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

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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:

• Check

• Threaten checkmate

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