About forks

Forks are the most common tactics that win material. With a fork you make a move with one of your pieces. After the move, this piece is attacking two (or more) of your opponent's pieces at the same time. Very often, your opponent won't be able to defend against both threats with their next move, and you can capture one of the attacked pieces.

Forks are possible with all pieces. You will practice forks with pawns, knights, bishops, rooks, and queens in separate levels. King forks are also possible, but they’re much rarer, because the king usually doesn’t attack until the game is nearing its end.

How to spot a fork

When you start learning forks, you have to look at all possible moves to determine which pieces are going to be attacked by that move. With more and more practice, you will be able to quickly see which attacking moves are possible, and you will spot many forks immediately and without effort.

Some forks can be more difficult to see—for example, if they involve the whole board, use diagonal backward moves or attacks, or are in complicated positions where a lot of moves and attacks are possible.

If there are any unprotected pieces, forks (as well as some other tactics and combinations) are much more likely. Therefore, it is always a good idea to look for unprotected pieces and any way to attack those.

About bishop forks

Bishops are not as good as knights at giving forks. They can move very quickly about the board if there are open diagonals, and, like knights, they are less valuable than rooks and queens. However, they can only attack up to three pieces at the same time (a bishop can move in four directions, but it must be coming from somewhere).

There are only two possible scenarios for bishop forks, shown in the following diagram.

• In the first diagram, the bishop moves on one diagonal to attack two pieces in opposite directions along the crossing diagonal.
• In the second diagram, the bishop captures a piece to attack two pieces on crossing diagonals. This must be a capture; otherwise the bishop could simply capture the rook immediately. Here the pawn was blocking the attack on the rook.

Although these are the only possibilities for a bishop fork, this tactic still does happen very frequently and is in the top ten tactics that decide games.

Examples

White can win material with the bishop fork Be6, attacking the rook on c8 and the unprotected knight on g4 at the same time. Black has no way to defend against both threats.

This is the most common type of bishop fork, where the bishop moves on one diagonal, and the attacked pieces are on opposite sides of the crossing diagonal.

Black can win material with the bishop fork Bxd4+, delivering check and attacking the rook on e5 at the same time.

Here the attacks are on crossing diagonals. This can happen if the move that delivers the fork also captures a piece that was previously blocking one of the attacks.

Related motifs