Tactics play an essential role in all chess games, and are the ingredients of any strategy. A strategy is an overall game plan, a statement about where you want to be at each point in the game. Tactics are used to execute a strategy. Obviously your opponent will not sit back and watch you play out your strategy without opposition. Tactics are used to force your opponent into accepting your moves. Tactics represent one or more moves used to obtain a short term advantage. They are the stepping stones in progressing an overall strategy.
There are many tactics that can be memorized or learned and deployed when required. As more tactics are learned, the players arsenal becomes more powerful. Learning new tactics, when to deploy the tactics and what combination of tactics work best together is an ongoing activity throughout a players entire life.
Explained below are several tactics that are very common and well worth practicing:
- Guarded Piece: This is simply the act of protecting one piece with another that is in turn protected or out of harms way. This tactic is often used when attacking or defending valuable real estate such as the center of the board.
- Attacking With Pawns: Pawns are generally the lowest valued pieces on the board. Attacking with a guarded pawn may force an opponents higher value piece to retreat from an attacking position.
- Pinning: Pinned pieces are pieces that are forced to remain on their current square as moving will expose a greater value piece to the same attack. For example, a bishop may be attacking a pawn. If the pawn is moved, it may expose the queen behind the pawn to the same attack. In this instance, the bishop will likely take the queen as it is of a higher relative value.
- Skewer: Similar to the pin, except the piece being attacked is of higher relative value. When the piece moves away, it will expose a lesser value piece to the same attack. For example, If a guarded bishop is threatening a queen and the queen is forced to move, it may expose a rook to the same attack. The rook may then be taken as it is of higher relative value than the bishop. This is a very common tactic.
- Fork: The fork is achieved by attacking two or more pieces with a single piece. The fork is normally executed using a pawn or knight, however it can be achieved using other pieces. The opponent is forced to sacrifice one of the attacked pieces as only one piece can be moved per turn.
