Knight Moves for Beginners: Part I
The rule of attraction, from tactic to combination, and other musings
A Small Revelation
I was inspired to write this after doing some tactics study. After working through several tours of the “easy” set in The Woodpecker Method* (2019) by Axel Smith and Hans Tikkanen, writing down solutions and coding errors, I noticed a pattern. I was missing a simple tactic, combining two tactical themes. As you may have already guessed, the tactic involves the knight. It’s not a tactic I should be missing, but I think that speaks to the “quirkiness” of knight tactics, and the importance of keeping tactically sharp.
(By the way, if you are interested in learning about an effective and efficient way of studying tactics, Noël Studer, “Switzerland’s youngest grandmaster”, has an excellent post on the topic: Improve Your Chess Tactics)
Unpredictability
"The late Dr. Robert R. McCready, a strong expert and beloved chessplayer in Dallas for many years used to jokingly say, ‘Were it not for those darned knights I would have been a grandmaster.” - Lou Hays in Combination Challenge!, 1991
The beginner understands the joke immediately. The knight has an air of unpredictability. Because the geometry of its movement is unlike any of the other pieces, rook, bishop, queen, king. The other pieces all move in a predictable linear fashion, must stop or capture where other pieces lay in their path. In contrast, the knight hops. Because of this, learning to handle it does not come intuitively. It is said that weaker players tend to overvalue it. Perhaps, among weaker players, this is not really a mis-evaluation.
As mentioned previously, the knight is the only piece that can “jump over” other pieces. Potentially it can threaten eight pieces at once, a feat that can only be equaled by the queen itself. (For this reason, a knight strongly positioned in enemy territory is sometimes referred to as an “octopus”.)
While the knight’s range is short, compared to the other pieces, it’s ability to move over other pieces makes it valuable in “closed” positions.
It’s sphere of influence is greatly reduced at the edge of the board, from 8 to 4 squares, or in the corner, 2 squares. From this characteristic comes the old phrase, “a knight on the rim is grim.”
The Knight Fork and Another Tactic
Take a minute or two to look at this position. Do you see the solution? (If you don’t see the solution in a minute, then you are the target audience for this post! Others feel free to follow along) A beginner, given the option to move the knight, might simply take the bishop on e7 (with a check! checks are good right?), but there’s much more to be had! Let’s simplify, and alter the position:
Do you see a knight fork in example 2? You will likely spot, after some study of the position, that Ne7+ is a fork, hitting both the king on g8 and queen on c6. Now let’s look at something closer to the original position. Adding another tactical element. Our opponents won’t always hand us such basic forks, however, we can manufacture them with a little skill.
Now the beginner may be puzzled. I don’t see a knight fork. If I play Ne7+ I’m just forking the king and the knight - but you can’t really fork another knight! Correct. Let me pause a moment to note something about tactics with knights that may be helpful. If pieces around your knight are on same color as your knight, there may be a knight fork. And in fact, in this position *all* of black’s pieces are on light squares, as is white’s knight. Something is afoot. We can’t fork a knight with a knight. But could we somehow fork the queen? Could we get the queen on that square where the knight is? Do you see it now?
The simple tactic that I was missing, in combination with the knight fork, was attraction. The tactic consists of drawing, luring, decoying or attracting a piece to a square in order to carry out some other operation. In example 3 it may still be hard to see as it involves momentarily giving up the queen - something most beginners are going to avoid at all costs. But if white plays Qxc6, capturing the knight on the light square then if the queen recaptures the knight on d5 (a light square, by the way) can now deliver a devastating check from d7. Let’s look at the original position again.
The position is more visually complicated because now there’s a lot more pieces on the board including a bishop on d7. But the recipe is the same. White takes the knight (which is on the same color square as their knight) with his queen, momentarily sacrificing the queen in order to fork the queen on c6 and the king on g8. It takes a little while to see this sort of tactic at first, but with regular and focused puzzle solving it can be trained, and you’ll be immensely satisfied when you get to play these tactics over the board.
The astute reader might well say, “Hey, the black queen does not have to capture the white queen!” This is true. This full variation is not forced, white can decline and simply lose the knight. But white declines because of the presence of the fork.
I hope this has little piece has illustrated the power of combining two simple tactical motifs, the knight fork and attraction. You may have read about chess combinations - this is where the term comes from - we have combined two tactics, the knight fork and attraction, using them together we find a resource that is otherwise not immediately obvious on the board.
Another Problem for Practice, and Some Resources
A bit more difficult problem for study, white to move. Try to spend 5-10 minutes on this one, if you don’t see it immediately. Do you see it? If it’s obscure, here are some hints. You’re going to use the more active, centralized knight. There are *two* sacrifices. You are going to attract the black’s pieces to squares that are the same color that your knight is on. Do you see it now? Spend some time on it. The solution is at the end of the post.
To further your study of such tactics, here are some resources:
Predator at the Chessboard - the navigation is a bit funny (you have to go to the bottom of the page to get all the material), but this website has some very well articulated explanations of tactics. Free and Recommended.
Chess Tactics from Scratch by Martin Weteschnik
Tactics: Back to Basics by Dan Heisman
Chessmood has a wonderful course for learning tactics. It’s perhaps for a little more advanced than beginner, but highly recommended. It consists of 19 hours of instructional video! The material is thorough and very well explained. (It is a paid course, but from time to time they open up their courses for free. Keep an eye out.)
*I would not recommend the Woodpecker Method for beginners. The examples are very well chosen, but they are for intermediate+ level players. If you are looking for books for beginners please see my previous post, which includes some books to avoid and some to seek out: