The Elements of Tactics: A Primer.

The Double Threat.

If you are new to chess, the sequences that good players use to win games may
seem impossibly complicated. But most of them actually are based on just a few
general concepts combined ingeniously and persistently. This frame and the ones
that follow explain the concepts broadly. The rest of the site teaches their use in
detail.

The most important idea in chess is the double threat. Generally speaking a double
threat is any move you make that presents your opponent with two problems at the
same time. Since each player can make just one move per turn, your opponent only
has time to address one of the threats you have made. On your next turn you
execute the other one. Maybe your first move checks his king and attacks another
of his pieces at the same time; or maybe you threaten one of his pieces and are
building a threat of checkmate elsewhere. The result is the same: your opponent
has to spend his next move dealing with your threat against his king, and then you
get to take the other piece you were threatening.

The universe of chess tactics can be divided into four or five great families of
ideas, each of them a variation on the logic of the double threat. This site is
organized around them:

1. The first family, and the best-known type of double threat, is the forka move
where one of your pieces attacks two enemy pieces at the same time. You no doubt
have seen examples of knight forks if you have played chess for a while; the knight
naturally lends itself to moves in which it attacks two pieces at once. But the same
idea can be executed with your queen or with other pieces, as we shall see.

2. A second type of double threat, and another family of tactical ideas, is

the discovered attack. This occurs when you move one of your pieces out of the
way of another so that both of them make separate attacks against your opponent.
Again, he only has time to parry one of the threats. You play out the other one on
your next move.

3. A third family of tactical ideas involves the pin or skewer. These occur when two
of your opponents pieces are on the same line and you place an attacker so that it
runs through both of them. In effect you again are making a double threatone
threat against the piece in front and another against the piece behind it.

4. And then there are countless other situations that may be lumped under the
heading of removing the guard, in which you capture or harry an enemy piece that
guards something else you want to take. Your opponent cant defend against both
threats on the one turn allowed to him, so you are able to play one of them or the
other.

In effect most games of chess are contests to see who can find a way to use one of
those tactical techniques first. One successful fork (or discovery, or skewer, etc.)
often decides a game by giving one player an insurmountable advantage over the
other. This is why Richard Teichmann said that chess is 99% tactics; and it is why
mastery of tactics is the key to having fun at the chessboard, not to mention
winning.

[Note: A fifth family of tactical operations involves mating patterns: characteristic

ways that kings get trapped. These are treated in the last section of this site. They
do not necessarily involve the logic of the double threat in the way that those
tactical devices just described do. We also are leaving aside a few other, more
minor families of tactics for now.]

The Loose Piece.

Another key idea in chess is the loose piece. A loose piece is simply a piece that
has no protection. It is common for players to leave pieces unprotected here and
there; as long as they arent being attacked, they look safe enough. But loose pieces
make perfect targets for the double threats described a moment ago. Suppose your
queen performs a fork, attacking your opponents king and one of his rooks at the
same time. He moves his king. Now you can use your queen to take his rookif it
is unprotected. But if the rook is guarded you wont be able to take it because the
cost will be too high: your queen will be captured afterwards.

We can turn this point into advice for practical play. You want to be aware of loose
pieces on the board at all times. Any piece your opponent has left unguarded is a
possible target for a tactical strike; any piece of yours that is left unguarded is a
vulnerability. Indeed, you want to not only notice loose enemy pieces but also look
for ways to create them. We will see countless examples in the studies to come.
("Loose pieces" also can be defined to include enemy pieces that
are underdefended: attacked once and defended once by a fellow piece. As we shall
see, pieces in that condition sometimes can make targets just as good as pieces
with no protection at all.)
The great chess writer Cecil Purdy stated the point as a rule: "Never leave or place
a piece loose without first looking for a possible fork or pin, and never see an
enemy piece loose without doing the same." Do you follow this advice already?
Many inexperienced players don't. When they put a piece onto a new square, they
mostly just check to make sure it won't get taken there. Purdy's advice is different.
It is to ask whether your piece has protection on its new square; and if it doesn't, to
ask carefully whether a fork or pin or other tactic might be launched against it. You
may not yet understand quite what it means to look for forks or pins, but you will
soon; and then following Purdy's counsel will save you many sorrows.

