Learn · Tactics
Chess Tactics: Forks, Pins and Skewers
The three most common chess tactics explained with examples: how to spot forks, pins and skewers in your games and how to avoid falling for them.
Most games between club players are decided by tactics: short, forcing sequences that win material or give mate. Three patterns account for a huge share of them: the fork, the pin and the skewer. Learn to spot these and you'll win more games and lose fewer pieces.
The fork
A fork is a single piece attacking two or more enemy pieces at once. Your opponent can only save one, so you win the other.
Knight forks
The knight is the master forker. Because it moves in an L-shape, it can attack pieces that can't attack it back, and its attacks are hard to see coming. The most dangerous kind is the royal fork: a knight checking the king while also attacking the queen. The king has to move, and the queen falls.
Classic patterns: a white knight on e7 forks a black king on g8 and a queen on c8 or c6, and a knight on f7 forks a queen on d8 and a rook on h8. Watch those squares whenever enemy knights are near your king.
Pawn forks
Pawns fork too, and because a pawn is worth so little, a pawn fork almost always wins material. A pawn on e4 that pushes to e5 attacking knights on d6 and f6 wins one of them for a pawn. In the opening, a well-known example is 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 Nf6 4.Nc3 Nxe4!? 5.Nxe4 d5!, a "fork trick" where Black regains the piece by forking the bishop and the knight with the pawn.
Queen forks
The queen can fork in eight directions at once. Queen forks often target the king and an undefended piece: a check that also hits a loose rook in the corner, for example.
The pin
A pin attacks a piece that can't move, or shouldn't, because a more valuable piece stands behind it on the same line. Only pieces that move in straight lines can pin: bishops, rooks and queens.
- An absolute pin is against the king. The pinned piece is not allowed to move at all, because that would expose the king to check. A bishop on b5 pinning a knight on c6 to a king on e8 is a common example.
- A relative pin is against something else, often the queen. The pinned piece may move, but it costs you. A bishop on g5 pinning a knight on f6 to a queen on d8 is the most famous relative pin in chess.
Once a piece is pinned, pile up on it. A pinned piece can't defend properly, so attack it again, ideally with a pawn. In the position with Bg5 pinning a knight on f6, moves like e5 or Nd5 often win the pinned knight because it cannot escape.
Breaking a pin
If you're the one who is pinned, you have options: move the piece behind out of the line (for example, move the queen off d8), put another piece in between, or attack the pinning piece, often with a pawn (...h6 against a bishop on g5). Sometimes you can ignore a relative pin entirely, as in the Elephant Trap, where the "pinned" knight captures anyway.
The skewer
A skewer is a pin turned inside out. The more valuable piece stands in front; when it moves out of the attack, you capture the piece behind it.
The most common skewer is a check along a line: a rook checks the king along a rank, the king steps aside, and the rook takes the queen or rook standing behind it. Skewers are especially common in endgames, where kings and rooks are out in the open. A classic example is a rook endgame where one side is about to promote a pawn: as soon as the new queen appears, a rook check on the same file or rank skewers the king and wins the queen.
How to spot them
Tactics don't appear out of nowhere. They need targets. Look for these warning signs, in your opponent's position and in your own:
- Undefended pieces. A loose piece is the first ingredient of almost every fork.
- Pieces on the same line. King and queen on the same file, rank or diagonal are begging for a pin or skewer.
- Pieces a knight's jump apart. If two of your pieces can be attacked from the same square, ask whether an enemy knight can reach it.
- An exposed king. Checks are the most forcing moves, so a king without cover makes forks and skewers much easier.
A thinking habit
Before each move, look at every check, every capture and every threat you can make, and then the same for your opponent. This short routine, often called "checks, captures, threats", catches the large majority of tactics on both sides of the board.
Practise it
Play the computer on Easy and hunt for one fork, pin or skewer per game. Then raise the level. Daily tactics puzzles from any source will also build your pattern recognition quickly; ten puzzles a day does more than an hour once a week.