King’s Indian Attack: The Ultimate Attacking Repertoire.
One of the foremost ways to win quickly in chess is to create a devastating attack on the kingside. But many openings are designed for quiet defensive play. Apart from the sicilian and yugoslav attack, there is one opening which really shatters the unparalleled reality of combative attacking play. The King’s indian attack!!! This system, also known as the barcza system, is a very flexible repertoire which is highly popular in top level chess. White set’s up a defensive position which, at a glance looks very subtle, but at second view ,Suicidal!
White usually starts with 1 Nf3 then g3 bg2 and then quickly castles early in the game. This may look harmless but, you can’t judge a move by it’s appearance but rather by its effect! White’s idea is to play h2 -h4 and slowly cramp black on the kingside and bring his pieces to optimal squares where they can directly attack the black king, however there are other move orders through which white can enter this exact same set up. He can start with 1.e4 and then play g3 bg2 and castle later on.
White’s next move will be d3 and e4 where white can grab , attack , and nullify the centre whereas black will use the queenside for a crushing minority attack
You can see that in this image below white has set up the most basic KIA formation. He has fianchettoed his light squared bishop , he has his pawns ideally placed on g3,e4 and d3 whereas black is fighting for the centre and the queenside. White will later play h2 to h4 looking to attack on the black kingside. whereas black is gonna try to create a minority attack on the queenside with his pieces. it is a race for doom since whoever succeeds in attacking first shall be perished. it looks unlikely for white in this scenario to create a powerful kingside attack, but believe it or not, white is gonna have all his pieces aimed and ready to attack on the kingside whereas black will have to beg for mercy to stop his sudden doom.
here is the attacking plan.. white is gonna push his e pawn in the centre,play h2-h4 , bring his d2 knight to g4 via f1-h2 and then develop his queen and bishop and look to create weaknesses on the black kinside by pushing his pawn all the way to h6. sounds complicated, right? but in fact this attack is really easy to create and execute. if black wants to prevent this idea, then he play an early pawn push to e5. wit this black has nullified whites major plan. the pawn can,t be pushed to the e5 square ,the knight cannot jump to g4 and the bishop also can,t be developed to f4, and white has no extra space in the centre .so what to do in this scenario? well ,i have another equally devastating plan to attack on the kingside.
Since white can’t play the direct attack, white can gain a equally strong attack by pushing his f pawn to f4! in this example, let’s say , white has the knight on f3, preventing the critical f4 advance. so all white has to do is to remove his knight out of the way of the f pawn! but where can it go? e5 is controlled by the knight and h4 is risky because of the queen and bishop on the same diagonal, the only move left for white now is to play ne1 and then push his f pawn. although this is the main continuation, this move has a certain drawback, that the white queen won’t be able to participate in the attack. because after the advance of the f pawn, white has opened up a diagonal from e1-h4 which the white queen can easily get access to via e1! so this is certainly bad idea, white knew how to take advantage of this position and found a very ingenious way to get his pieces into the attack 8 h3 ! a very clever idea, creating a luft for the knight on h2 for the advance of the f pawn! after this move, all of the white pieces can easily participate into the attack
.. one such example of this swashbuckling opening play is the famous game between fischer and myagmarsuren which continued with 8 e5! nd7 9Re1 b5 10 nf1 b4 11 h4. white followed our basic steps for the avalancial attack which will be unleashed in a few moves from now. a5. myagmarsuren thinks he has got a great queenside initiative, but this is not what the great pioneer of this wonderful masterpiece foresaw. 12 Bf4! a4!13.a3! a beautiful move! blocking the queenside. bxa3 14 bxa3 Na5 15 ne3! aiming the pieces at the kingside. ba6 16.bh3 d4 17 nf1 it looks like white,s attack reached nowhere but, fischer knows how to manoeuvre his pieces to optimal attacking squares!. nb6 18 ng5! looks like a beginner move, but in fact white has a vicious threat of bringing the queen to h5 and delivering checkmate! nd5 19.bd2 of course saving the precious bishop for the vicious attack. Bxg5 20.Bxg5 attacking the black queen. Qd7, 21.Qh5! what did i tell you? that fischer calculated everything very precisely and now he has the bishop pair and they are preparing for a ghastly attack on black’s king.Rfc8 black desperately tries to save the game by means of a minority attack,but white,s next move indicates that there is gonna be peril on the pier! Nd2! white’s most passive piece is threatening to get into the game. nc3 23Bf6!! the bishop is shot off the catapult!Qe8 if black takes the bishop, then exf6 and a inevitable checkmate on g7 or at least a better chance of winning for white. 24 ne4! , g6 25 Qg5 nxe4 26 Rxe4 c5 27 h5! now black will be suffocated to death within the span of 4 moves from now. cxd3 with the desperate attempt to make a silk purse out of a sows ear .28 Rh4! with the idea of opening the h file with hxg6. Ra7 29 Bg2!! a silent murderer, white has a deep idea of delivering checkmate in two moves which includes the participation of the light squared bishop. dxc2 threatening to promote, and now is the game gonna finish with a brilliant checkmate delivered not by the queen but with the rook and bishop!. seems unlikely but now, 30 Qh6! threatening mate on g7 Qf8, black has to react and now the aesthetic finish, Qxh7+!!. 1–0.
If the queen is taken then hxg6 with the discovered check by the white rook on h4, kxg6 and now comes the role of the king’s indian bishop, be4#.
So now you witnessed the striking power of this deadly novelty, and how can this be used to obliterate the strongest of players, this crushing game clearly demonstrated that, and since you’ve learnt how to use this novelty ,it’s time to put the weapon to test!.