The Forcing Move.

Sometimes in chess you do whatever you want to do and then your opponent does
whatever he wants to do. Other times its different: if you capture his knight with
your bishop, for example, he pretty much has to recapture your bishop; otherwise
he simply is short a piece and probably will lose. (The other pieces belonging to
both sides gradually will be exchanged away, and you will end up with the only
attacking piece left on the board.)

Another example: If you check your opponents king, he cant do whatever he

wants in reply; he has to either move the king, block the check, or capture the
piece you have used to make the threat. And if you make a move that will enable
you to deliver checkmate on your next turna mating threatyour opponent
likewise will have to address it immediately.

Checks, captures, and mate threats therefore are known as forcing moves. In other
words, they are moves that force your opponent to pick from a small set of possible
replies. They are the essence of tactical chess; they allow you to dictate your
opponents moves and thus control how the board will look two or three or more
moves from now. Other types of moves may be "forcing" as well, mind
you: any threat you make against your opponentfor example, a simple threat to
take one of his pieces on your next movemay force him to reply in a certain way.
This happens all the time, and we will see examples as we go. But checks,
captures, and mate threats tend to be the most interesting and important kind of
forcing moves because they so powerfully limit your opponent's choice of replies.

This notion of forcing moves helps clear up some common confusions about chess.
No doubt you have heard about good players seeing ahead five moves, or a dozen
moves, or more; how do they do that when their opponents have so many possible
responses to pick from? The usual answer is that their opponents dont have so
many choices after all. Suppose I think like this: if I take your knight with my
bishop, you will have to recapture my bishop; then if I check your king, you will
have to move it over one square; then if I check your king on its new square, you
will have to block my check; then your rook will be left loose and I will take it. In
this case I have seen ahead four moves, but notice that I didnt have to keep track
of a lot of possible variations. To each of my moves you only had one plausible
reply. I just had to realize this. Of course sometimes your opponent will have more
than one plausible reply, and in that case you will need to keep track of some
variations after all (if he does this, Ill do that; if he does the other thing, then I go
to plan B, etc.). And its true that very strong players can keep straight lots of
variations. But its also true that a lot of great tactical sequences consist entirely of
forced moves that make it not so hard to see ahead.

Once you grasp the idea of forcing moves it also is easier to understand how to
come up with nifty tactical ideas during your games. Of course you might like to
unleash a fork or discovery or skewer, but what if no such moves are possible
when its your turn? Do you wait around for a fork to become available? No; your
first job when you are deciding what move to play is to examine your possible
forcing moves: any checks, captures, or mating threats you can offer. You don't
look at these things just as ends in themselves; you ask what moves your opponent
would be forced to make in reply, and whether you then would be able to play a
fork or discovery or skewer or some other tactic. If the answer is no, you imagine
playing another forcing move after the first one and then ask the same questions.

The point of experimenting with forcing moves, in short, is that they change the
look of the board. They may open up lines that currently are cluttered; they may
cause your opponent to leave pieces loose that now have protection; they may
make him line up pieces that are not now on the same line; they may make him put
his king where it can be checked. Your task is to imagine the board as it would look
after your forcing moves and see if changes such as those would create tactical
openings for you. Gradually a pattern you recognize may emergethe makings of
a fork or discovery or other idea.

With practice this becomes second nature: if your rook is aimed at your opponents
knight, you automatically consider capturing the knight and allowing your rook to
be taken. This would be a sacrifice, of course, since rooks are more valuable than
knights, but great tactical ideas routinely begin with sacrifices like that. The
question is whether the exchange of your rook for his knight would leave you with
a chance to play a fork or other double threator with a chance to play another
forcing move that isnt yet possible. Maybe after your rook is captured you then
can play a check that wasnt available before; and maybe after your opponent
responds to the check you then will have a fork. But it all starts by thinking about a
simple capture you can make and its consequences.
Likewise, you generally dont want to make any moves without being aware of
any checks you give and their consequences. Checks are the most forcing moves of
all because your opponent is required to reply by moving his king, taking the piece
that threatens it, or moving a piece between them. This usually makes it easy to see
what a check will require your opponent to do. And since a check often forces your
opponent to move his king, it may lead directly to tactics that make the king a
targeta fork with the king at one end, or a pin with a king at the rear, or for that
matter checkmate.

