Chess Tactics

 I do like this picture!
“Whenever anyone rated between 1000 and 1800 asks me how to improve in chess, I always say, study more tactics!” Read more on Jennifer Shahade’s blog here. She’s  a Grandmaster  from the USA.

I’ve come across a very good site which has fantastic explanations…you can read on this site about the pin and the skewer and there are some good mating positions too!

 In this first diagram you can see the Knight-fork… I value Knights more than Bishops, I know other players value Bishops more, I think it’s more my opinion as I have used my Knights so many times to launch attacks that wouldn’t be possible with Bishops. I always try to save them, I will even offer my Bishops in order to save my Knights! With your Knight you can sometimes launch a surprise attack on your opponent like in one of my games earlier yesterday… my opponent won’t feel happy when he returns to his board today, just to find that he’s in check and  the same time loses his Queen! In this image, you can clearly see the “fork”, black needs to move and he’s about to lose his Rook!

On the next image you can see the Rook-fork. The Rook attacks the King and the same time threatens the Bishop!

Ouch! A position I hate to be in with! King in check whilst Rook in danger!

Please click HERE to see more forks and complete explanations!
On this next image, you can see my game I was referring to…I’m playing white in this game and my Knight has made a move…King in check and Queen in danger!

Hey! Where are those people saying Bishops are more valuable than Knights…LOL! This is another game of mine..and I love my Knights…look at this position…same as the previous one….

On this next image, I played black and you can see how close I was to checkmate my opponent.. I was getting tired of moving up and down, so I move in such a way for him to checkmate me in his next move. By the time I copied the pic, his final move wasn’t made yet, ( I moved his Queen by using the “play through” option)… but I do expect it to be made by tomorrow… so, that’s another tactic! This game wasn’t a rated game so I wasn’t that much bothered… lol!