CategoriesChess Midgame

Chess Basic Tactics Series #3 – Double Attacks/Forks

In my last post I discussed discovered attacks. Technically, discovered attacks and discovered checks are forms of double attacks. I decided to do two separate postings because this tactic is so common and important. Learning the exact terminology isn’t the goal here, what’s important is recognizing the patterns and being able to incorporate them into your own games.

A double attack is an attack against two pieces or pawns at the same time. It is also possible to attack a piece and a square at the same time. Typically a fork involves one piece attacking two separate enemy pieces. The knight is the piece most associated with forking, but don’t forget that queens, rooks, bishops, kings, and even pawns can fork enemy pieces! Let’s look at some examples.

Here the white knight seems very menacing in blacks territory. Indeed it is because white plays 1. Nc7+ forking blacks king, queen, and rook! Notice that the knight can only attack squares of the same color. Keep that in mind when you are looking for forking opportunies with your knights.

The following is an example of a bishop fork, see if you can spot the fork before looking below the diagram

Here white plays 1. Bc6+ forking blacks queen and rook. Now let’s look at a king fork!

Here white plays 1. Kb3 and forks blacks rook and knight.

Now that we have a basic idea of forks, let’s do an exercise that’s a little harder. Instead of a one move fork let’s try to create an opportunity.

This diagram is a little more difficult, then the previous ones in this post and series. With that said take some time and study it. Imagine that the black king was on h8, if that were the case then Nf7 would be a fork. Is there a way for us to get there?

The winning move is 1. Qh8+! Notice that this move also skewers blacks king and queen. If black plays either Kg6 or Kh6 then white simply plays Qxe5. Because of this 1 … Kxh8 is forced. Then white plays 2. Nxf7+ forking blacks king and queen. The final fork is shown below.

 

The above is an example of how to turn simple tactics into multi-move combinations. Remember that the foundations for long combinations are basic tactics. Once you learn the basics by heart, then creating forcing sequences becomes much easier. We will continue our tactical study in the next post!

CategoriesChess For BeginnersChess Midgame

Chess Basic Tactics Series #2 – Discovered Attacks/Checks

In chess the discovered attack is one of the most important tactics. When we first begin playing chess we learn about simple threats. We attack one of our opponents pieces, and they defend. With a discovered attack we are creating two threats at one time. Since our opponent cannot defend against two attacks at the same time, we gain a material advantage. In a discovered attack a queen, rook, or bishop is positioned behind another piece. When that piece moves, it unleashes an attack. Let’s look at some examples to clarify.

In the above diagram it’s white’s turn to move. Notice how if white moves the bishop on e2, the white rook will attack blacks queen. There are a few moves at white’s disposal here, can you spot what the best one might be? Here the best move is Bg5! With this move white simultaneously attacks blacks queen and rook. Black has no choice but to lose material. Let’s keep studying this tactic because it’s incredibly important.

Here it’s blacks turn to move. White has just played dxc5 which was a major oversight. Here black plays 1. …Bxh2+! and white immediately resigned. Since white is forced to deal with the check, black will then play Qxd3 winning whites queen. Notice how in both of the above cases the bishop moved and created a powerful threat. Because of this, the piece that it uncovered was free to capture the enemy piece. When the piece that moves is able to check the enemy king, the discovered attack is even more powerful.

The most powerful form of discovered attack is the double check. This is extremely strong because it checks the enemy king with two pieces. When a king is in double check it is forced to move, as there is no other way to get out of check. Let’s see what this looks like in practice.

Here it’s white’s turn to move. We can see that the knight on e4 has several squares where it can move, unleashing the rook to give check. In this case however white can give double check by moving his knight to either f6 or d6. Here white plays 1. Nf6++ and gives double check and mate. Can you see why this move is superior to Nd6?

I hope you enjoyed this post! In the next part of our series we will discuss double attacks and forks.

 

 

 

 

 

CategoriesChess Reviews

Cheap Chess Sets: Ensuring you get the best price

We spend a great deal of time ensuring that we sell our chess sets at the most competitive prices without compromising on the quality of our boards or pieces. Through careful product selection, supplier relationships and price monitoring & matching we are constantly working to deliver the best value equipment to all of our customers.

Click here for our cheap chess sets.

When you’re looking for a more affordable chess set, rather than absolute luxury, there are a number of things to look out for that’ll help you get an even better deal:

The Chess Board: Chessboards are constructed using a variety of different methods and a number of different materials. These materials range from solid woods and wood veneers through to vinyl and compressed board. Although wood veneers are cheaper than boards made from solid wood they represent a great balance in terms of quality vs. cost. Chess Sets with veneered boards are not only incredibly stylish but are also cheaper than boards made from solid wood. It’s important to realise that this doesn’t automatically mean compromising quality. Veneered boards are much more consistent, less sensitive to environmental factors (like humidity) and each board is identical – free from minor imperfections and variations that naturally occur with solid wood boards. They are cheap in terms of cost, but not in terms of quality and appearance.

