Top 2 chess tactics to improve your game immediately – Chess techniques
Samuel Reshevsky, the great grandmaster and chess prodigy explained the importance of tactics in chess and said, “No matter how much theory progresses, how radically styles change, chess play is inconceivable without tactics.” Chess is a mind game and tactics
lay the foundation of successful play. In order to be competitive, any player must know the different tactics that are made use of in chess. Without these, no one can imagine to make any progress in the game.
In this article, we are going to discuss with you the two basics chess tactics that are commonly made use of in the game. Knowledge of how to work with them will improve your play significantly as it will enable you to see many possibilities in a given chess
position and how best to use it to your own advantage.
Fork
As the name suggests, this tactic has more than one line of focus. It is an attacking maneuver, in which a piece is used to attack more than one enemy piece. The rationale behind this tactic is material gain. By threatening more than one piece of the enemy,
the probability of making a capture increases significantly. The player whose pieces are being forked finds it hard to come out of a fork unscathed.
The piece that is carrying out a fork is called the forking piece while the ones that are being put under attack are known as the forked pieces. The forking pieces can be any, even a king, but the commonly used forking pieces are the knight, queen and pawn.
A royal fork is something that any chess player dreads. As implied by the term, a royal fork occurs when the king and the queen get forked. Similarly, a grand fork is a situation where the king, queen and/or one or both the rooks are forked.
Skewer
This is also an attacking tactic. The piece performing the skewer puts two of the enemy’s pieces under threat as both the pieces come under the line of attack. The position of these two pieces is such that, the piece being directly attacked is more valuable
or of equal value as compared to the piece behind it. Therefore, the player being skewered has to make a hard choice in most cases and give up the piece behind the one being directly attacked. A skewer is performed by long range pieces, which are the queen,
rook and bishop.
There are two types of skewers depending on the pieces involved. A relative skewer is the one in which the player being skewered has the choice to move or not to move the more valuable piece out of the way. The player may chose not to move the valuable piece
to gain some long term strategic advantage. However, this is fairly uncommon. For instance, the first piece in the skewer is the queen behind which a rook is standing. It is not necessary to move the queen even though it is highly advisable to do so.
The other type of skewer is called the absolute skewer. In contrast to the relative skewer, the player is obliged to move the first piece that is being skewered. This happens when the first piece is the king. As it is compulsory to put the king out of check
if the threat cannot be eliminated, moving the king out of the skewer to expose the comparatively less valuable piece becomes necessary.
Both the tactics discussed have a common line, in that they both force the opponent to choose between his pieces. You can use his or her reaction to figure out what move they want to make or which pieces they are trying to protect.
Tags: