, to to really focus on Alexander Alekhine is a foundation
layer that's really important.
So it's it's nice to have the more modern plans as favorite players, but because of the advances of
engines and databases, the modern game is potentially a lot more complex to follow, especially between
super grandmasters which are not making mistakes our opponents generally make, especially on online
casual chess at Lords Masters.
I have the I had the experience of seeing the likes of sure of motivation on demo boards destroying
opponents.
And it's just fun to see these demolition jobs against opponent King sometimes.
So, yes, I think chess is in itself a process of finding yourself in a way.
So if I find I'm a huge Alexander Alekhine fan, it is a search for one's own interests within the interest
of chess and also Kasparov fan.
But Kasparov was so dominant with his peers and such a dominant world chess champion, winning very,
very strong tournaments.
But as I say, the complexity level is just much higher than if you want to learn about attacking chess,
go a step lower to alekhine before the engine era, before opponents was, you know, super good.
So you can see some instructive mistakes, a contrast between alekhine and opponents that actually make
some mistakes which are punishable.
And I've got a great example to show you towards the end of this of what I mean.
Online tournaments have a bias nowadays.
You don't just wait for all the games in around the finish.
It's not necessarily Swiss format, it's these kind of weakening arenas.
So you want to like win quickly and to win quickly.
It's good to make if you checkmate, the opponent hasn't got any other moves.
It's the end of the game.
Checkmate ends the game.
So that's great for the bias for all we can eat tournaments.
And I've won so many of those, you know, through attacking chess to win quickly.
There were certain key one day games.
I had this game with Gary Quillin.
He he crushed me but he did say about attack potential king safety is a major, major element.
And sometimes that aspect is amplified to me, even as the king's crusher.
I need to reinforce that myself.
The King safety.
That's what really can win a lot of games you can trade off.
We can try it off construction as long as you make the opponents king, then you've won the game.
So always bear in mind that's a kind of golden principle, which my estimate is also emphasized.
Champ, mate, end of the game.
So, okay, one more thing.
I did have also my YouTube playlist for The King's Gambit is one of the more popular.
I was wondering why, but it's kind of obvious is kind of the romantic era of chess.
So people on YouTube appreciate romantic era chess style.
Attacking dashing chess style is something which is appealing to the masses in general.
Okay, so without further ado, let's have a look at this 1985 game I saw once in a book.
And after, you know, I was wondering about 1985, instead of routinely costing this kind of possession,
Vasily Rostov had been self-indulgent in the opening and had reached this position.
So would you routinely console or do something else?
And I've used similar G five stuff to really wipe out so many opponents online ever since.
And this was years ago.
I saw this game just from a book, you know, glimmer of this alekhine game from a book Attractive Alekhine
game.
So it wasn't a super long, no less than 30 moves.
But the first move here, can you guess 400 points?
Yeah, I think you might have had clues.
Night.
Gee, five.
So why is this so dangerous?
Well, we see Bishop E seven and now Queen G4.
Now here, things get interesting.
If I guess what an accordion plays here, which even engines like it's a super duper, absolutely super
duper move to really punish the opponent's lack of development and the Kingston Center and things like
that super advanced move.
So it's 9/10 H seven.
So this is what I mean by contrast.
You know, modern grandmasters generally won't have this sort of position, but how do you actually
punish this kind of lack of development?
So we have rotates H seven and the point is Bishop takes H seven main takes and the point here, Queen
takes G7.
What we have got is this outside passport asset.
But you might think, well, hold on, hold on.
You know, Black's controlling the H for square, surely.
Do we still play H for.
Yes we do.
Alekhine did.
The thing is, he's going to now hijack the dark squares.
There is a downside, fundamentally a fundamental downside of Black's position, the dark where he's
kind of vulnerable because we have pawns on light squares and we have this beautiful move.
Now can you see what it is?
It's kind of amplifying the dot square weaknesses.
And this Bishop How do we amplify this Bishop?
Yeah.
We want a bishop with our counterpart exchange sack.
Take out the defensive Bishop.
