Chess Tactics for Beginners: Forks, Pins, Skewers and More

The essential chess tactics for beginners: forks, pins, skewers, discovered attacks, double checks and removing the defender, with puzzles to try.

"Chess is 99% tactics" is an old saying, and at the beginner and club level it is close to true. Most games are not won by deep strategy but by a short combination that wins a piece or delivers mate. The good news: tactics follow a small number of patterns, and you can learn to spot them.

This guide explains the six tactics every beginner should know, with an interactive board for each one.

What is a chess tactic?

A tactic is a short sequence of moves, usually two or three, that wins material or delivers checkmate by force. Tactics usually work because of a double threat: you create two threats at once, and your opponent can only deal with one of them.

Before learning patterns, learn the most basic tactic of all: take free pieces, and do not give away yours. A piece is "hanging" when it is attacked and not defended. Before every move, ask two questions:

1. What does my opponent's last move attack?
2. After my move, will any of my pieces be undefended and attacked?

This habit alone will raise your rating by hundreds of points.

The fork

A fork is a single piece attacking two or more enemy pieces at the same time. The opponent can only save one. Knights are the best forking pieces because they attack in an unusual pattern, but every piece, even a pawn or king, can fork.

The strongest forks include a check, because the opponent must respond to the check first:

The pin

A pin happens when a piece cannot move (or should not move) because a more valuable piece stands behind it on the same line. Only long-range pieces pin: bishops, rooks and queens.

• In an absolute pin, the piece behind is the king, so the pinned piece is not allowed to move at all.
• In a relative pin, the piece behind is valuable (like the queen), so moving the pinned piece would lose material.

Pinned pieces are great targets. Here the black knight is pinned to its king, so attack it again:

The skewer

A skewer is a pin in reverse: you attack a valuable piece, and when it moves out of the way, you capture the piece behind it. Skewers with check are especially strong, because the king must move.

The discovered attack

A discovered attack happens when you move one piece out of the way and uncover an attack by another piece behind it. The moving piece can make its own threat at the same time, which makes it a double attack. If the moving piece gives check, it is called a discovered check, and it is one of the most powerful tactics in chess.

The double check

A double check is a discovered check where both pieces give check at the same time: the piece that moves and the piece behind it. Because two pieces check at once, the opponent cannot block or capture both. The king must move. Double checks are often the start of a mating attack.

Removing the defender

If an enemy piece is defended only once, you can capture or chase away the defender, and then win the piece it was protecting. Variations of this idea include:

• Deflection: forcing a defender to move away from its job.
• Overloading: a single piece has to defend two things at once and cannot do both.

Other tactical ideas to know

• Zwischenzug ("in-between move"): instead of the expected recapture, you first make a stronger threat, often a check.
• Back-rank weakness: a king trapped behind its own pawns can be mated on the back rank. See basic checkmates.
• Trapped pieces: a piece with no safe squares can be won by attacking it.

How to get better at tactics

1. Solve puzzles every day. Ten to twenty minutes of chess puzzles a day builds pattern recognition faster than anything else. Start easy; speed comes from familiarity.
2. Look for checks, captures and threats on every move, for both sides, in that order. This simple scan is how strong players spot tactics.
3. Review your games and find the tactics you or your opponent missed.
4. Learn the patterns by name. It is much easier to find a fork when you are looking for one. The interactive tactics lessons on Chessyo cover each pattern step by step.

For a complete improvement plan, see how to get better at chess.