Müller: Karsten Müller - Attack

It is not a new discovery to say that most players prefer attacking to defending. Nor is it surprising that various authors have devoted numerous books to the popular subject of attack for more than a century.

In this book, the author attempts to present the recurring mechanisms of the attacking game as compactly as possible by restricting himself to a limited number of important motifs and describing typical building blocks of the attacking strategy. To provide more in-depth information, numerous clear and meaningful rules of thumb are formulated for the various subject areas.

With regard to practice, however, it is important to point out that in chess it is not important to know this or that rule by heart, but that it is of crucial importance to train one's intuition to recognize as accurately as possible when something is a rule and when it is an exception.

For example, it covers such essential topics as: 'Bishops of different colors give the attacker an advantage', 'Avoid exchanging attack potential', 'Typical attack structures', 'Attack on a weak square complex'. Then, in a chapter dedicated to one of the greatest attack artists of all time, Mikhail Tal's genius in this regard is demonstrated using some of his striking and pointed quotes - such as "Centralize and sacrifice!", "If the opponent attacks one of your pieces, attack two of his!"

A chapter on the checkmate attack in the endgame, a look at some of the author's impressive attack victories and all sorts of topic-related tasks for the individual chapters round off the whole thing. In addition, practical QR codes allow you to replay the game directly on your smartphone if you don't have a board at hand.