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Reviews

The Art of Attack in Chess

Reviewed by Bill Whited

8/4/02

The Art of Attack in Chess, by Vladimir Vukovic (Cadogan / Everyman, 1998). 352 pp.

Many years ago, when I was starting to play chess seriously, I picked up an English descriptive notation version of Vladimir Vukovic’s The Art of Attack in Chess. First published in 1965, it is still one of the best books on learning to attack that remains in print. Cadogan (now Everyman) republished it in algebraic notation in 1998 and I immediately went out and added it to my collection.

Learning how to attack is an art, and one that is sadly neglected in a lot of instructional books. While I completely agree that tactical vision is a critical skill for any player wishing to improve, mastering the three move cheap shot will only take you so far. Vukovic explains how to attack, and just as importantly, when to attack. He starts with the attack against the uncastled king, and then proceeds from there to explore all of the elements necessary to carry out a successful attack. Unlike Tarrasch and many modern authors, he is not interested in the accumulation of small advantages and then seeking a win in the end game. There is nothing wrong with this approach, but if you are going to improve your game, you must learn how to attack, if for no other reason than to be able to defend against one.

Vukovic’s main thesis relies on the use of focal points, which he defines as a “weak square” for the defender and a strong attacking point for the aggressor. Squares that allow an attacker to threaten mate are called mating focal points, while squares which allow the king to be harassed or the attacker to invade the castled position are referred to as strategic or auxiliary focal points. Focal points that are all of the same color are referred to as a “network of weak squares”. Once again, the theory of strong and weak squares goes back to Wilhelm Steinitz but Vukovic addresses their role in the completion of a successful attack as opposed to the context of the game in general.

His focus on how to sacrifice and attack is what sets the book apart from most standard middle game texts. I want to stress that this in not a book on tactics but rather a monograph on the positional basis of the attack. Forks, skewers and x-ray attacks form the bulk of a tactician’s bag of tricks, but if he doesn’t know how to plan and execute an attack, he is forced to wait for an opponent’s misstep. The great attacking masters knew this and if you study game collections from the late 19th century and earlier 20th, you will see many of Vukovic’s ideas in practice. Chess is neither solely positional nor tactical but exists along a continuum with Tigran Petrosian on one end and Mikhail Tal on the other. Most of the other great masters are somewhere in between.

The Art of Attack in Chess teaches an intermediate player how to plan and carry out an attack. I would recommend studying Seirawan’s Winning Chess Strategies and Winning Chess Tactics before tackling Vukovic, but I wholeheartedly recommend it as a book that should be part of the library of anybody who is seeking to improve. Everyman is to be commended for re-issuing it in algebraic since most players today have trouble with English descriptive notation. I wish more publishers would take the trouble to reset these classics into algebraic since there is a tremendous amount of chess knowledge locked up in these books that is as valid today as it was 40 years ago or earlier.