The Fork: Attacking Two Pieces at Once

Your opponent gets one move to answer your threats. If one move creates two threats, one of them usually survives. That is the whole idea behind the fork: one piece lands on a square from which it hits two targets, and the defender can only deal with one.

The strongest forks include a check. A check must be answered immediately, so the second target never gets a chance to move or find a defender. When one of the targets is the king and the other is the queen, players call it a royal fork; a knight hitting king, queen and rook together is often called a family fork.

A fork only wins material if the targets are worth more than the forking piece, or if they are undefended. A knight forking two defended pawns wins nothing. A knight forking a king and an unprotected bishop wins a piece.

The knight is the classic forking piece. It attacks in a pattern no other piece shares, so a knight can hit a queen or rook that cannot hit it back. Knight forks also tend to be the easiest to overlook, because the attacked pieces do not line up in any obvious way.

The queen forks constantly because she attacks in eight directions. A queen check that also hits a loose piece on the far side of the board is one of the most common ways games are decided at club level. Pawns fork too: a pawn pushed between two pieces wins one of them, since nothing is cheaper than a pawn. Kings, bishops and rooks can fork as well, especially in endgames.

Start with loose pieces. "Loose pieces drop off" is a saying worth taking literally: every undefended piece, and the king, is a potential fork target. Once you know the targets, look for a square that attacks two of them at once.

For knight forks, work backwards. Picture the squares a knight would need to stand on to attack the king, then check whether any of those squares also attacks another target. Squares a knight can reach with check are the ones to examine first.

Forks are often set up by a forcing move first: a capture or check that drags an enemy piece onto a forkable square. If two targets are almost in a fork, ask what would push one of them the last step. The forks you miss in your own games are the ones worth drilling.