If you’re new to chess, learning all of the chess-specific vocabulary can sometimes feel like learning a whole new language! But learning these chess terms has plenty of benefits, including giving you the tools to more accurately describe your own chess games, as well as understanding articles and videos that you come across.
Here are 11 chess terms that every beginner needs to know:
Attack
Tactic
Strategy
Blunder
Pin
Fork
Skewer
Rank
File
Kingside
Queenside
Attack
To attack another piece is to move a piece to a square where it can capture an enemy piece on its next move.
Attacking is not the same as capturing: Capturing is when you successfully remove an opponent’s piece from the board, while attacking is just getting in position to capture on the next move. Attacking is a silent threat—one that you hope your opponent won’t notice. Shhh!
An attack on a king has a special name: check. Because kings can never be captured like other pieces, kings must escape this attack. If there is no way for a king to escape an attack (in other words, escape check), then it’s considered checkmate, and the game is over.
Tactic
Tactics are short, forced move sequences that lead to an immediate win or advantage, such as a checkmate or winning a piece. They create indefensible, short-term threats that can be fully visualized and analyzed, as opposed to strategy, which refers to longer-term goals that are not usually forced and cannot be entirely calculated.
Tactics are recognizable patterns that you’ll learn to spot the more you see and practice them. There are many different types of tactics, including pins, forks, skewers, discovered attacks, x-ray attacks, deflection, sacrifices, and more!
Tactics often lead to a win, but they may also be utilized in losing positions to salvage a draw or recoup material.
Strategy
Strategy in chess refers to formulating long-term goals, as opposed to finding short-term tactics. Examples of strategy include plotting to weaken your opponent’s pawn structure, perhaps by saddling them with an isolated pawn, or aiming to improve the placement of your passive bishop by maneuvering it to an open diagonal where it will be more active and control more squares.
While tactics lead to immediate, forced wins, strategy does not involve inescapable threats, and relies instead on small advantages that accumulate over time.
Strategy includes topics like development, material, space, king safety, pawn structure, key squares, piece activity, piece placement, and more.
Blunder
A blunder is a very poor move—for example, one that loses a piece or allows a checkmate. At higher levels, blunders can also be more subtle, including things like letting your opponent get a superior pawn structure, or trading an active piece for one of your opponent’s passive pieces, or even failing to catch one of your opponent’s mistakes. Either way, the result is the same: You’re handing an advantage over to your opponent!
To avoid blunders, it’s good to go through a quick mental checklist before moving any piece. Ask yourself if your piece is defended on its intended destination, check if any opponent’s pieces will attack it there, and examine any checks, captures, or threats that your opponent may have on their turn.
Pin
A pin is a tactic where one piece attacks an enemy piece that is in front of a more valuable enemy piece, making it impossible or highly disadvantageous for the opponent to move the first piece away.
There are two types of pins: absolute pins and relative pins. In an absolute pin, an enemy piece is pinned to that side’s king, and in a relative pin, an enemy piece is pinned to a piece other than that side’s king.
Because pins require long-range attacks over ranks, files, or diagonals, only long-range pieces can pin. This means only the queen, rook, and bishop can pin, while kings, knights, and pawns cannot.
A pin can be thought of as the reverse of a skewer.
Fork
A fork is a tactic where one piece attacks two or more enemy pieces simultaneously. Because the opponent can only move one piece at a time, a fork usually wins material.
Although knights are perhaps best known for forks, every single chess piece, including the king, can also execute a fork.
Forks can also involve checks. A fork that attacks the enemy king and queen is often called a royal fork.
Skewer
A skewer is a tactic where a piece attacks a more valuable enemy piece that is in front of a less valuable enemy piece. The opponent is usually compelled to move the more valuable piece away to save it, leaving the second piece behind for you to capture.
A skewer is sometimes considered the opposite of a pin.
Rank
Each horizontal row on the chessboard is called a rank. There are eight ranks in total, and for convenience, they are numbered one through eight in chess notation, with the first rank being the first row from White’s point of view.
File
Each vertical column on the chessboard is called a file. There are eight files, and they are labeled a through f in chess notation, starting from the left side of the board from White’s perspective.
Kingside
This is the side of the chessboard that both kings start the game on. The kingside consists of the e, f, g, and h files, making it the right half of the board for White, and the left half of the board from Black’s perspective.
Even if a king later castles on the other side of the board or moves to a different region, this doesn’t change anything; the kingside is still the right side for White, and the left side for Black.
Queenside
This is the side of the chessboard that both queens start the game on. This means the queenside is made up of the a, b, c, and d files.
Like the kingside, the definition of queenside doesn’t change even if one queen (or both!) later moves to the other side of the board. The queenside is always the left half of the board for White, and the right half of the board from Black’s point of view.
Level up
Now that you’ve got these chess terms down, you’re now ready to take your game to the next level. See you over on Duolingo Chess!