The Chess Pieces: the type of wood that is used in the construction of chess pieces, and the level of detailing, generally determine their cost, and in turn the cost of the overall set. Boxwood chess pieces are ideal if you need a chess set that is more affordable. It is both a dense and robust wood that ages well, looks fantastic and is relatively cheap. You’ll find that boxwood is often used with reasonably priced chess sets for both the white and black pieces, it is naturally light in colour and is dyed or stained to form the black pieces. Another thing to look closely at are the knights -they are a good gauge of value. Knights are the most intricate and time consuming pieces to carve, so the more detailed the knight, the more expensive the pieces.

Our Budget Chess Sets

We stock a large range of inexpensive chess sets -these are perfect for customers who are budget conscious and looking for something cheap to buy.

Our Down Head Championship chess set  is a typical example and this is one of the best value cheap chess sets we sell – it represents a perfect balance between quality and value for money. The beautifully made chessboard is handcrafted in Europe whilst the pieces are expertly crafted in a specialist workshop in India. The board and pieces in this set have been paired by our experts to deliver a chess set which is astounding quality and value.

As well as cheaper wooden chess sets we also sell a range of high quality tournament standard sets, these are manufactured from plastic, are nicely detailed and are ideal for customers who are looking for professional grade equipment used by enthusiasts and experts. These sets are both inexpensive and incredibly good value. They are especially good for customers who are looking to become regular players, for clubs, schools and universities.

Ex Display and Clearance Sets = Affordable Luxury

Our ex-display and clearance chess sets are a great way to get a high-end or luxury chess set at a cheap price. Products in this section are usually items that we’ve used for display in our showroom, they may be unwanted customer returns, or they may have minor imperfections or blemishes. In many cases these chess sets are discounted with up to 75% off their normal price.

Each item is carefully photographed, any imperfections or damage clearly described and the products are listed individually – We always ensure that any blemishes are clearly visible so you can make an educated decision before you buy.

You can check out our clearance section here. This section is regularly updated and is a great way to grab a bargain!

Price matching

Although many of the products that we sell are unique or commissioned by us, we spend a great deal of time working to reduce the cost of our products so that we beat our match competitor’s prices on comparable products.

Chess sets are often similar in style but the variation in quality can be tremendous – at Regency Chess we are especially focused on craftsmanship as well as the affordability of all of the chess sets that we sell on our site, whether they are luxury or cheap. Through our supplier relationships we not only ensure that our chess sets are beautifully crafted, but that they are appropriately priced, beating or matching our competitors prices.

Keeping Costs Down

Pricing is something that we constantly monitor and constantly work to keep down. As one of the UK’s biggest chess retailers we commission many of the chess sets that we sell and work closely with manufacturers to keep production and manufacturing costs to a minimum without sacrificing quality.

Where we buy products from manufacturers we’re also able to buy them in a volume that allows us to offer some of the best prices in the UK.

CategoriesChess Reviews

Lord of the Rings Chess Set Review

Although I’ve watched and really enjoyed all three of the Lord of The Rings films, I’m not the biggest LOTR fan in the world and I must confess that I haven’t read the books. As you can imagine I was a bit surprised when I was asked to review this Lord of the Rings Chess set produced by Studio Anne Carlton, but here goes….Lord of The Rings Pic

Overview

This themed chess set is based on the first film in the Lord of the Rings Trilogy; The Fellowship of the Ring and is officially licensed by New Line Cinema, who I understand are the producers of the LOTR films.

The set consists of 32 pieces each representing a bust of a character from the Fellowship of the Rings story and comes bundled with a lovely dark wood chessboard.

All of the pieces in the set are hand painted, with 32 pieces in total (no spare queens I’m afraid) – each piece is made from crushed stone.

The chessboard that comes bundled with the pieces measures approximately 55cm x 55cm. The largest of the chess pieces themselves (the king) is approximately 11.5cm tall.

Unboxing and First Impressions

unboxing lotr chess set
Unboxing the Chess Set!

I wasn’t really sure what to expect with this themed set, although there are some lovely themed chess sets out there, I haven’t been too impressed with some of the cheap ones that I’ve seen in the past, especially from China.

The pieces come packaged in a lovely SAC (Studio Ann Carlton) box, which has a medieval style typeface and the box is a combination of yellow and red. There is no mention of Lord of the Rings on the outside of the box (I’m not sure if it is generic) but it does have a feeling of quality about it and the lid slips off very easily.

Inside we’ve got an information sheet printed on both sides; giving us some background on the Lord of The Rings, and each of the characters that have been used as pieces in the set.

