5 Most Important Tactics You Must Practice

Chess is a complex game with endless possibilities. Yet, certain patterns occur frequently in our games and we can study them, learn about them, and improve from them.

One of the best ways to improve your pattern recognition and calculation is to solve tactical puzzles that are themed to just a particular theme, like pin, skewer, etc.

But before that..

What are tactics?

Tactics usually refer to a move or a sequence of moves that result in an immediate material win or checkmate. For example:

This sequence of moves results in a material advantage. Thus this is an example of tactics.

Chess is 99% Tactics

— Richard Teichmann

There are some types of tactics that occur very frequently, and they are very important to practice and master. Here is the list of the top 5 most important tactics that you need to practice:

#5. Intermediate Move or Zwischenzug

Zwischenzug is a chess tactic in which before you play the most tempting move, often a capture, you play a forcing move like a check, and only after that, do you play that expected move.

#4. Skewers

Skewer is a tactic similar to pin, in which you attack a high-value piece, forcing it to move and then you take a low-value piece behind it. 

#3. Discovered Attack

The discovered attack is a powerful tactic in which moving a piece creates an attack for another piece.

When you see a possibility of discovered attack, you should consider all of the possible ways when you create the discovered attack. You should create the discovered attack in a way that also creates an additional threat.

For example, in the previous puzzle, moving the knight created an additional threat of a mate on h7. Any other knight jumps would have created a discovered attack, but none would work because they do not create an additional threat.

#2. Fork

Fork, especially knight fork needs no introduction whatsoever. Fork is a tactic in which a single piece attacks two or more pieces at the same time.

                             

                             

#1. Pin

A pin is a tactic that forces the opponent's piece to stay in the same square because moving that piece would expose an attack on an even higher-valued piece behind it.

This is an example of a pin. The rook cannot move because that would expose an attack on the king.

There are 3 important characteristics of a pin:

1. Pin always occurs in a straight line. This is a useful thing to remember to find pins easily. 

How to Practice Chess Tactics:

Practicing tactics is an important and essential part of every chess training. There are a number of ways you can practice tactics:

1. Books:

For centuries, this was the only and the common way to practice chess tactics. You would grab a book, solve the puzzles from the book and improve your chess tactics. 

Recommendation:

1. Chess Tactics for Champions: A Step-by-step Guide to Using Tactics and Combinations the Polgar Way

2. Build Up Your Chess

2. Chess.com or Lichess Puzzles:

Both chess.com and lichess have excellent puzzle features which can help anyone to improve their tactics. Chess.com is my recommendation if you have the premium packages, otherwise, lichess is the way to go. (Maybe I should not say that in a chess.com blog )

Conclusion:

Tactics are definitely the most important aspect of chess. So, if you wanna improve, you gotta practice these types of tactics mentioned above. I can guarantee you would improve very quickly if you master these tactics. And as always, thanks for reading.