Right from when we first start to play chess, we are taught quick knock-out ways of checkmating our opponent's king. We quickly learn Scholar's mate and other speedy methods of scoring an easy win. At that point, the more difficult and sophisticated job of trying to break down a castled king is only a vague outline in our mind. Eventually we develop various slapdash methods of attacking the king that has fled to safety. However, it seems to me that the topic of attacking the castled king is poorly represented in chess literature, and as a consequence, very few of us are true masters of this tricky subject.

   As a chess player I know there is almost always more to be learned from defeats than victories, especially the spectacular ones. So, though these two books will inevitably fall short of their aim, I hope the reader will agree that at least I fought valiantly to make sure that it was not by much.