For all the talk of strategy, checkmate ends the game. And hunting the enemy king is the first and final love for many chess players, the ultimate essence of the game.
The high stake sacrifice, tenacious defense, and the brilliant finishing move are a major part of many of the most beloved games in history.
Now Mato Jelic, the hugely popular chess coach, has produced an extraordinary 28-hour investigation and training into the art of King Hunt.
Almost 600 games are examined as Mato deconstructs some of the greatest attacks on the king ever played, teaching you how to win games in the most satisfying way imaginable!
By the end of this two-part course, you will have absorbed hundreds of tactical ideas and patterns for winning with attacks on the castled king and sacrifices on each of the classic target squares h7/h2, f6/f3, g6/g3, and h6/h3.
Want to win more games with exciting onslaughts and create works of art you’re proud to show to others? Learn the art of attacking the king in chess with The King Hunt (Part 1 and 2) with Mato Jelic!
About the Author:
Mato Jelic is one of the most popular chess presenters and teachers, whose focus is mainly on helping beginners reach new heights. His lessons are simple and effective – and thousands of novices are swarming to them for chess tips.
Mato Jelic is a quiet-spoken chess coach and his style makes it very easy for players of any level to understand what he is explaining and really absorb the knowledge provided.
How is this course going to help me?
The ability to successfully attacking the king in chess is an essential skill for any ambitious chess player. To develop a good sense of when to start an attack, how to build up an attack, when it is best not to start an attack, and to improve your attacking abilities, you need to absorb and study plenty of attacking patterns.
Throughout this course, Mato Jelic provides you with hundreds of tactical patterns to study and later recognize in your own games.
Tactical pattern recognition helps you to improve your calculation as patterns you’ve noticed in the past come to your mind in your games.
Mato Jelic’s examples in this course are well-structured and based on five elementary attacking patterns like the sacrifice on h7/h2 or the sacrifice on g6/g3. This structure follows simple tactical concepts which leads you to find more targets in own games.
Here’s what you’ll learn:
The Sacrifice on h7/h2 – The Greek Gift Sacrifice
A sacrifice on h7 is possible on some special occasions. Usually, this sacrifice involves a White bishop on the b1-h7 diagonal, a White knight on f3 which can come to g5 with a check and a White queen which then joins the action on the kingside.
In the position o the right, White can play 1.Bxh7+! Kxh7 2.Ng5+ Kg8 3.Qh5 (threatening mate on h7) 3…Re8 4.Qxf7+ Kh8 5.Nxe6!, attacking the Black queen and threatening mate on g7. Black is totally lost.
The Sacrifice on f6/f3
The f3 square in White’s camp and the equivalent on f6 in Black’s camp are particularly endangered with a kingside-castled king.
There is often a knight on these squares which tends to be a key defender of the kingside. Therefore, sacrifices to eliminate this defending piece are looming.
In this example, White eliminated one of the last defenders of Black’s kingside with the exchange sacrifice 1.Rxf6! gxf6 2.Bxh6 and there was no defense for Black against the mating attack.
Sometimes, you can also sacrifice a piece on f3 or f6 when this square is empty. The idea can be to destroy the opponent’s pawn structure in front of the king to close any escape routes for the enemy’s king
By absorbing as many of these patterns as possible, you’ll be able to identify pieces or squares which are perhaps exploitable. This can also help you to spot the not-so-obvious moves.