And now this bishop has got free reign over these dark squares.
It's a beautiful concept.
And as idea of a key idea of Queen F6 to mate on the dance squares, we have Queen H one checking the
two.
And now Queen takes G2.
Because if Queen takes a one, just Queen f6.
How does Black defend?
So this is a classic, you know, material versus king safety tradeoff.
Yeah, blacks.
Black's going to get mated.
So we have black trying.
Queen takes G2, Queen F six which which protects F two in France.
And these mate France so black is forced to counter-attack the queen and it only kind of delays the
inevitable.
Now at 497 we have rook 197 one is winning her fight my e free bishop scanning knight g for the knights
having fun on the f start square Rook st pinning the f eight Knight Knights e.g. six Let's have six
checking the eight And now a beautiful finish here to the game.
Guess what the Queen plays here, which is a good investment.
400 points.
Yeah.
Queen 66.
So he's getting a lot of material for the Queen now.
Black resigned if F tanks, rook tanks, F eight.
Check.
King C seven Rook takes a whole rook up.
So anyway, the point is this game.
Yeah, really was inspirational for me.
And I did go hunting for this game.
If you get really serious, just says you might consider getting your own online, you know, local
database like chessbase and you can actually search for maneuvers.
I did actually search for Knight G5 as a maneuver, and I was really happy to find this game for you
because this this really was an inspirational game.
There's quite a few key inspirational games of Alekhine, which I didn't really think at the time to
present so much of Alekhine on YouTube as Garry Kasparov.
But yeah, now I think that's a big mistake.
We've got to reassess our attacking chess if we've just been looking at the latest generation players,
that's a big mistake.
The classic Masters show us how to punish things and this has been a resource that I've used in so many
countless wins.
Basically my G5.
There's all sorts of dangers with this kind of move.
I mean, another common winning mechanism, if H6 we can play a move like Queen H five and if Queen
is seven, guess how I've been winning games from this position as a sideline?
Nine So you know.
G five it's very dangerous when the king's in the center.
Yeah, we're looking F seven saucepot four.
So for 100 points, I've been winning games a lot in general with nine takes F seven.
So Queen six there's Bishop G six.
So yeah, instead of routinely castling, if we open ourselves up, we don't have to like Castle Robot.
We look at the opponent's position and should we be punishing the opponent versus doing a standard castling?
That's another thing about the attacking players when to balance things out.
And we've got balance in a position.
We've got a center which is not even under pressure with C five yet.
So we've got a certain amount of stability with this center for this nine G5.
It was just such an attractive game and inspirational for all sorts of wins based on the dangers of
Knight G five.
So this is just one example and this is not even, as I say, this is not even in many game collections.
It's in a few, but it's not in as many as the other absolutely brilliant games we cover in this course.
So okay, so I do have a passion and drive for attacking chess.
But the key thing, and this applies to other subjects as well, most of the base examples, the simpler
examples before going on to the more advanced, even if the advanced are apps, they brilliant and lucrative,
they might be a bit more complex, which might inhibit your understanding.
So it's good to get this clear clarification of attacking chess from the attacking masters, in my view.
And of course earlier Paul Morphy to most of the the open game.
And Anderson, you know, the masters of the open game for drastic punishment of even worse mistakes.
But alekhine for me yeah.
Is very, very instructive in the same vein as Paul Morphy.
Okay, so I hope that's clear about my passion and drivers for attacking chess.
So in a nutshell, I've loved this kind of style of play, attacking chess combinations, tactics.
From a very early age.
I've been inspired looking at the successes of attacking players, especially in Swiss tournaments,
where they're even trying to win with black.
They're playing very aggressively with the black pieces.
They're not just playing solidly like a lot of super games nowadays.
So, you know, I have a big influence from attacking players and I take it very, very seriously.
I take the attacks very, very seriously, trying to understand and get, you know, the solid foundations
needed to understand more advanced examples.
So that's the spirit of this course and the drive and passion for attacking chess that I personally
have and have experienced.
Okay, Thanks very much.