A King and Bishop alone cannot mate the lone King, but a King and two Bishops can. Therefor it is very important to assure that the King doesn’t capture one of the Bishops during the mating attempt.
In addition stalemate has to be avoided and we have to accomplish the mate within 50 moves, but after [...]
In the skewer two pieces in a line are attacked by a queen, rook or queen. A skewer is very similar to the pin, but in case of the skewer the most valuable piece is the front piece. So instead of being pinned the piece has to step out of the way allowing the piece [...]
A discovered attack occurs when a player moves one of his pieces out of the way of his Queen, Bishop or Rook to reveal an attack on one of his opponent’s pieces. Because the piece moved can make a independent threat the result may also be a double attack.
In the next diagram white’s rook on [...]
The initial moves of a chess game are called the opening. There are a lot of different openings (with their own names) and we will pay more attention to some of these openings later on.
For now the most important thing to know about the chess opening is a set of general guidelines that can be [...]
This lesson introduces one of the most important tactic building blocks in chess: the pin. A pin is a move which forces one of the opponent’s pieces to stay put because moving it would be illegal (an absolute pin) or exposes a more valuable piece behind it (a relative pin).
In the diagram below two pins [...]
