basic tactics

tactics are a important aspect of chess. Learning as many of these as possible will do wonders for your rating. I will show you three common tactics.

1. the pin 

the pin is when you stop or make it hard to move a piece. Here is a example:

as you can see black can't move his knight without putting himself in check. 

2. the fork

the knight has just attacked 2 pieces at once! white could only save one.

3.discovered attack

as you can see the bishop checks and reveals a discovered attack on the knight.