welcome to chess tips we're in seven minutes or less you can learn or strengthen a chess concept
and today we're gonna be talking about attacking the king and a rule I like to call the +2 rule
which is when you need two more attacking pieces than there are defending pieces to successfully
checkmate or destroy the enemy Kings position we're gonna look at three examples let's jump
right in in this position recorded at the time of Gotham guide my opponent had just played the move
h6 I've got two pieces and maybe a third in the distance potentially a fourth coming down this
way and even a fifth piece here ready to join the attack and I immediately took advantage of this
pawn by playing the move Queen to d2 I expected King h7 at which point I would have played Bishop
c2 lining up the Bishop of the King but my opponent played g5 and you really shouldn't be
pushing pawns on the same side that you're being attacked now I could have moved my bishop and
then played something like h4 but sometimes when you have a substantial piece advantage there's a
sacrifice looming and here Knight takes g5 crashed right through after HG Bishop g5 my idea is that
if the Queen moves away I play Bishop f6 and Queen g5 and the King is just dead and so here my
opponent played f6 but I had foreseen all the way through to the end if you just take everything and
then look for a check the most forcing move your white is winning pawn takes f6 Bishop takes takes
takes and check the move Bishop takes f6 frees up Queen g5 check and it looks like king f7 actually
holds everything together but rook f6 Queen f6 and now rook f1 will decide the fate of the Queen now
here my opponent can take and we can still play a few more moves because I have queen for a rook
and Knight but given the fact that the enemy King is so exposed and I'll just be flying in here with
my bishop as well this position is lost for black most important thing here Queen d2 King h7 Bishop
c2 would have seen for attacking pieces against two bishops and with moves like h4 h5 not to
mention that when these two pieces excuse me these two pieces move out of the way white will have
five attacking pieces so make sure that sacrifices are always part of your and if you sacrifice that
you still have a piece majority attacking the king it can't just be one piece it should be two
or three all right let's move on to example number two very similar position actually a similar move
was just played h6 but obviously a bit different there are no sacrifices looming we have two pieces
and maybe a third and once this Knight gets out of the way we'll have a fourth I can start an attack
with a pawn as well here with f4 f5 in the game I decided to play Knight f3 targeting the pawn
on h6 what my opponent should have done here is realize that I have for attacking pieces lined
up to his King and he does not have a single defender he should actually at this point this
is important for you on the defending side look to trade the pieces so something like Bishop a6
highly recommended by the engine because it gets the light squared Bishop off the board that's one
less piece for the attack your he decided to play c4 when you play that move you're just thinking
okay my opponents gonna go Bishop b2 but then he got hit with a thunderbolt I mean remember it's 4
to 0 at this point so Bishop takes h6 and here we see the real problem if my opponent plays C
takes D 3 in this position I have attacking moves such as Knight g5 and there's no way to defend h7
because I'm threatening to sacrifice my bishop and take and if he takes my bishop like this Queen h6
and queen h7 mate is unstoppable the way the game proceeded he took my bishop first on h6 I took
with the Queen threatening made in one then he took and then I played Knight g5 so the game kind
of transposed but using my four to zero advantage I just just completely destroyed this his position
and the safety of his King and after sacrificing the Queen for a moment materials actually kind of
balanced that mean he has two knights and a bishop from my queen but right now it's one to zero so
how do we make it to 2-0 to more attacking pieces how do we get the rook in the game f4 and then
rook up and over and after just a few more moves I brought the rook in my opponent had to resign
but none of this would have been possible if here I decided to back up because that would
have given him a moment to potentially get back into the game you have to use your four to zero
advantage and sacrifice and breakthrough hope that makes sense now let's look at one more game where
the sacrifice is a little bit less clear we're a little bit far from the action so this position
a student of mine was playing this game that's why you don't see a you know the names of the
opponent's students rated about 1100 on chess comm playing against the 1350 obviously the opening has
been pretty successful for white even though white has no material advantage white has a queen and
a rogue directly lined up against the enemy King now if you've been paying attention at this point
white once again has for attacking pieces you can argue that black has like a little bit of defense
going on but not really I mean some squares are guarded but the main pawns near the King have
no extra protection but it's kind of hard to break through so pause the video here if you want try to
find a way to even further develop White's piece count against the enemy King all right you need to
play the movie for this is the only move in the position that wins the game and at first glance
it doesn't look like it does much of anything when a lower rated player and when I say lower rated I
mean 1500 I just mean lower rated to myself 1500 1700 1200 800 when they think of this move they
think if takes I can take and then I have this that's what you'll see and if you didn't see
that now hopefully you see it but the other thing that you're doing is that you're disregarding this
entirely it's the opening of the bishop and here black is busted my student didn't find the movie
for my student play a bunch of other moves and the game was like 80 moves long and I think my
student ended up losing in the end game but the movie for just wins on the spot so for example
let's say black tries to like fight back f5 while here first of all you can take the pawn but even
on passant and then if something like rook f6 you have a 5 and if the rook goes back you have
1 2 3 4 5 pieces versus whatever it is and Bishop takes h6 is just decisive so all your pieces crash
through and you win the game none of this would be possible without the opening of the center of
the board with the movie for getting more pieces into the action and so we include today's session
of these three examples we had white in all of these games but obviously the same rules apply
for when you have the black pieces piece count when you are attacking super important you can
use it to gauge when you're sacrificing material to get to the enemy King or when you're bringing
more pieces to the party to then ultimately crash through a good player will use their
pawns and their pieces in a coordinated fashion to launch a successful attack on the enemy King