Attacking An Uncastled King

     Once upon a time when I was a young patzer chess books were a frequent purchase, but one day I realized two things about chess books: 1) most of them never got studied and 2) they didn’t seem to help much. Then one day I had another epiphany...over the board chess had little interest for me and what I really liked was postal play. 
     A correspondence master rating seemed within reach and to that end specialty opening books and foreign chess magazines became important purchases. 
    The problem is that when you start out in postal chess as a kid in Class C reaching master takes a long time...remember this was using post cards because computers and the Internet were in the future. 
    After getting to within about hundred points of my goal life interfered and the result was a 13 year hiatus. By the time I returned to correspondence play it was being done on the Internet and Fritz 5.32 was on the scene. Climbing higher proved impossible because while using Fritz was illegal the rules didn’t matter to a lot of people. The result was that instead of being a young patzer I found myself an old patzer. 

     Things might have been different if I had found Purdy back in the old days. The simplicity and clarity with which he wrote makes him one of the greatest instructors ever. A sample of his advice: 

* When playing against an isolated d-Pawn avoid Bd3 (or ...Bd6) 
*The average player will more easily learn to play commonsense chess from the games of Morphy than any other player...we commend them to all who find modern games too complex to understand. 
* Positional play is the treatment of positions in which sound tactical play is not possible. It means strengthening one’s own position or weakening the opponent’s...if neither is possible avoid weakening your own position. 

     Purdy wrote that to play chess well requires imagination and intuition and you will develop these qualities by thinking methodically and at the same time you will avoid many blunders. To this end he devised the Purdy Method to be followed at every move: 

(1) What are his threats or his objective? Before parrying them, see if they can be ignored. 
(2) Have I a sound combination? The emphasis is on sound. A lot of rating challenged players seem to think just willy-nilly giving up a piece is playing tactical chess, but quite often they are just throwing away a piece for nothing.
(3) If there is not a sound tactical continuation, and there usually isn’t, what should be my aims? This is where planning comes in and that does not necessarily mean a 20 move long plan. It often is nothing more than the improvement of a piece’s position. Hint: if you can’t think of anything to do, find your least active piece and try to improve its position. 
(4) Before playing any move ask if it will allow you opponent a sound combination. 
(5) During your opponent’s turn to move, make a reconnaissance, looking quickly all the squares each piece commands; ask how safe are the Kings and other pieces, what Pawns are weak and what squares? (Note: this is going to require that somewhere along the line that a player must become familiar with strategy)
(6) I might add this: most gross blunders (dropping pieces, etc.) can be eliminated by visually scanning ranks files and diagonals after your opponent moves and before you move. 

     Following his advice won’t make you a Master, but it will eliminate a lot of blunders and raise you rating...how much is anybody’s guess. 
     When attacking the King it makes no difference whether it is uncastled or has been driven from its castled home, the problem facing the attacker is the same. It should be mentioned that just because a King is uncastled, a mating attack is not always justified. Its loss of castling must be accompanied by its exposure to attack. 

An attack against an uncastled King usually has three phases: 
1) draw it away 
2) pursue it and 
3) set up a mating net. 

    That said, there have been times when the King escaped, so the attacker has to be alert to make sure the prey can't get away. A good example is seen in this offbeat variation of Alekhine’s Defense: 1.e4 Nf6 2.Bc4 Nxe4 3.Bxf7+ Kxf7 4.Qh5+ Black can’t castle and white regains the sacrificed N, but has he no advantage whatsoever in spite of the fact the black's King appears to be in serious danger. In fact, black may actually stand a little better.