Chess Tactics for Beginners: The Essential Patterns

What are chess tactics?

Strategy is the long-term plan: where should my pieces go, what pawn structure do I want? Tactics are short, forcing sequences of a few moves that win something concrete, usually material or the game itself. They run on forcing moves: checks, captures and threats your opponent has to answer.

Almost every tactic rests on one idea: a piece does two jobs at once, and your opponent can only deal with one of them. The patterns below are variations on that theme. Learn their names, because what you can name, you spot faster.

Double attacks and forks

A double attack is a single move that creates two threats at once. A classic case: the queen moves to a square where she hits an undefended piece and threatens mate at the same time. Your opponent has to stop the mate and loses the piece.

The best-known version is the fork, where one piece attacks two or more enemy pieces. Knights are the most dangerous forkers because their jumps are easy to overlook. A white knight landing on c7, for instance, attacks the king on e8 and the rook on a8 together. The king must move and the rook falls. Pawns fork too: a white pawn advancing to d5 hits pieces on c6 and e6 at once.

The pin

In a pin, a queen, rook or bishop attacks a piece that is shielding something more valuable behind it. If the front piece moves away, the piece behind it gets captured. A familiar example arises in the Queen's Gambit after 1.d4 d5 2.c4 e6 3.Nc3 Nf6 4.Bg5: the bishop on g5 pins the knight on f6 to the queen on d8.

There are two kinds. In an absolute pin the king stands behind, so the pinned piece is not allowed to move at all. In a relative pin something else stands behind, so moving is legal but costs material. Pinned pieces make great targets: attack them with a pawn, because they cannot simply run away.

The skewer

A skewer is a pin turned inside out. This time the more valuable piece stands in front and is attacked. It has to move, and the piece behind it is left exposed. The textbook case: a rook checks along a file, the king steps aside, and the rook captures the queen that was hiding behind the king.

Skewers show up a lot in endgames, whenever king and rook or king and queen end up on the same line or diagonal. Avoid lining up your valuable pieces on an open file or diagonal where an enemy rook, bishop or queen could strike.

The discovered attack

In a discovered attack, one of your pieces blocks the line of a long-range piece, say a knight standing in front of a bishop. When the knight moves away, the line opens and the bishop suddenly attacks. The trick is that the knight can create its own threat with that move, so two threats appear at once.

The most powerful version is the discovered check, where the unmasked piece gives check. Your opponent has to deal with the check, and the moving piece can grab almost anything it likes. Even stronger is double check, where both pieces give check. The only defense is a king move, because no single move can block or capture two checking pieces.

Overloading

A piece is overloaded when it has two defensive jobs at once. As long as nobody tests it, everything seems fine. The moment you force it to carry out one duty, the other one collapses.

A typical case: a black rook guards both a knight and its own back rank. White captures the knight. If the rook recaptures, it leaves the back rank and a white rook delivers mate there. If it does not, Black is simply a piece down. So ask about every enemy defender: what is it protecting, and can it really protect all of that at the same time?

How to practice tactics and use them in games

Tactics are learned through repetition. Solve small puzzles regularly, ten minutes a day beats three hours once a month. Over time your brain starts recognizing the patterns on its own. During a game, use a simple order: look at all checks first, then all captures, then all threats, for both sides.

Patterns stick best when you find them in real games. In Chess of the Gods you play offline against the computer and can choose a level where your opponent still makes mistakes you can punish tactically. The review after the game then helps you see where a fork or skewer was waiting.

• Checks: which checks are available, even ones that look silly?
• Captures: what can I take, and what happens next?
• Threats: which move attacks two things at once?