Defending tactics

Chess is not something new for me however I am still improving my skills. One of the things I struggle with is the play against opponents knights and forks. I think that the only way to prevent forks is to foresee them. Is there any material or lessons you can share with me to improve defending skills against knights and their forks? Chess.com learning material targeted to teach offense but not defense. 

Hi. On here, go to learning puzzles, select forks (I couldn't see a knight forks option), turn down the rating and solve ten-a day. In three months it will be burned into your brain (pattern recognition). There are probably sites that allow you to select and drill specifically knight forks. Try ChessTempo. I think it has a highly configurable tactics engine. Also check out chessable. One or more if their free tactics books might have a knight forks chapter.

On defending against knights, they grow in strength towards the centre and towards the 6th ranks. But this means they need active squares to jump to, advanced support points. One way to defend is to take away these squares by using your pawns to control them. For example, if your opponent has a knight on f3, controlling g5 and e5 and d4 reduces its scope. If your opponent is occupying these with pawns then blockading the pawns also reduces the knights scope. You are looking to take away it's good squares. What is achievable and desirable depends on the position but you get the idea.

Playing through some GM games annotated for beginners, Logical Chess by Chernev is a good book for example. It may teach you something about the middle game battle between bishops, knights, pawns, weak squares and outposts.

there is a geometrical relationship between positions and colors of the squares that determine knight forks; and the geometry of having a bishop “in opposition of knight” except not opposition since it is two ranks separating knight and bishop on same file or vise versa too (two squares apart on same file,or rank)- see i can explain it well enough because i have trouble with this too

i am sure there is someone who can articulate it simply and succinctly

i too have always had a bad eye for knight forks

so much so that i based my entire otb game “plans” on shadowing opponents knights and never letting a fork get me if i could help it


the best way to get better- for me anyways- is practice knight fork tactics that you attack with and get these down pat

and, in general, visualize, calculate the potential jumps of opponents knights and keep an eye on your heavies (king-queen-rooks) and their alignment issues

A Knight can only fork two pieces that are on the same color square... both on light squares or both on dark squares. Just keep your King and Queen on opposite colored squares, and you'll never be Knight-forked.

For quick sanity checks, a knight always moves to the opposite coloured square that it is on. The knight and both pieces need to be on the same colour squares to execute a fork. Dont under estimate the distance over which a knight can fork. They can ruin your game from a surprisingly long range.