Learn About Pins!
Learn about this Chess tactic called a pin!
What is a pin?
A pin is when a piece is in front of a more valuable piece which is behind it.
In this case the knight is pinned to the queen. That is because if the knight moves we capture the queen.
Why is knowing this important?
You might be wondering that's cool and all but "why should I spend my time learning this?"
That is because you are going to get positions like this.
In this position can you find white's best move?
If you said e5 you are correct!
Since a pinned piece (like that knight) can't move (because the bishop can capture the queen if that happens), we will be able to capture the knight with out pawn and win!
There are sometimes exceptions when pinned pieces can move!
In this game although white's knight was pinned to the queen, white can still move the knight because there is a checkmate coming up!
This trap is also called the Legal's Mate Trap.
One last thing is there are 2 types of pins: An absolute and a relative pin.
Absolute Pin
Since the knight legally can't move it is an absolute pin.
Relative pins
A relative pin is a pin to a queen like the example above. Although the white knight was pinned it could still move because of the checkmate coming up.
Thank you for reading!
Note: This blog was a basic introduction to pins, and there are hundreds of more things to learn about pins so please keep reading my blogs!
If you want to learn more about pins, watch this video