Looking at any checks and captures you have to offer is like looking for loose
pieces on the board: these are things you do all the time during a game, because
most great tactical ideas involve one of those elements or the other.

Strategy vs. Tactics.

Often you will look at your forcing moves and decide they lead nowhere. Thats
fine; now you instead play a strategic move rather than a tactical onea move that
improves the quality of your position without trying directly to win your
opponents pieces or mate his king. But strategy and tactics are linked, since one
goal of strategic, positional play is to increase the power of your pieces and
create fertile conditions for tactical strikes on later moves. Sometimes this is a
matter of arranging your pieces so that they have more freedom of movement and
denying the same freedoms to your opponent; sometimes it is a matter of
coordinating your pieces so that they are aimed at the same sector of the board;
sometimes it is a matter of arranging your pawns to help achieve those same
purposes for your pieces. At the end of our study of each tactical family (and
sometimes more often), we will pause to consider its strategic implications: what
the tactical ideas teach about the right sorts of moves to play when there is no such
tactic yet available.

All this talk of weaponry admittedly is abstract. It will become concrete in the
studies that follow. We will look at over a thousand tactical sequences. The rough
structure of most of these sequences, and of a large share of all the great tactical
moves ever played in chess, is similar; it involves the elements just described. First
there are some forcing moveschecks or captures or mating threats that limit your
opponents replies. Then there is a denouement: a double threat, such as a fork or
discovered attack or one of the other themes we will consider, that becomes
possible after the forcing moves have changed the board. As a result you are able to
take a loose or underprotected enemy piece. We can call this a combination. The
variations on this pattern are limitless, and there is much to know about its details:
how to spot forcing moves and figure out their consequences, and how to spot the
patterns suggesting that a fork or pin is in order. You can spend a lifetime building
your understanding of those things and gaining skill at carrying them out under
time pressure. But as you get started it all may be more manageable if you consider
these studies as variations on the single idea just described.

The rest of this introductory section will be discussing chess notation and jargon,
then some more technical aspects of the site. This therefore is a good time for a
reminder that if you want to skip any or all of that stuff, perhaps because you
already are comfortable reading about chess positions and want to cut right to some
lessons, you can go back to the table of contents and navigate from there by using
the link near the upper right corner of this screen.

Notation; Jargon; the Look of the Site; Hard Copies.

Notation and Jargon.

This site makes every effort to explain everything in words, but when describing a
series of chess moves it often is convenient to use abbreviations to describe them.
Those abbreviations are known in chess as notation. This site generally uses the
algebraic notation employed in most chess books, though with a small difference
explained below. Despite the unpleasant label, it's very easy to understand. Most of
it can be figured out as you read, but here is what you need to know about how it
works:

1. Squares are named by their coordinatesa4, e5, h8, etc.; these should be self
explanatory, since every diagram includes numbers running up the side of the
board and letters along the bottom. The numbered horizontal rows are called ranks.
The vertical columns named by letters are called files.

2. Pieces are named by their first letter. Q = queen; R = rook; etc. The only
exception is the knight, which is referred to as N to distinguish it from the King
(K). Pawns are named by their squares, so that d4-d5 means the pawn on d4
moves to d5. Sometimes in this book (and routinely in other books) a pawn move
is described without bothering to name the square it came from: one simply says
"1. d5," and everyone understands this means that the pawn on the d-file moves to
d5.

3. Captures are described with an x between the names of the pieces capturing
and being captured. So QxB means queen takes bishop; Rxa5 means the rook
captures the pawn on a5; and h7xN means the pawn on h7 captures the opposing
knight.

