Attacking motifs
Fork in chess
By Antoine TamanoUpdated
A fork in chess is one piece attacking two targets at once, and only one can be saved.
A fork is a double attack by a single piece. The knight is the classic forking piece because it attacks squares no other piece guards at the same time, and because its targets can never attack it back along the same line. But every piece forks: a pawn on a knight and a bishop, a queen giving check while eyeing a loose rook, a rook on the seventh hitting two pawns.
What makes a fork WORK is not the geometry, it is the targets. A fork on two defended pawns wins nothing; a fork on the king and a rook wins the rook, because the king must move. So the checklist is: which enemy pieces are undefended or more valuable than my attacker, and is there one square that hits two of them?
The strongest forks come with check. A check leaves the opponent exactly one move, and it is never the move that saves the other piece. When you see a loose piece, look for a check that also attacks it. When you see a king on an open file or diagonal, look for what else sits on that line.
The second half of the skill is seeing forks BEFORE they exist: the square is empty now, but a capture or a deflection will open it. The higher the level, the more the fork is the second move of a combination rather than the first.
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Questions
What is a fork in chess?
A fork is one piece attacking two or more targets at the same time, so the opponent can only save one of them. Any piece can fork, but the knight is the most common because it jumps over everything in between and cannot be blocked. The fork wins material on the move after it lands, not on the move itself.
How do you spot a fork before it happens?
Look for two enemy pieces that already stand a knight's move apart, or on the same rank, file or diagonal for the line pieces, and then ask which square attacks both. Undefended pieces and the king are the targets worth checking first, because a fork that includes a check forces the reply and buys the tempo to collect the other piece.
What is a royal fork?
A royal fork is a fork that hits the king and the queen at once. Because the check must be answered, the queen falls on the next move. A family fork is the bigger version: king, queen and a rook, and sometimes more, usually delivered by a knight landing near an uncastled king.
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