Most of the time it is an advantage that it is your turn to move, but sometimes it is a very serious disadvantage. In chess this is known as Zugzwang.
This word Zugzwang originates from the German and means something like “forced to move”. It is your move and in chess you have to move since [...]
One of the most used examples of the classical bishop sacrifice is taken from the game Edgard Colle - John O’Hanlon, Nice 1930. This is rather strange because in this game the normal preconditions before sacrificing the bishop aren’t even met. Some chess players and teachers even considered the sacrifice in this game as unsound. [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