This last point is the way that the notation here varies from the usual algebraic
notation in other books. Algebraic notation normally describes a capture by just
referring to the square where it occurs. Thus if Whites queen takes Blacks rook on
the f6 square, most chess books would say Qxf6; but on this site we will say
QxR. The reason for the difference is that this site is meant primarily for people
who havent read other chess books before (as noted before, it's a chess book for
people who don't like chess books), and for that audience the notation used here
will be more intuitive. It's easy to understand that QxB means queen takes
bishop: easy to imagine, and easy to find on the board. Qxf6, however, has to be
translated into queen takes bishop by looking at the board, finding f6, and seeing
what piece is there. Thats easy when you know instinctively where f6 is, but most
readers of this project probably will find it faster to locate the bishop than to locate
f6. The real benefits of naming captures by the squares where they occur come
when describing long sequences, and few of the sequences here will be all that
long. (The approach used here is similar to the one used in Bobby Fischer Teaches
Chess, a well-executed book for beginners.)

This approach to describing captures should be easy to follow for readers already
used to ordinary algebraic notation; anyone can understand what QxB means even
if they are used to reading Qxf6. The gripe I anticipate from those who get worked
up about these things is that if readers become used to this approach they will find
it hard to read algebraic notation in other books: they will see, say, Qxf6
elsewhere and have trouble remembering that the other author means to say the
queen captures whatever piece is on f6, not that the queen captures the f6 pawn (as
it will mean here). I regard this as a trivial complaint; the reader of this site who
does move on to other books should have no trouble making the transition if the
above explanation is kept in mind (or just figuring it out on the fly; for this
explanation makes the whole business sound more confusing than it is in practice).
It's not that big a deal.

4. Turning back to the notation rules, castling is indicated by writing 0-0 (if it's on
the side of the board where the king starts) or 0-0-0 (if it's on the queenside: long
castling, as it is called).

5. Now a couple of minor points that don't come up often; you probably don't need
to worry about them, but for the sake of completeness: if a capture is made en
passant, that's indicated by writing "ep" afterwards or some variant. (I'm assuming
you know what an en passant capture is, but if you don't, I'll explain it if it ever
gets used hereand in the meantime you easily can find an explanation of it
elsewhere on the web.) Second, if one of your pawns reaches the opponent's back
rank, it gets promoted to some other more powerful piece of your choiceusually
the queen, though very occasionally some other choice works better. We indicate
promotion with an equal sign: f7-f8=Q means the pawn on f7 moves to f8 and
becomes a queen. Again, I'll say more about this wherever it pops up.
Finally, if more than one piece could be indicated by a description (in other words,
if I refer to "R" but there are two rooks on the board and it's not obvious which one
is meant), sometimes the coordinate of the piece will be given as well. So Rc8xN
means the rook on c8 (not some other rook) captures the opponent's knight.
Occasionally this approach also will be used just for clarity's sake even if there is
no technical reason for confusion.

6. Sequences of moves are described in pairs, with the White move first. Thus a
game might begin 1. e2-e4, e7-e5 [again, this could have been written "1. e4, e5"];
2. Nf3, Nc6; 3. Bb5, a7-a6; 4. BxN, d7xB. This means that White started by
moving his e-pawn forward two squares, and that Black then did the same; then on
Whites second turn he moved his knight to f3, and then Black moved his knight to
c6. White brought out his bishop. Black chased it with his pawn on the a-file.
White replied by taking Black's knight. Black recaptured with pawn on c6. The
position on the left illustrates the result.

When we look at positions from the middle of a game (as we generally will) we
will describe Whites first move in that position with the numeral 1 (as
something like 1. Nf5, for example). We call it 1 because its the first move in
the pictured position, even though its not the first move in the game.

If we want to start by describing a move of Blacks, we do it by saying something

like: Black can play 1. Nf5. The 1 followed by the three dots indicates that
were looking at the first pair of moves in the position but that were starting with
the second half of the pair: in other words, with Blacks move.

