Attacking Chess Courses

Below about 1500, tactics and mating-pattern practice are free and are the usual first step, so a chess attack course is optional. If you do want a dedicated course, the best-documented choice by level is ChessMood's Fearless Warrior ($150 alone, 800-2000 per the seller, as of 8 November 2026), and Attack Like a Viking ($250, 1500-2600) from about 1500. This guide is based on published documentation, pricing and reports, and we found few attacking courses outside ChessMood in the catalogues we could read.

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Test depth: Public information only. Nobody at ChessCourseFinder has taken these courses. This page is based on seller pages read on 8 November 2026. How we review explains the limits. This page is part of our skills guides.

What attacking chess involves

Attacking well is mostly a decision about timing, followed by calculation. The skill has four parts: judging whether the position justifies an attack, bringing enough pieces, opening a line to the king, and calculating the finish. It rests on tactics and mating patterns, and conventional coaching advice is to get those habits first, because an attack that misses a defender's resource tends to lose material. That is received wisdom, not research.

FM Viktor Neustroev sets out two preconditions on a Tricks of Chess lesson page: the centre should be closed or stable so the opponent cannot get counterplay there, and you should have more pieces on the side where the enemy king stands, or see how to bring them. Neustroev adds that the piece majority is not required if the king is already compromised (Tricks of Chess). Chessworld's checklist, on a site that also sells an attacking course, adds a question worth asking: what happens if your first sacrifice is declined (Chessworld guide)?

The plan also depends on where the kings are. This table is conventional coaching wisdom:

Kingsights' guide to pawn storms gives the same two conditions for that last row: your king is not behind the pawns you push, and the centre is closed or fixed (Kingsights).

A worked example of counting. The Greek Gift sacrifice, Bxh7+ Kxh7 followed by Ng5+ and the queen coming to the h-file, is conventionally taught with a short checklist. Your bishop is on the b1-h7 diagonal; a knight can reach g5; your queen can reach h5 or the h-file quickly; the enemy king is on g8 with h7 guarded only by the king; and no enemy knight stands on f6. If two of those conditions are missing, you have the shape of the attack but not the attack. Lichess Practice has a free interactive Greek Gift study.

Does your play have this gap?

These are common coaching exercises, and our reading of the results is a rule of thumb. Go through your last ten decisive games and find those where a king was exposed, stuck in the centre, or the players castled on opposite sides. Mark each one:

• (a) Chance not taken. The engine or your own review shows an attack you did not start.
• (b) Attack failed for lack of force. Too few pieces joined, or the centre opened against you.
• (c) Attack failed tactically. You missed a defence or a capture.
• (d) No attacking chances arose. The game never had the conditions.

If (a) and (b) lead, an attacking course addresses your problem directly. If (c) leads, go to tactics or calculation first. If (d) leads, the question is your openings and middlegame plans, so an attacking course has little to work on. If you lost because someone else attacked you, see defending and converting.

Fearless Warrior's free introduction includes two lessons that work as a quick check: "Can you find the plan?" and "When do we attack?" (page).

A sensible order of study

This order reflects conventional coaching, not a tested curriculum:

1. Tactics and basic mating patterns, including Lichess's free "Exposed king", "Kingside attack" and "Attacking f2 or f7" themes (themes page).
2. Punishing a king left in the centre, where the plan is easiest to see.
3. Opening lines, and the sacrifices that do it.
4. Opposite-side castling races.
5. Same-side attacks, which take finer judgement.
6. Unsound attacks: how to recognise them, in your own games and your opponent's.

Research does not settle this. Charness and colleagues (2005) found that time spent on serious study alone was a stronger predictor of tournament rating than formal instruction or tournament play in the groups they surveyed (Crossref record). It was a correlational self-report survey with nothing specific to attacking play, so it cannot tell you that a course works or that one does not. It is a reminder that a course only counts if you do the work that goes with it.

What to buy by level

Levels are approximate.

• Under about 1200: nothing yet; tactics first.
• About 1200 to 1800: Fearless Warrior (the shorter course) or a free alternative.
• About 1500 to 2200: Attack Like a Viking, or both ChessMood courses if you are paying for the library.

How we chose

We required a stated rating range, a listed count of lessons and puzzles, a listed syllabus, and a readable price. We found few outside ChessMood: Chess.com's lessons library has an Attacking category but we could not see which courses sit in it or how they are gated (Chess.com lessons), and a title "Attack and Win" by GM Igor Smirnov appeared in TheChessWorld search listings on 8 November 2026 with no details we could read (we could not open the product page directly).

Two books also appeared in search listings on 8 November 2026: Vladimir Vukovic's The Art of Attack in Chess and Michael Prusikin's Attacking Strategies for Club Players, which lists a chapter on pawn storms with opposite-side castling. We could not open the product pages directly, so we give no price or further detail.

The best-documented options

Ratings are ChessMood's, with no rating system named. Calculated from listed figures, Fearless Warrior alone is about $61 per listed video hour (2h 28m) and Viking about $40 (6h 18m). Bought together, $400 for 8h 46m is about $46 an hour. Listed hours are not study time.

Fearless Warrior

The page names GM Hovhannes Gabuzyan as coach, and its ten sections run from Exposed King to Tactics and mating patterns. Downsides: no date is shown; and at 2h 28m listed, $150 alone is a high price per hour.

Attack Like a Viking

Same coach, per the page. Its 18 sections cover exposed and central kings, sacrifices, open lines, pawn breakthroughs, same-side and opposite-side castling attacks, attacking with bishops and exchanges, and punishing unsound attacks. A 17-episode test (35m 5s) follows the conclusion. Downsides: $250 alone; the free preview is the introduction and Section 1 (Exposed King) only; no date is shown.

Which first? A section-by-section comparison

Times below are the sellers' listed section lengths. The pairing of topics is ours, made from the section titles.

The seven Viking-only sections are Expose the weak King, Bishop pair, Opposite color Bishop attack, Exploiting weakness, Creating weakness and provocation, Prophylaxis, and Punishing nonsense attacks. Together they make up about 28% of its listed time.

Nine of Fearless Warrior's ten topic sections have a matching Viking topic, usually at greater length. So buying both does not mean twice the new subjects, though we cannot say how much the content repeats without taking them. If you are about 1500 or lower, start with Fearless Warrior's unlocked lessons. The courses differ most in same-side attacks, and in that closing group on weakening, prophylaxis and unsound attacks.

What the seller's pages do not tell you

• How much the two courses overlap in content. Section lengths show emphasis; they do not show whether the examples repeat.
• What the unlocked previews leave out. Both previews stop after Exposed King (about 26 minutes for Fearless Warrior and 19 for Viking), so you cannot see the castling-attack sections before paying.
• When they were made. Neither page shows a date.
• What your rating is on their scale. The system behind "800-2000" is not named.

Who should skip this

Skip if you often lose to simple tactics (see tactics), if you mostly defend and convert (see defending and converting), or if you cannot spare study time for a second course. A subscription is hard to justify for one 2-hour course; see ChessMood pricing.

The free resource that covers the same ground

Lichess Practice includes Fundamental and Advanced Tactics (Greek Gift, deflection, attraction and others) plus Checkmates (Lichess Practice); see our Lichess guide. For free attacking positions, Lichess's themes page showed 192,809 "Exposed king" puzzles on 8 November 2026. Calculation matters for attacks; see calculation courses. For general buying advice, read how to choose a chess course.

If you want the unlocked lessons first, ChessMood's free Basic plan is the route.