That Pesky Tricky Knight
It’s amazing how the Knight catches so many players unawares with it’s forks and jumping around with gay abandon. So a few tips here what to look out for:-
If a knight is sat on a dark square, it will jump to a white square, nothing new in that observation, but what you need to look out for is what pieces of my opponents are sat on the same colour square as my Knight?
Look at this diagram:-
The White Knight is eyeballing the c7 square to fork the King and Rook but the Black Queen is protecting it. So let’s try the tactic of ‘Removing the Guard’ by moving the Bishop to d5 threatening b7
Oh No my Bishop!
Queen takes the Bishop, now note how many of Black’s pieces are on the same colour square as White’s Knight….
Knight Check Shadow
Karpov’s Distance
Anatoly Karpov is a Russian and former Soviet chess grandmaster, former World Chess Champion. This particular moved was very often played by him hence the name, moving the King to within 2 squares of a knight, if the Knight moves it will be in ‘Knight Check Shadow’ (or taken) and we all no what that means!