Beginner Chess Tactics | Forks!
#tactics #forks #italian #fourknights #pirc #czech
One of the most important tactics to learn as a beginner in chess is the mighty fork. The fork is when one of your pieces attacks two of your opponent's pieces simultaneously. This is potentially a forcing tactic to win material or a concession as your opponent can only move one piece per turn.
With our minds calculating positions in a linear and sequential fashion, it can sometimes be difficult to see a potential fork - to use against our opponent, or where one could be used against us. This can result in forks being unexpected traps.
I played a couple of games against another Australian player @Warlpiriman in a chess.com tournament, who is likely earlier in his chess journey. My opponent probably had a relative weakness in seeing forks and these couple of games are potentially instructive from a learning perspective.
Game 1 - I had the Black pieces and my opponent played the Italian Game. As usual, I responded with the Two Knights Defense, which then drew the game into the Four Knights Game, which I like with Black (1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bc4 Nf6 4. Nc3). The tactical logic is that White is likely aiming for a conservative and quiet game, but Black has the dynamite move with immediately opens the centre with (4... Nxe4)!
This results on the next move for Black the first fork of the game (5... d5), hitting White's knight and bishop with a pawn. Not uncommonly, White is unable to navigate the immediate threat, and Black wins a good advantage in the opening [-1.5].
On move 9, White tries to raise the heat of the game by bringing out their queen, but this was a mistake. A risk if you're not careful is that the queen is chased around, while the other player develops. In this game, White was forced to make three consecutive queen moves. This meant that I was substantially ahead on development.
After White castled short, I rotated my knight on the queenside through a series of steps to join the attack on White's king. Knight moves are potentially difficult to visualise, and on move 14, White missed the second fork of the game (14... Ne2+), a killer royal fork of White's king and queen!
Sooner after on move 14, the third fork of White's rook pair with a bishop (16... Bxf3) inflicted fatal emotional damage with White resigning after the capture of one of the rooks. GG!
Game 2 - I had the White pieces and my opponent played the Czech Defense in the Pirc (1. e4 d6 2. d4 c6 3. Nc3 Nf6). I am completely unfamiliar with the Pirc, other than knowing that general opening principles usually works out fine. And this was the case - on move 8 we entered the middlegame with an evaluation of [+0.5].
My opponent played quite well in this game, and I struggled to find an attack in the early middlegame. However, by move 16, I was able to operationalise my overall strategy. With Black having castled kingside, I needed to move my pieces to that side. One of my knights had a bit of an adventure chasing the Black queen on the other side of the board, but I had managed to rotate it back to the centre. Although Stockfish thought it was losing on evaluation, I thought (16. Qh3) and then (17. Bh6) ignoring material loss, was quite okay to set up an attack down the h-file.
And it worked! Big attacks are often difficult to evade, and Black blundered. First, I captured the fianchetto bishop guarding the Black king and naturally, the king captured back (18. Bxg7 Kxg7), but this was a mistake [+2.2]. Simply, this puts the king, queen, and rook in position for a family fork! Black managed to avoid that but fell into the first fork of the game (20. Nxh7+), and absolute fork of the king and rook. The effect is that the knight I gave away as a gambit a few moves earlier has now paid back with interest!
The second fork came a few moves later. It was another trap - a seemingly hanging pawn that was irresistible. Black's king captured and then walked into an absolute fork with the queen of the king and knight.
So, on move 25, I had my rook pair and queen, versus Black's rook and queen. The tactic is to simplify. I managed to force trade Black's rook, and then their queen. And in an endgame where one player has an additional rook is simply a matter of routine. GG!
