Clearance — what it means in chess
Vacating a square or line so another piece can use it, often with tempo.
Vacating a square or line so another piece can use it, often with tempo.
Clearance is the removal of one of your own pieces from a square or line so another piece can use it — and the art is doing it with tempo, so your opponent has no time to react. A piece that steps aside quietly hands over the move; a piece that steps aside with check or a threat hands over nothing.
The clearest version is the promotion clearance: your own knight sits on the queening square, so it leaps away with check, and the pawn promotes behind it before the opponent can breathe.
[[board startfen="1k1N4/1p1P4/8/8/8/8/8/6K1 w - - 0 1" pgn="1. Nc6+ bxc6 2. d8=Q+" caption="Clearance with tempo: the knight vacates the queening square with check." notes="White to move. The d7 pawn wants to promote — but White's own knight occupies d8. Nc6+ — the knight clears d8 and gives check at the same moment. The tempo is the whole point. bxc6 — Black must deal with the check, and the capture is the natural way. d8=Q+ — the pawn promotes on the vacated square, with another check. Black never got a turn of their own."]]
Clearance is the mirror of interference: one removes a friendly piece from a line, the other plants a piece on an enemy line. Both are about who controls the geometry. When the cleared square is the one a decoy will drag a defender onto, the two ideas combine.
The Endgame Society glossary defines more than 240 chess terms — rules, notation, tactics, strategy, pawn structures, endgames, and openings — in language a beginner can act on rather than dictionary shorthand.