7. A plus sign after a move (like this: Rh8+) means that the move checks the enemy
king. A "#" sign after a move (like this: Rh8#) means that the move is checkmate
(or simply mate, as we more commonly say).

8. It often happens that a player can sacrifice a knight or bishop to win an enemy
rook. Since rooks are more valuable than knights or bishops, a player who does
this is said to have won the exchange. If we reach a stage of the game where I
have, say, a bishop and a rook and you have a bishop and a knight, I am said to be
ahead the exchange.

9. A piece is said to be loose if it has no defenders. It is hanging if it is exposed

to capture; you hang your queen if you leave it where your opponent can take it for
free. This also is known as leaving a piece en prise.

The Value of the Pieces.

This site assumes that you know how to play chessin other words, how the
pieces move. If you know that much, you probably also know which pieces are
worth more than which. But to be on the safe side, it is conventional to rank the
pieces in the following order of value, with points given to them as indicated to
make it easier to work out whether a set of exchanges is favorable or unfavorable:

Queen = 9

Rook = 5

Bishop = 3

Knight = 3

Pawn = 1

Bibliography.

One of the goals of this project is to take every problem that commonly arises in
tactical play and illustrate its handling with a half dozen or so progressive
illustrations. To find the positions needed for the purposeroughly 1,200 in allI
drew on just about every source I could find. I list them below, and thank their
authors (and beg the pardon of any I may have neglected to mention). I have
learned from all of them. There are a few notes at the end about some particular
titles.

Alburt, Chess Training Pocket Book (1997)

Ault, The Chess Tutor (1975)

Bain, Chess Tactics for Students (1993)

Blokh, The Art of Combination (1994)

Blokh, Combinational Motifs (1998)

Blokh, 600 Combinations (2001)

Burgess, The Mammoth Book of Chess (1997)

Chandler, How to Beat Your Dad at Chess (1998)

Chernev, Combinations: The Heart of Chess (1960)

Chernev, Logical Chess: Move by Move (1957)

Chernev and Reinfeld, Winning Chess (1948)

Emms, The Ultimate Chess Puzzle Book (2000)

Fischer et al., Bobby Fischer Teaches Chess (1966)

Furst, Theme Artistry (1987)

Gillam, Winning At Chess (1994)

Gillam, Your Move (1994)

Harding, Better Chess for Average Players (1996)

Hays, Combination Challenge (1991)

Hays, Winning Chess Tactics for Juniors (1994)

Horowitz, How to Win in the Chess Openings (1951)

Horowitz and Reinfeld, First Book of Chess (1952)

Ivaschenko, The Manual of Chess Combinations (1997)

Koltanowski and Finkelstein, Checkmate! (1998)

Koltanowski and Finkelstein, Checkmate Strategies (1999)

Lein and Archangelsky, Sharpen Your Tactics! (1996)

Littlewood, Chess Tactics (1984)

Livshitz, Test Your Chess IQ (1981)

Neishtadt, Test Your Tactical Ability (1981)

Neishtadt, Your Move! (1990)

Palatnik and Alburt, Chess Tactics for the Tournament Player (1995)

Polgar, Chess (1994)

Pongo, Tactical Targets in Chess (2000)

Purdy, The Search for Chess Perfection (1997)

Reinfeld, 1001 Brilliant Ways to Checkmate (1955)

Reinfeld, 1001 Winning Chess Sacrifices and Combinations (1955)

Renaud and Kahn, The Art of the Checkmate (1953)

Robertie, Winning Chess Tactics (1996)

Seirawan and Silman, Winning Chess Tactics (1995)

Tal, Tal-Botvinnik 1960 (1970)

Vukovic, Art of Attack in Chess (1998 ed.)

Walker, Chess Combinations (1999)

Weeramantry, Best Lessons of a Chess Coach (1993)

Wilson and Albertson, 303 Tricky Chess Tactics (1999)

Znosko-Borovsky, The Art of Chess Combination (1959)

Some positions also have appeared in Shelby Lymans chess column in the Boston
Globe or in Rigas Chess magazine.

