The Fork: Working Backwards

The Fork:  Working Backwards by, Mrs Jessica E Prescott (aka BoundingOwl)

Hi chess friends!  Have you ever come to a position or a puzzle where you have no idea how you got there?  Like maybe both kings are in check at the same time?  Well, sometimes you have to work backwards to solve a problem.  It's good for your logic skills!  

In these puzzles we will start with a simple fork, then work our way backwards until we are solving harder puzzles.  All you have to do is figure out how to make the positions look like the ones you solved already.

 

Let's start with this one.  Hint:  do you notice how the h pawn is pinned?

 

Good, now I'm going to go backwards a step.  Make the same fork in two moves.

 

Now make a fork in 3 moves!  If we started out with this puzzle first it might be too tricky.  But now that we've worked backwards from the final position it should be simple for you!

 

Some people cheat on mazes this way.  They start at the end instead of the beginning!  Well maybe it's not cheating it's being *creative*.  

 

Try this fork.  It's easy when it's in one move, right?  This was a game played by former World Chess Champion Tal.  He played someone named Parma in 1961.  Mikhail Tal was a fantastic player who loved to sacrifice pieces and later in life grew him some cRAZy hair.  

People call him the Wizard or the Magician of Riga (where he's from, capital of Latvia).  Where is his family fork (queen, king, AND rook)?

Now let's go back a step.

 

Got the hang of it?  Try the last one by envisioning (seeing in your head) the final position.  Where would the king and queen need to be to fork them with your knight?  This is also a great example of a counterattack.  Notice how your own knights are forked!  Make a forcing move that gets the queen and king into position.

 

Nice work!  Keep watching chess videos   

Tip of the week:  Be creative!  If one way of solving a problem isn't working, try working backwards.