Accidental and coordinated threats

Based on Tempo's recent explorations, I have gained appreciation for two dimensions of threats in my games. One, the dimension of basic tactics, or 'accidents' (e.g., your opponent gives you the opportunity to skewer his queen or fork his king and queen). I now see this dimension as superficial but extremely important. This is the dimension that I first really focused on in my chess training: the side with more material wins, so do what you can to gain a material advantage. Since my games rarely reach anything but a very lopsided endgame, this approach works. Limited endgame and opening knowledge required. Tactics is God. I call this superficial because avoiding accidents is necessary but not sufficient to understand the full nature of threats.

The second dimension is the art of attacking the King. Instead of just hoping to get to an endgame with more material, which happens less and less frequently, it becomes a goal to coordinate pieces and attack the enemy king. This goal is guiding every move. Opening lines and coordinating pieces for an attack becomes the main goal once the pieces are developed. Of course, staying on top of accidents is still necessary, but they are constraints within which the real action is taking place. And sometimes you just have to defend against an attack yourself to stay alive!

Different players typically start out in chess with a focus on one or the other dimension. I started with the first, and I have a serious deficit in my knowledge of attack as a result. I have a tendency to place pieces somewhat haphazardly, where I think they will encourage isolated little accidents from my opponent. I am just starting to try to coordinate my pieces with the goal of king attack instead (all within the constraints of avoiding and exploiting accidents, of course). When I finish the Circles, after taking a little break I will read what many have called the Art of Attack for the novice, The Art of Checkmate (see their summary on when to attack here). I should read that post before every game. I have been trying to use their ideas to help me guide my planning during the game. It seems to help a lot.

Many, such as Seirawan, started by focusing on attack as the key goal, not simple tactics. Many other people I play obviously have the same starting emphasis. They tend to be better players in the long run, if not a bit easy to parry when they are just starting out (they tend to go for Scholar's mate in every game). My cousin (who never read a chess book) and I played a game about two years ago. His sole purpose was attack. What did he do? Opened his lines with a pawn storm, moved the rooks to those lines, and attacked. He didn't even bother to castle, as it wastes time. He beat me. He's quite good at chess, and his only education in the game was playing a lot, and independently developing an overall plan: push pawns to open lines, and then destroy. He is also incredibly smart, which probably helped. Of course, such aggression can sometimes backfire, but it sure makes for fun games, and my main point is that starting with such an approach will ultimately lead to a more interesting command of, and understanding of, the flow of a game, more than the accident-focused approach to threats.

I think an inadequate feel for attacks in chess is my main stumbling block to reaching my goal (a rating of 1500). As Stean suggests (in one of my favorite chess excerpts of all time), once I get competent with attack, I will start to realize I need to learn some strategy. This is the natural chess learning progression...