Attacking Technique

by Colin Crouch

A guide showing various ways to sharpen your attacking technique in chess. It shows how to exploit an opponent's weaknesses, when and how to exchange off into a winning endgame, describes how to launch attacks and handle desperate counterplay, and includes practical test positions.

Genres: Chess

112 pages, Paperback

First published September 15, 1996

Reviews

[Randy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked this book, despite a few problems. Even though Crouch gives only 17 annotated games, most are quite instructional. The basic idea is that there is a period before a successful attack is possible, which Crouch calls "Fighting Chess". I think this is a nice idea - first you fight for an advantage. There is no real technique in doing this, it is about the application of positional knowledge, and perhaps finding tactics or noticing blunders. When you have a big material advantage, the attack is "a matter of technique". If you are a piece up in a middlegame, and have decent technique, you will win before the endgame. When your advantage is positional and not material, the same is true, once you have everything in place, meaning you have won the "fighting" part of the game, then you can proceed to attack, and if your attacking technique is good enough, it will be successful and you will win.

The main problems I found were related to the analysis of the games. Several were clearly skewed based on the outcome and one was simply the wrong moves:

In Morozevich-Petursson Lloyds Bank op 18th (1994) Round 8 the book gives and analyzes 15.Bb1 when the databases seem to agree the 15.Qb1 was played. This makes the game moves make more sense - it also makes most of Crouch's analysis meaningless.

The last chapter about "when the attack goes wrong" was muddy at best, it's two games in which Crouch's analysis just doesn't hold water. It's one thing when a comment to a move made me question it to the point of turning on an engine and finding Crouch way off, but in the last game the editor (Nunn) had to step in and correct some of the analysis.

I think that if this book hadn't been on my shelf so long, I would have skipped it in favor of either a newer attacking game collection, or putting more time into re-reading Art of Attack in Chess.