Kasimdzhanov's Attacking the King - For Experts
That's the title of the latest ChessBase DVD presented by former FIDE champion Rustam Kasimdzhanov. There are 23 clips, generally about 10 minutes apiece, 21 of which present attacks from game fragments. There's a brief intro, then one fragment apiece for the world champions from Steinitz through Kasparov, then eight fragments from Kasimdzhanov's own play, and finally a brief wrap-up.*
Who is it for? It's not really for the student looking for a didactic presentation. For that, a book like the Vukovic classic The Art of Attack is your best bet, and for more advanced players Aagaard's Attacking Manual 1 (and whenever it comes out, vol. 2) is the way to go. Generally speaking, it has to be this way: the amount of material in a video is minuscule in comparison with a book's contents.
If you're curious about the video for entertainment purposes, then it's worth considering. The games are well chosen on several levels. First, they are extremely diverse. Some attacks feature open centers, some closed. Sometimes they involve some sort of classical build-up, sometimes they seem to come out of a clear blue sky. Some flow naturally from overt positional factors; on other occasions, it seems like nothing other than tactical legerdemain. (And so on.) Second, Kasimdzhanov has attempted to present attacking games from the world champions that are characteristic of their style, and in this I think he has succeeded. That makes the disc a nice intro to the world champions, for those who are new to the game's history. Finally, his own games are very nice as well. He has a very active and even tricky style, and for us we get the best of both worlds: on the one hand he's a great player, so his games are at an extremely high level; on the other, he rarely plays in the absolutely highest-level events, so his games are usually new to us.
By emphasizing the disc's entertainment value while denying its role as a sort of primer, I don't mean that there's nothing to learn from the material. As with any collection of outstanding games, especially when they are annotated, the reader or viewer can benefit greatly by its study. So if one watches interactively, frequently stopping the video and trying to work everything out first, the training value can be significant. If not, then it's basically (good) entertainment.
* In two cases the "fragment" includes the whole game. For those who are concerned to have the entire game, fear not: all the games are given in full elsewhere on the disc.
Who is it for? It's not really for the student looking for a didactic presentation. For that, a book like the Vukovic classic The Art of Attack is your best bet, and for more advanced players Aagaard's Attacking Manual 1 (and whenever it comes out, vol. 2) is the way to go. Generally speaking, it has to be this way: the amount of material in a video is minuscule in comparison with a book's contents.
If you're curious about the video for entertainment purposes, then it's worth considering. The games are well chosen on several levels. First, they are extremely diverse. Some attacks feature open centers, some closed. Sometimes they involve some sort of classical build-up, sometimes they seem to come out of a clear blue sky. Some flow naturally from overt positional factors; on other occasions, it seems like nothing other than tactical legerdemain. (And so on.) Second, Kasimdzhanov has attempted to present attacking games from the world champions that are characteristic of their style, and in this I think he has succeeded. That makes the disc a nice intro to the world champions, for those who are new to the game's history. Finally, his own games are very nice as well. He has a very active and even tricky style, and for us we get the best of both worlds: on the one hand he's a great player, so his games are at an extremely high level; on the other, he rarely plays in the absolutely highest-level events, so his games are usually new to us.
By emphasizing the disc's entertainment value while denying its role as a sort of primer, I don't mean that there's nothing to learn from the material. As with any collection of outstanding games, especially when they are annotated, the reader or viewer can benefit greatly by its study. So if one watches interactively, frequently stopping the video and trying to work everything out first, the training value can be significant. If not, then it's basically (good) entertainment.
* In two cases the "fragment" includes the whole game. For those who are concerned to have the entire game, fear not: all the games are given in full elsewhere on the disc.