Attack - The dance to the death

With so much time doing mindless things in army, I have meditating recently on how to play chess. Okaaayy, I should correct myself. Not on the really basic level of how to move the pieces around in accordance to the rules, but really more on how to move the pieces so that you can win. The essence of it. Beginners playing chess for the first time, me included, are clueless about how play chess so that you can KO the enemy king. They do not have a goal, because there are just so many pieces standing in their way, each one interacting with the rest differently. Clearly, it takes some coordination between the pieces to win. Because a ill-coordinated army, is one that is waiting to be picked off by sniper fire - one by one.

I recently came up with the idea of how I should play chess. Attack aggressively. Why should that be? Should we not fear that the opponent will defend its pieces and wait you out? First of all, it takes one piece to attack another piece. If you direct your attack along a direction such that the piece-under-attack cannot return fire, then the opponent if it wants to save its piece, will either move that piece away, or defend it with another piece.

If the opponent's piece was already sitting on a good square, then you have managed to gained control of some space. It remains to be seen of course, whether you can maintain your grip on that square. You should straight away put that square to good use by posting some minor piece there where it can exert some influence in the surrounding area. Sometimes however, the attacking a piece in bad position causes your opponent to relocate it to better positions without the opponent having to waste 1 free move to move it else where. This is clearly what we do not want. If a piece is in a bad place, we want to trap it not chase it away. Or else do nothing for the moment. Because the opponent probably has many things to do with his free moves, either to initiate an attack, or relocate his pieces. Having to move that particular piece in bad place to a better place, means that he will have to give up the chance to attack you in that turn.

If the opponent defends the piece with another piece, this is where your chance comes in. Because each of you has the same number of pieces, if you place attacks on different pieces, and he has to defend everyone of them, there simply cannot be enough pieces to defend every piece with another piece. There will be definitely be the situation where one defender is defending many pieces. In this occasion, we then have a 'overworked piece'. By sacrificing one piece, you can lure the defending the piece away, and you can win the other pieces that the defender was defending originally.

Then when should we ever defend? We should defend only when it quite clear you can ascertain that your opponent threat is really nothing to it. Then you should parry it, and then continue whacking him. Or if your attack is faster and more deadly, just go ahead with your attack. It may even force him to pull back his forces to defend.

If one adopts a wait and see defense strategy from the start, then one is inviting other people to take potshots at you. If your defence was extremely solid, the enemy would not probably be so stupid to take their pieces and bang futilely against the wall. They would probably use some piece to lure your forces out of the defensive structure.

With an active attack strategy, we are really playing a game of bluff with other people. The game of chicken. If 2 guys goes head on with attack, then really your best strategy if you want to win, is to take a really big risk and just continue head on. The other guy will most probably chicken out. Leaving you the definite winner. Game theory analysis shows that that 2 players playing this optimal individual strategy results in stalemate. Clearly, I think we have a result for how the ultimate game of chess with 2 players playing with the best strategy be like. Its either a white win, or a draw. I include the possibility of a white win because white moves first; maybe white will extinguish its opponent first in a race on both sides to attack one another.

进攻战略，上攻谋，次攻心，下攻城。There is nothing more complete a victory than convincing your opponent that he cannot possibly win against you. That's the definition of being utterly defeated.