Forks, Pins, and Skewers

Forks, pins, and skewers sound silly, but they are special tactics to defeat your opponent! Yeah, that's actually what they're called! 

Forks

Forks are moves that use one of your pieces to attack more than one of your opponent's pieces. Forks are usually played using a knight or queen, but they can be played using any piece, even a king!

A pawn fork

A knight fork

A bishop fork

A rook fork

A queen fork

A king fork

All of the positions above are "relative forks". This means that the opponent can save either piece. But, in an "absolute fork", one of the pieces attacked is the king, as shown below.

This position here is an absolute fork. 

Because the white bishop is giving check, black has to move the king.

No matter where the king goes, the bishop will capture the rook next.

Pins

Pins are moves that attack a piece with a more valuable piece behind it, keeping the piece in front from moving. Pins can only be played with bishops, rooks, and queens.

A bishop pin

A rook pin

A queen pin

All of the positions above are "relative pins". This means that the opponent can move the piece in front, but they would lose the piece behind it. But, in an "absolute fork", the piece can't move because that would put their king in check, an illegal move.

This position here is an absolute pin.

If the rook moves, the black king would be in check from the bishop.

So, the rook can't move and is stuck in place.

Skewers

Skewers are like pins, but the more valuable piece is in front of the less valuable one. They can also only be played with bishops, rooks, or queens.

A bishop skewer

A rook skewer

A queen skewer

All of the positions above are "absolute skewers", because the king is the piece in front. This means that the opponent has to move their king to get out of check and lose the piece in the back. But in a "relative skewer", the piece in front doesn't have to move.

This position here is a relative skewer.

Because the piece in front isn't a king, black doesn't have to move it.

Black would lose the e4 knight if it didn't move, but the move isn't forced.

Fighting Forks, Pins, and Skewers

Forks, pins, and skewers are powerful moves. What do you do against them?

Well, there are two ways to get out of a fork, relative pin, or relative skewer:

Take a look at this example from earlier (with kings added).

Black can escape the fork by giving check to the white king, which saves one rook.

White has to move the king out of the way and can't capture the other rook.

When white moves out of the way, black can save the other rook!

You can use the same concept to get out of pins and skewers. But how can you do it by threatening checkmate?

Take a look at this position. The rook is pinned to the queen by the bishop, but there is a way to escape!

White can get out of the pin with the sneaky move Re3. Can you see what's coming next?

If black doesn't see the threat and takes the queen, Re8 is checkmate!