After removing all the protective foam, we’re left with two trays each containing 16 chess pieces for each side of the board, both black and white.

Predictably SAC have chosen to represent the LOTR white pieces with the good characters from the story (Gandalf, Galadriel etc) and the dark/evil characters are represented by black pieces.

SAC Chess Box
The SAC Box

One of the first things that I picked up on was that this Lord of The Rings set uses busts of the characters rather than an entire figure. This works surprisingly well and in my view helps to bring together the concept of a film and a traditional game in a way that isn’t tacky. I don’t think I would have any hesitation in having these pieces on display in the same way that I would with traditional pieces.

One of the things that I did notice with the SAC packaging is that because of the size of some of the chess pieces (i.e they are big) they do fit rather snuggly into the trays in the box. This is only a small issue, but SAC could look at tweaking the tray sizes to improve on this.

Moving on to the board, again it’s nicely packaged. It looks as though this has been produced by a manufacturer in Spain and has obviously been paired with the pieces by the supplier (in this case Regency Chess). This seems to be normal practice as chess boards and pieces aren’t always produced by the same company.

Opening the board up it is a lovely dark wood/light wood mix. It is a veneered board and the wenge/maple wood is a good contrast with a nice clean finish. No problems here, initial thoughts are that it is nice quality and matches the price bracket of the pieces.

Closer Look: The Lord of the Rings Pieces

As I mentioned above, each of the pieces represents a bust of a character from the Lord of The Rings. Here is a list of the pieces that SAC have used:

Sam Chess PieceWhite Side (Good)

King – Gandalf the Grey
Queen – Galadriel
Bishops – Aragorn
Knights – Gimli
Rooks – Frodo Baggins
Pawns – Samwise Gamgee

Black Side (Evil)

King – Saruman the White
Queen – Ringwraiths
Bishops – Lurtz
Knights – Orc Overseer
Rooks – Moria Orc
Pawns – Orc

I’m incredibly impressed by the level of detail and I really like the hand painted finish, which looks fantastic (especially with the white pieces). The dark side is also intricately detailed and some of the characters are borderline scary!

Weight-wise the pieces range from about 66 grams for pawns to 132 grams for the kings. This is a nice weight for these types of pieces and adds to a general feeling of quality about the chess set. Because the pieces are made from crushed stone the weight comes from the actual material rather than artificial weights, which is great.

Lord of The Rings inscription
Lord of The Rings inscription

On the bottom of the pieces I noticed that they all have ‘The One Ring’ Inscription (another nice touch) and the bottom of the pieces are properly felted to protect the board from scratching.

The pieces range from about 5/6cm high for the pawns through to 11.5cm for the kings.

Closer Look: The board

Returning to the board – The one supplied with this Lord of the Rings chess set is a dark wood, light wood mix and manufactured by Rechapados Ferrer – based in Spain. From what I’ve heard Ferrer specialise in producing mainly veneered boards and this one is about 13mm thick and approx 55cm x 55cm.

Lord of The Rings Chess Board
Maple Winge Chess Board

Whilst I do like boards manufactured from a solid piece of wood, the price can often be a drawback. These veneered boards offer a good compromise between quality and value – and this one is beautifully made. Another advantage with veneered chessboards is that they are much more stable and much less prone to the cracking often associated with solid wood. Unlike solid boards each one is identical and free from the defects / variations associated with completely natural wood.

I think this is a fantastically made board that pairs perfectly with the SAC chess pieces.

Conclusion

I was initially a little concerned as to whether we would be able to remember which characters represent which pieces when we started to play. This has always been something I’ve wondered about with themed chess sets and we did have to refer to the information sheet to help us get us started, but after about 10 minutes of play we soon found our feet and ultimately this didn’t pose a problem.

Chess Pieces
Lord of The Rings Chess Pieces

In the past I’ve been on the fence in terms of themed chess sets, I’m a big fan of the traditional Staunton style and I’ve often struggled to see the value in themed pieces. This Lord of the Rings set seems to have converted me – the pieces are beautifully crafted and I like the Spanish chessboard that Regency chosen to match the chess pieces.

In summary – I think this set makes both a beautiful display piece and a chess set that can be used day to day. It gets my thumbs up and makes an ideal gift!!

Review by Daniel Edgebrook

The Lord of The Rings Chess Set is Available Here

2018 Update: The pieces in this set have been discontinued due to the demise of SAC and the expiration of the LOTR license. The Regency Chess Company have a VERY limited number of ‘New Old Stock’ sets left in stock which are available for sale on our website.

CategoriesChess Midgame

Chess Basic Tactics Series #1 – Pins and Skewers

If you’ve read my previous post, then you know that studying tactics is one of the most important things you can do to improve your game. In this series, I’m going to go deeper, define, and give examples of some basic tactics. Before we get into the fun stuff, let me first give some required definitions.