A few notes on these:

1. The books by Reinfeld and Hays probably are the best collections of positions to
solve if you are looking for practice (a number of positions from those books are
discussed here); Livshitz and Gillam also are excellent for that purpose, as is the
book by Lein and Archangelsky.

2. Among books that offer instruction in words, I suggest Chernev and

Reinfeld's Winning Chess, Ault's The Chess Tutor, and Seirawan and
Silman's Winning Chess Tactics. (The first two may be hard to find, but are worth
the trouble.) Many of the others are excellent, too, and I don't mean to slight any of
them by mentioning these three. Of course those books fill a somewhat similar
niche to this site; for those who are reading this, they are my competition. But I
encourage you to check them out and make comparisons. Different people learn
better from different writers.
3. The titles by Renaud and Kahn and by Chandler are terrific sources on mating
patterns; so are the Koltanowski and Finkelstein books, which are overlooked.
Again, many positions in the "mating patterns" section of this site are drawn from
those sources.

4. For the reader looking to move on to the study of strategy, I especially

recommend Chernev's Logical Chess and Nunn's Understanding Chess, both of
which walk you through chess games and explain the strategic (as well as tactical)
thinking behind the moves. My other favorite titles on strategy are Jeremy
Silman's The Amateur's Mind, How to Reassess Your Chess, and (perhaps most
useful of all) The Reassess Your Chess Workbook, which is full of excellent
examples and discussion. Seirawan and Silman's Winning Chess Strategies is
another fine overview you may find helpful. Everyone's Second Chess Book by
Dan Heisman also has a wealth of tips on strategy as well as other topics; Heisman
offers a number of good online resources as well.

5. And for the reader simply looking for good, lively writing about chess, I suggest
checking out any of the writings of C.J.S. Purdy, starting with the one referenced
above. He is magnificent.

Chess in Literature.
Some Interesting Allusions to Chess.

But human life, as hath been discovered by some great man or other (for I would
by no means be understood to affect the honour of making any such discovery),
very much resembles a game at chess; for as in the latter, while a gamester is too
attentive How impossible for human prudence to foresee and guard against every
circumvention! It is even as a game of chess, where, while the rook, or knight, or
bishop, is busied forecasting some great enterprize, a worthless pawn exposes and
disconcerts his scheme.

Fielding, Life of Jonathan Wild the Great (1743).

to secure himself very strongly on one side the board, he is apt to leave an
unguarded opening on the other; so doth it often happen in life, and so did it
happen on this occasion; for whilst the cautious constable with such wonderful
sagacity had possessed himself of the door, he most unhappily forgot the window.

Fielding, Joseph Andrews (1742).

The Double Attack.

The Knight Fork.
Introduction.
We begin our study of tactics with double attacks, or forks: moves that attack two
enemy targets at once.

And we begin our study of double attacks with knight forks. In the skeletal diagram
to the left, Whites knight has forked Blacks king and rook; in other words, it
attacks them at the same time.

Why start with the knight? Because it is an especially vicious and common forking
tool. First, it can threaten a wide range of targets. The knight is roughly comparable
in value to a bishop, and so is less valuable than a rook or queen; thus a knight not
only can attack any unprotected (or loose) enemy pieces but also can be
exchanged favorably for enemy queens and rooks regardless of whether they have
protection. Second, the knights unique, non-straight pattern of movement creates
two advantages: it allows a knight to attack other pieces without fear of being
captured by them; and it enables a knight to make jumps and deliver threats that
are surprising to the eye and so are easy to overlook.

To spot possible knight forks you will want to become habitually aware of the
relationships between your knights and your opponents pieces (and between his
knights and your pieces), especially as the knight progresses up the board. Every
rank a knight moves forward tends to bring it closer to forking targets, especially
the king; notice that once your knight reaches its fourth rank, it can attack your
opponents back rank, and often his king, in one move (thus in the diagram to the
left, Whites knight might have been on e4 a move earlierseemingly pretty far
from Black's king). Hence the strategic importance of planting knights on central
and advanced squares, and the tactical importance of constantly looking for forks
your knight might be able to deliver once it is properly developed.

