Thank you! I knew the puzzles had themes but until you said that I didn't realize I could select them, I thought I was stuck with whatever it throws at me on that day. Now that I look in the custom puzzles section, I see the breakdown of what I've been doing and sure enough, I'm 100% on various other topics but only 50-67% successful on the knight themes.
And funny you say that, I just realized that mental shortcut that the knight always targets opposite color squares a couple days ago. I'm still getting used to it but it should help my time management, I was spending way too much mental energy just figuring out which squares were newly threatened each time a knight would move.
Possible moves for knight are octagon shape with the knight at the center, so being aware of this will help you.
Before making your move look at every square his knights could move to. you got to do it without fail every single time before making your move.. Also you got to look at every single one of his other pieces to see where they could move to as well.
Thanks, I get that idea, but the problem is that spotting the fork one move before it happens is (at least for me) usually not good enough, by then the trap is already sprung and I'm out of position in most of the cases. I really need to spot them two moves ahead and there's no way I have time to check every piece two moves ahead in a game. So I am trying to use puzzles and lessons suggested to spot the patterns that precede such an attack.
Rambling now, but I think the problem I have with the knight forks is that there's no quick/efficient way (for my skill, anyway) to check if a piece is defended against them. I can easily see if a piece is vulnerable to upcoming attack by a straight-line moving piece, for example, "oh good, my king is behind a pawn, he's safe" but with knight forks that goes out the window, so I leave pieces subtly exposed and have no clue.
usually when they move a knight they have some type of plan in mind... try to see what their plan might be.. try to spot the square their knight is trying to get too.. then take the square away from them so they can't put the knight there. ruin it for them. try to have fun and chase their knights away with a pawn move, . then when they use a turn up to try and escape, it gives you time to do an even more nasty move. Just keep thinking knight, knights, knights lol
I sat one day and found every position, and every way in which something could be forked. But I was still confused until I started to think in themes and resulting positions. Change/Think in different terms as makes sense to you. I named the Themes, based off of Empty Squares (whether they were empty or an irrelevant piece was on them) along with orientation of the squares. Diagonals or Rank/File. There are 20 positions (depending on how someone thinks, there could be many more), but they all stem from 6 Themes. Themes are what you need to look for, both you and your opponents. In addition all themes can be forked by 2 ways (with room on the board for the Knight to do so) except for one.
Theme 1 - Diagonal Touching. – IE: Rd4 and Be5 or Rb3 and Bc2
Theme 2 – Diagonal 2 spaces between. – IE: Rd3, e4,e5, Bf6 or Qc7,d6,e5,Kf4
The following 4 are Rank/File. I only Look in terms of Diagonal for the above , or Straight for the rest.
Theme 3 – One space between. -- IE: Ke3,e4,Re5 or Qb5,c5,Rd5
Theme 4 – Three spaces between. -- IE: Ke3,e4-5-6,Re7 or by rank
Theme 5 - Three spaces between Double Kick. – IE: Ke3,f4-5-6,Rg7 or Kg3,f4-5-6,Re7. Same by rank. (forked only 1 way, dead center of the two kicks)
Theme 6 – Two spaces between Single Kick. – IE: Kd4,d5-6,Qc7
Theme 6 – If a piece is on IE: d4 then the eight positions would with the other piece being on c7, e7, f5, f3, e1, c1, b3, or b5.
If your King is on the opposite color from his Knight, he can't fork you.
If you keep your King and Queen on opposite-color squares (eg: King on a dark square, Queen on a light square) he cannot fork them.
What blueemu said. Focusing on what colour squares my pieces are on has been the single most useful thing for avoiding knight forks. Plus it's super simple, which is handy for shorter time controls. One fork that I got caught out by a lot when I first started was when I castled queen side. Both rooks would end up on the same colour square and end up getting forked. After this happened a bunch of times I finally remembered to look out for it, so even the frustration of being caught out by an opponent's fork can be enough to help you remember it in future.
I found these lessons helpful: https://www.chess.com/lessons/champion-tactics-with-gm-wolff-forks
As AtaChess68 in post 2 points out, remember that Knights change from light to dark and dark to light squares. So, before you move, look at your opponents Knights, are they on light or dark squares? And just remember, if you move to a square of the opposite colour of their knight's square, then that knight might be able to just take you! Don't walk into an unwanted capture. But, if you move to a square of the same colour, the knight might be able to fork you, so check what other pieces do you have that are on the same colour as the knight.
Knights are tricky. All other pieces work on straight lines (rooks up and down, bishops on diagonals, pawns move forward, attack diagonally, etc), but Knights work in circles. Plot the 8 squares a knight attacks, and it's a circle. Moving to the edge of a circle is just harder to see than following a straight line. So, slow down, take your time. Eventually you will get faster at it, but you don't get faster without being slower at first.
After your opponent's knight develops , try to open your position and develop pieces that occupy squares in such a way that they provide protection to the corners and uphold development as well like bishops . You need to look out especially if the opponent's knight crosses over to your side of the board and try to find out where it might attack , taking into consideration how it might coordinate with other pieces to do so . One important tip is that if you want to prevent two pieces from getting forked , keep them on different coloured squares and make sure they don't move in such a pattern that they might get forked
In recent games, now that I reached ~800 level and cleared some other errors out of my game, I have identified that one huge flaw in my tactics is that I simply fail to see knight forks coming. I find it insanely difficult to catch on to them a couple moves ahead of time, and so I fail to defend and I get surprised by them all the time now that I'm playing a bit stronger opponents.
I can appreciate the advice often given here to take things slower and assess the opponent's intent behind their moves, but the unfortunate reality is that I don't have any time in my days for games more than 15|10 or rarely 30 min, and at least for me that's barely enough time to calculate enough to avoid all kinds of other blunders. So I was hoping if anyone could maybe point to a lesson on this site or elsewhere that covers this topic? I'm working my way through the lessons on here but again, time issue, I find them very helpful indeed but it's hard to wade through when trying to fix a specific thing.