Maximizing the Pin Tactic
The Pin is the most frequently used tactics in chess; however, many players fail to maximize the pin tactics. In this blog I will be taking you through some games that may serve as an eye-opener to you when next you have a pin.
Firstly, I will like you to know that there are two types of pins in chess.
- The Absolute pin: refers to a situation whereby, your piece is pinned to the king and thus cannot move.
- The relative pin refers to a situation whereby, your piece is pinned to a higher value piece. For example, a knight pinned to a queen, in as much as the knight can move if you want to move it, you wouldn’t like to move it because it gives up your queen or the higher valued piece behind the pinned piece.
It should be noted that the bishop, rook and queen are the only pieces that can pin.
Fig. 1: Absolute Pin
In the position above, Black to move and the pawn cannot capture the bishop because is pinned to the king by white’s queen hence, cannot move.
Fig. 1: Relative Pin
In the position above, black to move and the pawn can capture white knight, however, you definitely will not like to exchange your rook for a knight in this position as capturing the knight opens up the bishop attack on your rook.
I guess I have been able to build a simple background on pins, so I will proceed to showing pins in action.
From the game above you will notice that Black Queen is pinned to her king, you can take advantage of this by adding another attacker. By simply bringing your rook to d1 to attack black queen and skewing the rook behind result in white winning material.
This example is from my game here on chess.com. After my opponent moved his queen to d4, I calculated and notice that I can simply chase my opponent's king into the open and then pin the queen by moving my rook to d1. So finding pins immediately or forcing your opponents into position where you can pin their pieces is a good way to make use of the pin.
This kind of pin is very common. Winning two pawns and still winning my piece back using the pin tactic gave me a sizeable advantage. This is another example from my game.
Below is a puzzle using the pin tactic to win material, please try it out.
Leave your feedback on the comment section about this blog. Thanks for reading.
