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Tactics: A Beginner's Guide
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Tactics: A Beginner's Guide

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GrandChampion2
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Hello everyone! This is a guide on tactics for beginners, although it can be helpful for amateurs to review the concepts taught here as well. So first of all, what is a tactic? A tactic is a winning sequence, which sometimes takes only 1 or 2 moves, while other times it can take far more than 5 moves. Knowing tactical themes is quite helpful to find tactics, and I will be covering 5 tactical themes here. I might post a second blog with more tactics assuming this one is marginally successful.

The 5 tactical themes I will cover here include:

1. Pins

2. Forks

3. Skewers

4. Weak Back Ranks

5. Hanging Pieces

Let's take a closer look at each one.

Pins

So, what is a pin?

A pin is when a piece can't move without giving up material and/or losing the game. Here is a common example of a pin that you may see in your games.

This, or a variation of this, is something you may see in your games often. The goal here is to notice that the knight is unable to move because the queen is behind it, and if the knight does move, the queen will be captured.

Forks

Now that you know what a pin is, what is a fork?

A fork is when two pieces are attacked at the same time, often a lower value piece attacking two higher value pieces. Here is an example you are likely to see.


Notice how the knight and the bishop are being attacked by a pawn? And that pawn is defended by the queen, so it can't be taken without the loss of material.

Skewers

A skewer is similar to a pin, except it occurs when a higher valued piece is in front of a lower value piece. So in the pin example, if the knight and queen were reversed, that would be a skewer. It's shown below. Notice how the queen must move in order to not get captured, but then the knight is hanging

Here is another example of a skewer. Notice how the queen must move, and this means that the rook is lost for a bishop.
Weak Back Rank
So what exactly is a weak back rank? Usually, a weak bank rank is when a king is stuck behind his pawns. Take a look at this example:
Here if it's white's move it's a checkmate in 1 move, and black would lose. Here's another example:
In this position, if you were playing black, you will lose a minor piece if it's your move, or you will lose the game if it's white to move. This is due to your weak back rank. To avoid this, it's a good idea to give your king one escape square at least by moving one of the three pawns in front of your castled king.
Hanging Pieces
Hanging pieces are one of the simplest tactical themes to execute, but can be a bit difficult to spot for new players. Oftentimes, in games between two players who are new to chess, both players miss several of these opportunities throughout the game. If you're able to spot these opportunities, it'll make it easier for you to win games.
Here, if white notices that black's last knight move was a blunder (meaning it gives up a significant advantage) as it hangs the knight, white would take the knight with the Queen and just like that White ends up with an extremely comfortable position to be in for the average chess player.

I hope this helped. If you've made it this far, feel free to leave any suggestions below in terms of how I should structure my blog posts and/or what topics I should write about. Thank you!