Attack and Defense In Chess - Part Two
By Grandmaster Alex Yermolinsky
Attacks and Defenses
Remove the Defender
In Part One of this article series, you learned about the basics of attack and defense in chess, now let's move onto some more advanced ideas...
Suppose we attack an opponent’s pawn with a knight, but then he brings his knight over to protect the pawn. In this scenario, we are no longer threatening to take that pawn because then he/she would capture our knight with his defending knight. This is "cause and effect" or in chess terms "attack and defense" continued!
If we attack a piece and our opponent defends, do we just give up
? NO, we continue to try and attack. If our opponent defends our threat, the question then becomes: How would we make it a threat again?
One idea is to remove the defender. The opponent’s knight (defending the pawn in the scenario mentioned above) can be exchanged, chased away, deflected or pinned. Once one of those plans is accomplished, our original threat of capturing the pawn is renewed.
In this case, exchanging the defender is the only way White can get his bishop involved in the attack against the black pawn on d5 (this is because the d5-pawn is on a light square). Since the bishop and knight are worth the same in value (3 points), winning the pawn on d5 makes the trade on f6 worthwhile for white.
In general, pawns are the best when it comes to chasing enemy pieces from important positions. This is because a pawn is worth the least in points, so if the pawn(s) attack a piece, that piece will almost always have to move away.
The defender must always be alert to make sure that his pieces can stay where they need to be, so if you can make them move away from "where they need to be" often times you can capture the piece they were defending. You might notice that if Black had a turn in the position above he could have prevented White's threat by playing his own pawn g6-g5.
Deflection (click here for a cool article about the art of deflection) is a very powerful method of removing the defender, widely used in an array (a lot) of tactical operations. Chessplayers often refer to a "piece doing two jobs at the same time" as an "overloaded piece". For the attacker it is important to find the right order of captures to take advantage of this "overloaded piece". In the above position White would not do well by transposing the moves. After 1.Nxd5? Black first exchanges the rooks, 1...Rxh1 2.Kxh1, and then captures 2...Nxd5, winning a piece.
As we know, "pinning" (check out more about Pins by clicking here) immobilizes the opponent's piece, making it unable to do jobs it is asked to do. Once you choose a target, first make sure it cannot move away. In the position we just studied, the white pawn on d4 played an important role of keeping the black d5-pawn right where it was. The black knight on f6 had to stay put to keep the d5-pawn defended. This is how defensive tasks make some pieces passive (meaning the f6-knight is stuck to defending, which means passive in chess).
The second step is to think of ways your other pieces and pawns can get to the defender. Remember to use the tactical ideas mentioned above: exchanging; driving away; deflecting; and pinning.
Sometimes the target is so valuable that the attacker will stop at nothing to eliminate the defenders.
Be consistent and resolute in your play and don't abandon your ideas too soon. There might be a way to get to the target in the end. Remeber to "remove the defender"!!! Now, please continue to Part Three.