Fork — what it means in chess
One piece attacking two or more enemy pieces at once.
One piece attacking two or more enemy pieces at once.
A fork is one piece attacking two or more of your opponent's pieces at the same time. They can only answer one threat; you collect the other. Knights are the famous forkers — they hit in a shape the eye doesn't trace, so the fork tends to arrive unseen — but every piece can fork, pawns included. The whole idea is finding the one square that touches two things at once.
Forks reward pattern recognition more than calculation. The knight fork has a shape — the L that touches both a king and a queen — and once your eye knows it, you see it on the board without hunting. Pawns fork almost accidentally, by advancing one square and attacking two pieces at once on the diagonals. Bishops fork along a diagonal that grazes two undefended pieces. The question to ask on every move is the same: is there a square where one of my pieces would attack two of my opponent's at the same time? Half the tactics in a beginner's game are forks that neither player noticed.
[[board startfen="6k1/5ppp/2N5/3q4/8/8/8/6K1 w - - 0 1" pgn="1. Ne7+ Kf8 2. Nxd5" caption="A knight fork: one move attacks the king and the queen at once." notes="White to move. The knight on c6 has one square that hits both the king and the queen. Ne7+ — check to the king on g8, and an attack on the queen on d5 at the same moment. A knight check can't be blocked. The king has to step away... ...and Nxd5 collects the queen. That is a fork."]]
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.