The difficulty in fashioning a fork, of course, is that no matter where your knight
sits you rarely will find a fork lying one move away against a decent player.
Leaving two pieces to be forked by a knight on the next move is a blunder almost
as bad as leaving a piece hanging outright. Forks have to be manufactured; the
challenge is to see when one lies a few steps away. Fortunately knight forks a few
steps away come in a finite number of types that you can learn to search for
systematically and, with practice, recognize quickly. Such situations can be sorted
into two general types.

First, sometimes two of your opponents pieces sit on squares that can be forked
with one move of your knight, but there is some obstacle to your taking advantage
of this; most commonly, the square your knight needs to reachcall it the forking
squareis defended by your opponent (the diagram to the left shows such a case,
again in skeletal form; White would like to play the fork Nf6+, but he can't; the f6
square is defended by a pawn). We will refer to these as cases where you have
a potential forka move that amounts to a fork on its face, but that needs to be
perfected by overcoming some defensive measure that your opponent has in place.
In a moment we will catalogue those defensive measures and how to deal with
them.

Second, sometimes you will not have even a potential fork because your
opponents pieces are not arranged for it; there are no two enemy pieces that your
knight can attack in one move. Thus in the diagram to the left, White cannot
deliver a fork, but he could if he were able to get Blacks king to move over a
square onto g8. In cases like this it sometimes is possible to draw enemy pieces
onto forkable squares with some forcing movesmost often with a check or two.
Later we will consider the clues that such possibilities for manipulation may exist
and how they can be brought to fruition.

Seeing Potential Forks.

Let's begin with ways of perfecting potential forksin other words, cases where
your opponent starts with two pieces that at least are on forkable squares. The first
important thing is to see all such forks in the first place. It helps to start by learning
to spot all of a knights possible moves at a glance. For this purpose you will want
a clear mental picture of the ring of eight squares that are the maximum to which a
well-placed knight can move. In the diagram on the left, the White circles show
squares where the White knight can jump, and the Black circles show squares
where the horribly positioned Black knight can jump. Now you can understand
why having your knight near the edge of the board generally is bad policy: it cant
reachand thus cant controlmany squares from there. Study these visual
patterns so that seeing a knights moves from any position comes easily to you.

Now to the matter of spotting knight forks in particular. You may be used to certain
forking patterns: your opponents king and rook are a square apart on his back
rank, inviting you to fork them. But it takes more care never to overlook a potential
fork when the board is crowded and the pieces to be forked are not lined up so
neatly on the same row. Consider the opportunities here for Blacks knight on b7.
By moving to c5 it can fork four White pieces (find them); by moving to d6 it can
fork two pieces. Whether either of these forks "work" is another question (the
squares the knights need are guarded, though Black has possible replies, etc.), but
don't worry about that now. It's just an exercise in geometry: we want to see
everyplace where two White pieces are in a forkable position. Seeing only the
obvious forking candidates is no good, and wont lead to tactical magic. If they are
obvious your opponent can see them, too, and can avoid them. You want to
see all of the possibilities every time they exist.
Notice an important feature of the knight's movements: every time a knight moves
it lands on a different colored square. This can be used to make your searching
more efficient. It means that two pieces can be forked by a knight only if they are
on squares of the same color; it means that they only can be forked by a knight that
lands on a square of the opposite color; and it therefore means that if a knight is in
position to deliver a fork on its next move, the knight and its targets must all then
be sitting on squares of the same color. This is a valuable idea; consider it a law of
knight forks.

To state the practical implication plainly, one way to build your ability to see all the
potential knight forks on the board is to look for any two pieces of your opponents
that are on squares of the same color as the square where your knight sits. If, as in
this case, your knight is on a light square, scan the board for pieces of your
opponents also on light squares. Can any two of them be forked by your knight?
This only takes a moment; you arent yet analyzing whether any of the forks would
work, but just are reviewing the board visually for simple patternsa color scan.
Sometimes this will be a helpful way to alert yourself to forking opportunities; in
other positions it will be more efficient just to look directly at your knight moves
without reference to square color. Experiment.

