Fork — Chess Puzzles

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A fork is one move that attacks two or more targets at once. The opponent can answer only one of them, so something falls. Every piece can fork, but the knight is the classic forker: it jumps, so a knight fork cannot be blocked, and the pieces it attacks cannot defend one another against it.

How to spot it

• Two enemy pieces stand a knight's move apart from the same square — most dangerously the king and the queen.
• The king is on the same rank, file or diagonal as a loose piece, so a check also wins the piece.
• A pawn push attacks two pieces standing side by side on the rank in front of it.
• One of the two targets is the king, which makes the fork unanswerable: the check must be dealt with first.

A worked example

White: king e6, knight e8, pawn f4. Black: king h7, rook h5, pawn f6. White to move.

1. Nxf6 takes a pawn with check and, from f6, attacks the rook on h5 at the same time.
2. The check has to be answered first. After Kg6 the rook has had no time to move, and Nxh5 collects it.
3. A knight fork cannot be blocked, and the two targets can never defend one another against it.

The idea Two targets, one move, and one of them the king. The check is what buys the tempo that turns a double attack into material.