Chess Teaching Archives

Capture exercises

As I have mentioned in the lesson about taking free pieces almost all chess games are won by first obtaining a material advantage.

I have added some capture exercises to this site. They are intended for the beginning chess player, but it is assumed that this chess player knows how the pieces move and also knows [...]

Replacing a piece

When looking at the chess position of the next diagram you may notice that White’s bishop at g2 is able to pin Black’s bishop at e6, but this can’t be called a real pin.

If White plays Bd5 then Black can just capture the bishop. In this specific case 33.Bd5 will probably be followed [...]

Chess Tactics Explained

In some of the previous lessons we have learned about the pin and how we could make use of a pin in order to win a piece. All these lessons started with a position in which two enemy pieces were aligned with each other. In order to create an absolute pin the opponent’s king has [...]

The pin revisited

Before we start with a new lesson about the pin we are going to repeat the four things that we have learned about the pin in our previous lessons:
1. Remember the difference between an absolute and a relative pin.
An absolute pin
Black is not allowed to move the knight on c6.

A relative pin
Black is allowed to [...]