Part 1-Traps!

Beware of traps! Your opponent may not be so dumb as to make a dubious move, he may in fact be setting up a trap! There are such traps including some like using bait to land a Fork etc. In this blog I'll be going into detail on some of the more obvious ones. OK now, the most obvious trap is bait, it is where you or your opponent sacrifices one of their pieces to either get your pieces in a set-up position or to expose something. It is not that hard to tell if it is bait or a dubious move, or is it? Sometimes it is hard to the point where you just do not know and you begin to doubt yourself. If you doubt yourself view your opponent's online chess to see their past games with other players. Use it to determine weather or not it was a bad move he/she made or not. Another trap would be trapping either you or your opponent into a corner, again with sacrifices, where they force a Draw with repetition. The bad part is they do this if they are lower in rating points or they are losing and would rather take the Draw. A very notorious trap would be tricking you or your opponent into Castling into a trap! They would then isolate your king, pick him out, and after that he has no chance of escaping. Yet a different trap is getting a Pawn almost all the way down (For example one square until Promoting), here it is most obvious that someone may use multiple pieces just to stop the Pawns progression so it may not become something more able-bodied for combat; but the fact is this is a trap, more or less a decoy, now that your King is without any gaurdians he is helpless for your opponent can easily get the King in Checkmate. This works well in an Open Game, although it works in a Closed Game it is better, from my experience, that in an Open Game it is more efficient. The final trap I'll mention in this blog is the one known as Intimidation, this is where your opponent moves fast (Like in Blitz Games) and has a high rating. This will cause you to move fast and their goal was for you to move fast and by doing so make a mistake. Finally I'll share some "Games" to show how some of the traps work and the steps involved to accomplish these elusive traps!