As you do your scanning you will discover certain additional laws of knight moves
that will become part of your visual vocabulary. An important example is that two
pieces can't be forked if they are on the same diagonal with one square between
them. Thus the Black king and queen in the diagram to the left are on squares of
the same color, but there is no square from which a knight would be able to attack
them both. This is a familiar pattern, and when you see it you will not need to
pause to think about whether a knight fork is in the immediate offing; the sight of it
will be self-explanatory, and you will move on.

Similarly, if your knight is on the same diagonal as an enemy piece and separated
from it by one square, the knight is three moves away from being able to attack the
piece. Thus in the diagram the White knight is three moves from being able to
attack the Black king; it must move, say, to e4, then to g5, then to e6.

Another useful thing to know is that a knight may be able to attack an enemy target
two different waysbut never more than two. In the diagram, for example, White's
knight can attack the Black rook by moving to e4 or d5 (and only the latter move
creates a fork). This is useful to remember because the first attacking idea you see
with your knight may turn out not to be the best oneeven against the same
enemy piece.

Practice broad-mindedness when you scan for forking prospects. It is especially

important not to dismiss a possible fork automatically, perhaps half-consciously,
when you notice that the square your knight needs is protected by a pawn, or when
you see that the fork would involve your opponents king on the one hand but a
knight or protected pawn on the other. In the latter case you might quickly imagine
that if you tried the fork the enemy would move his king and the pawn would not
be worth taking, and so write off the forking prospect without taking it seriously.
But that train of thought is premature; great combinations often look just that way
at first. You want to separate the creative process of seeing that the geometry is
there for a fork from the editing process of analyzing whether the fork can be made
profitable. Much of the rest of this chapter is devoted to the editing process: how to
take potential forks that look defective and turn them into tactical shots that work.
But all along you also want to build the visual habit of noticing every time your
knight can attack two sensitive points at once, no matter how implausible the
attack looks at first.

The Pinned Guard.

When you see a possible knight fork, a natural first question is whether the square
your knight needs is protected by any of your opponents pieces. If it is, your
attention turns to the guard of the square and whether you can get rid of itor
whether you really need to get rid of it. Perhaps you don't; maybe the protection
that the piece appears to offer is an illusion, as is the case if the guard is pinned. A
piece is pinned if it can't move without exposing the king or another valuable piece
to attack. Indeed, a piece that screens its own king from attack is subject to an
absolute pin and so cannot legally move. We will study pins in detail in later
chapters, but this much is enough to help you see that sometimes a square that
looks well-defended really isn't.

So here is our method in this section: consider the piece that protects the square
you want to occupywe can call it the guard of the forking squareand see what
other pieces may be on the same line with it and thus exposed to attack if it moves.
Start with the diagram on the left. There is a knight fork waiting for Black with
Nf2; the placement of White's king and queen with three squares between them on
the first rank is a classic setup for a double attack. If that isn't yet obvious to you,
notice that your knight is on a light square and that White's king and queen (not to
mention several other pieces) are on light squares as well, which encourages a look
at whether you can fork any of them. Having found Nf2 one way or another, ask: is
f2 protected? It seems to be, by the White rook at f3; so study the rook more
carefully. It's on the same line with its king, and with your queen. This means that
if the rook moves it will expose its king to attackwhich is to say that the rook
can't legally move at all. So Nf2+ can be played with impunity, and it wins the
queen after White moves his king.
Our modus operandi is to look for double attacks with the knight
and ask whether they can be made to work. This time you're
playing the White pieces. Notice first here that your knight is on a
dark square; now look for Black pieces also on dark squares. You
find the Black rook and king, and ask whether they can be forked.
They can, with Nd5+. Now ask: Is d5 protected? Yes, by the pawn
at c6. But before worrying further you examine the pawn to see if
it is constrained. It is; its pinned to the king by the White rook at
a6. So Nd5+ is safe, and it forks and wins the Black rook. This
position is structurally about the same as the previous one.