Chess Tactics And Puzzles To Sharpen Your Skills
Hello everyone and welcome to my new blog. Today I will talk about chess tactics that will help you be a better player. If you are a beginner or an advanced player, I'm sure you will find something useful here. Here are tactics I will talk about:
1. Pin
2. Fork
3. Decoy
4. Clearance
5. Interference
Pin
Pin is a tactic in which the attacked piece cannot move from the line of an attacking piece without losing the more valuable piece that is behind it. Here is an example:
To test your skill, try to solve these puzzles:
Fork is a tactic in which a piece attacks multiple enemy pieces at once. Here is an example:
And now with that in mind, try to solve these puzzles:
Decoy
Decoy is a tactic in which that lures one of the enemy's pieces onto an undesired square. Here is an example:
In the position below, there is an equal material (5 pawns each, 2 bishops and 2 knights). White can play a really cool tactic. Bishop takes Knight. This LURES blacks the king to the square in our favor which leads to Ne5 which forks the king and bishop. The black king cannot go to any square that would defend the bishop, so we can take the bishop and be a full piece up in the endgame!
And now, try to solve these puzzles:
Clearance
Clearance is a sacrifice tactic that vacates a square to open lines of attack. This means you sacrifice a piece that is not good for the attack which opens up a line of attack for your good piece. Here is an example:
In the position below, white starts off with the attack by Rf8, giving the rook away and clearing the path for checkmate with bishop and queen battery. Black has 2 responses. The first of them is Bxf8. If a bishop takes the rook the black rook stops defending the g8 square and we have a Qg8 checkmate. But what if the black rook takes our rook with Rxf8? Well then, white play a beautiful queen sacrifice, Qg8. This attracts blacks rook to g8 square and we have Nf7 checkmate!
Now with that in mind, try to solve these puzzles:
Interference
Interference is a tactic in which an attacking piece interrupts the defense of 2 enemy pieces or the defense between the enemy piece and square/file. Here is an example:
In the position below it is white to play and win. White plays the interfering move Bd6. This disconnects the rook from the queen and also threatens the checkmate on f8. Black cannot do much and has to let white take their queen because it is going to be a checkmate in a few moves if they don't.
And now for the final time, try to solve the following puzzles:
And that is all. Thank you so much for reading this blog and I hope you learned something from this. If you solved all puzzles, congratulations and best of luck in your games. See you in my chess adventure! 
All of the credit goes to Thechessnerd for providing these tactics. He is an amazing content creator so please check him out: https://www.youtube.com/@thechessnerd
