When someone castles against me, I have a hard time penetrating the defense. Its the typical 3 pawn system, with the knight and rook protecting the king. Can't seem to find a way to infiltrate it. Any suggestions.

You basically just asked "How do I win at chess?"

I like to use a combination of my pieces to achieve this effect.

Super wide question, roughly equivalent to "How do I attack in chess". Read up on basic tactics and strategy, alternatively post some concrete examples for us to answer

I only asked because I am a relatively good player, but sometimes I find myself with zero chance of getting to the king and I will sacrifice a knight just to get one of the pawns out of the way. Or if there was an opening that made someone have to move their king or their rook.

I have no idea how good you are, so this may be beyond your level or below your level of who knows, but what you are looking for is the book Art of Attack by Vukovic (sp?). It rather brilliantly and patiently shows you the exact mechanisms for attacking castled positions in all sorts of setups.

My short answers would be:

1) Control the kingside (or castle queenside) and use your kingside pawns to launch a pawnstorm, shoving your pawns up the board and busting up his castled position.

2) Create a significant kingside material advantage (i.e. have all your pieces working together pointing toward the kingside while his pieces are coordinated elsewhere) and find an advantageous piece sacrifice.

3) If none of those options are available, find another way to win. You can't always attack a castled position.

As a general rule, most attacks against the castled King start by driving the Knight away with a pawn or exchanging it for your Bishop or Knight.

Once this is achieved, you can line up your pieces against the rook's pawn. This will force the opponent to advance a pawn in front of his king, which creates weaknesses you can exploit to open lines.

I tried to find some games showing this plan in operation:
http://www.365chess.com/view_game.php?g=2286597
http://www.365chess.com/view_game.php?g=1232540

There are other variations, for example where the Bishop is sacrificed for the pawn to draw the King into the open. But in general the key plan is to remove the Knight - if this is not possible, then usually you don't have any chance of a successful attack.

Thanks for the suggestions. I myself castle kingside which I now see is what prevents me from the pawn attack. Perhaps castling queenside may help with my game.

You absolutely can attack the kingside with a pawnstorm while castled kingside, in many positions. In others, of course, it is suicide, but it is frequently the correct play.

If you have enough control of the center and kingside, you can still castle short and safely launch your pawns.

Sometimes a direct kingside attack just isn't the way to treat the position. If he has no weaknesses in front of his king you usually need a massive concentration of forces or a pawn storm to succeed. If both isn't available, try to play in other parts of the board first. Sometimes a central or queenside attack can indirectly create chances for a mating attack by creating weaknesses or diverting the opponent's forces away from the defence of his king.

You have to remember though that the point of a pawn attack is to open lines for the rooks and Queen behind the pawns. A pwan attack typically has chances of success only when the opponent's king shelter is weakened (when he has advanced one of the pawns in front of the King) giving you a target for your advancing pawns to latch on to.

You shouldn't forget that there are other ways to win a chess game other than a direct attack on the King. Sometimes you can win by exchanging into an endgame and promoting your pawn to a queen. Or sometimes the threat of winning an endgame might force your opponent to weaken his King, giving you attacking chances. There's more to chess than just Kingside attacks.

This plus a million.

You have to mate better than your opponent to be good at chess.

PUN TOTALLY INTENDED

What everyone here is getting at, OP, is that you need to adopt a different thought process. Don't ask, "How can I attack his castled king?" Instead, ask, "What is the plan my position calls for?" Sometimes it will clearly call for a kingside attack, sometimes it'll call for quiet positional play or a build-up in the center, sometimes it'll call for a minority attack. (If you don't know what a minority attack is, you should look it up. All "good" players should be familiar with it and when it should be used.) The checkmate of the enemy king is your ultimate objective, but there are many different ways to achieve that end; you need to find the one that is right for your position.

link This is a good cd on this topic.

Of course, this is a simple question with no simple answer, but the first thought I had was Vukovic's book, because he takes a very systematic approach to methods of attacking the castled king. Although much of his analysis has been improved by John Nunn's editing (aka computer analysis), it's still a great book.

Art of attack by Vukovic

This should help you in what you need.


Link to amazon http://www.amazon.com/Art-Attack-Che...3090125&sr=8-1

Since using the pawn blitz and some of the tips in here I have been able to get my rating up to 1150 and 12 games over .500 on chess.com. Definitely improved my game from this thread. Thanks!