Beautiful Tactics 1 -- Forks 🍴

Hello everybody,

I'm back with another informational blog post. This time, I will be teaching about forks. 

Once again, I will remind you that my rating is around 950, so I have absolutely no qualifications to teach you. Take this with a grain of salt.

Anyways, the fork is one of the most powerful moves in chess. It is basically where one piece attacks two pieces at once. When done correctly, it guarantees winning material. This blog post will teach you how to fork, and how to prevent forks, specifically against knights.

Knights are probably the best pieces for forking. This is because they can attack anything (except other knights) with out being attacked back by the piece it's attacking. In other words, they are the only piece that can safely attack queens.

This is important because in order for the fork to actually work, the forking piece needs to safe. If it forks two or more pieces, but it is in danger, your opponent would just take the piece. 

Here is a few forking puzzles:

One of the most common forks in the game of chess is a knight fork on the bishop's pawn, forking the king and the rook. Since the opponent has to move their king out of check, the knight gets a free rook. In order to prevent this, you just need to protect the bishop's pawn or move the rook or king. The most desirable option would be the former, as it can help you positionally and prevent forks.

Preventing forks in mid-games and endgames is tricky and takes practice. But, when facing a knight, there are some patterns. 

Whenever two of your pieces go into the position above and there is a knight nearby, be very wary of your next move. Forks are hard to spot and impossible to stop if done correctly.

Thanks so much for reading! Congratulations! You reached the bottom! I plan to make more in this series, so look out for it! See you!