In chess tactics can be defined as short term opportunities where one player makes threats against the opponent.  Pins and skewers, are just two examples of various tactics that are used in a chess game. A pin in chess is when you attack a piece that can not move out the way because it would allow capture of a piece of greater value. There are two types of pins, absolute pins and relative pins. Let’s look at some examples.

This first diagram is an example of an absolute pin. The black knight on c6 is absolutely pinned to the king because the knight cannot move. In chess, it is illegal to move a piece and expose your king to check. Keep in mind that absolute pins are more powerful than relative pins for this very reason, the piece that is pinned is completely stuck!

 

The next diagram is an example of a relative pin. The knight on f3 is pinned to the queen. Unlike the first example, it is possible for the knight on f3 to legally move. Doing so however would be bad since it would lose the queen which is more valuable than the knight.

One thing to remember is that only queens, rooks, and bishops can pin other pieces.

The next tactic we will discuss is the skewer. A skewer is very similar to a pin, however in the case of a skewer the more valuable piece is in front of the piece of equal or lesser value. When the more valuable piece moves, it exposes the less valuable piece to capture. Just like pins there are absolute skewers and relative skewers. Let’s look at some examples.

The following diagram shows an example of two skewers. The white queen is skewering the black king on a5 and black rook on a8. Since the black king is in check it must move out of the way allowing the capture of the rook. Also, the white bishop is skewering the black rook on f6 and the black knight on g7. Since the rook is more valuable than the knight, when it moves it allows capture of the knight. Just like pins, only the straight line pieces, queens, bishops, and rooks can skewer.

 

I hope this post helped you get your feet wet with some basic tactics! In the next post in this series we will discuss double attacks. In the meantime start improving your tactics play by solving some chess puzzles!

CategoriesChess For Beginners

Chess Noob #7 – Special Pawn Moves

Like I said when I told you how the pieces move, the Pawn is a very tricky piece.  It might be worth the least (only 1 point), but it has the most special rules.  Remember, it moves forward but attacks diagonally.  And it moves only 1 space at a time UNLESS it’s the first time it moves, and then it can chose to move 1 space or 2.  Well, this tiny chess piece is about to get even more complex with it’s two special moves: En Passant, and promotion.

En Passant

En Passant (meaning “in passing”) is a very special move that can be done by Pawns, but only in certain places and situations.  As we discussed before, Pawns move forward (1-2 spaces on their first move and 1 space after that) and attack on the diagonal, as seen here

The special case of En Passant  occurs on the 5th rank for white Pawns, and the 4th rank for black Pawns.  Consider the following diagram:

White Pawns start on the 2nd rank moving toward the 8th rank, and black Pawns start on the 7th rank moving toward the 1st rank (in chess, “rows” are called “ranks” and “columns” are called “files”).  Therefore the pawns at a2 and f7 are in their starting position.  We know this means those 2 Pawns can move either 1 space or 2 spaces on their first move.  Let’s say it’s black’s turn.  He knows that if he moves his f-Pawn to f6, that white’s e-Pawn will take him.  So he decides to move 2 spaces to f5.

BECAUSE WHITE’S E-PAWN IS ON THE 5th RANK, he can take the f-Pawn as if it had moved only one space forward, but taking it “En Passant” or “In Passing”

This can ONLY be done on the 5th rank for white and the 4th rank for black as a special privilege for crossing into enemy territory.  ALSO, it can only be done to a Pawn moving 2 spaces on it’s first move.  If the f-pawn had already moved before the e-Pawn got there, En Passant would be illegal.   So if the position were already like this:

when the e-Pawn got to e5, he cannot take the f-pawn.  Also, if black’s pawn started on f6 and then moved to f5 so you can’t take it, en passant is not allowed.  ONLY on the pawns 1st move is en passant an allowable circumstance.

Pawn Promotion

One final special move for Pawns (see, I told you they were complex little pieces) is promotion.  Because Pawns are so weak (only worth 1 point) and because they have limited movement (only 1 space at a time in a forward direction), it is a great feat for a Pawn to get all the way to the other side of the board (8th rank for white and 1st rank for black).  Because of this, is a brave little Pawn manages to get that far, they are rewarded with a promotion.

A player that manages to get it’s Pawn all the way to the other side of the board may transform that Pawn into any piece they want (most players chose a Queen).

So now you know all the moves of the chess pieces (from this blog and from “All About Pieces” parts 1 and 2) as well as how to win (from “Check, Checkmate, Stalemate”).  Go out and play chess with the confidence that you know the rules of the game!  You may not start winning matches right away, but at least you know what you’re doing.  And you’ll learn even more by bookmarking this blog so you can stay up to date with all future blogs!

Have a topic you’d like me to cover or a question you’d like to ask? send me an e-mail at [email protected]