Attacking 101: Volume #001 - Joel Johnson

The goal of the books in this series Attacking 101 is to provide detailed analysis of my own attack games played against lower rated players. The players are all rated in the range of 1000 to 1800 - the types of players you would frequently encounter at your local chess club, local tournaments, online, and at home.

They make the same errors you regularly witness in your games but here you get to see a Chess Master dissect and exploit the moves, show why they are wrong, and how to punish the opponent‘s poor play.

Joel Johnson, unlike nearly all other chess masters, started playing tournament chess at the advanced age of 17. But it did not take long before success struck, in just his third chess tourney, Joel won the 1972 Merrimack Valley High Chess Championship (Lowell, MA area).

Less than six years later, Joel earned the National Master title, raising his USCF rating from 1342 to 2320, followed shortly thereafter, by earning the Life Master title. As a player, Joel is a tactical chess player that has won many chess tournaments during his roughly thirty-five years of playing chess at the Master Level.

During the summer of 2007, Joel won the 2007 U.S. Senior Chess Championship. Over the last few years, Joel has been the most active chess player in the state of Arizona, playing more than triple the number of USCF rated games, than the next most active player.

In addition to playing, Joel was an award winning Editor of "Chess Horizons", the official state chess magazine for the state of Massachusetts and is a past Games Editor for the magazine.

During his career, Joel has been involved in all aspects of chess, from organizing and directing chess tournaments, serving as a chess magazine editor, serving as a games editor, creating chess clubs, writing chess books (including the best selling "Formation Attacks", "Formation Attack Strategies", and the recently released "Positional Attacks"), winning many chess tourneys, to being a very highly sought after chess coach, possessing great communication skills and many successful students.