Attacking and Defending Pieces
A piece is said to attack (or threaten) an opponent's piece if, in the next move, it could capture that piece. A piece is said to defend (or protect) a piece of the defender's color if, in case the defended piece were taken by the opponent, the defender could recapture right away. Attacking a piece usually, but not always (see sacrifice), forces the opponent to respond if the attacked piece is undefended, or if the attacking piece is of lower value than the attacked one.
When attacked, one has several options:
- Capture the attacking piece.
- Move the attacked piece.
- Interpose another piece in between the two, if the attacker is not a knight and is not directly adjacent to the piece attacked.
- Guard the attacked piece and permit an exchange.
- Pin the attacking piece so the capture becomes illegal or unprofitable.
- Use a zwischenzug (create a counter-threat).
Read more about this topic: Chess Tactic
Famous quotes containing the words attacking, defending and/or pieces:
“I do not believe in lawyers, in that mode of attacking or defending a man, because you descend to meet the judge on his own ground, and, in cases of the highest importance, it is of no consequence whether a man breaks a human law or not. Let lawyers decide trivial cases.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“While I am in favor of the Government promptly enforcing the laws for the present, defending the forts and collecting the revenue, I am not in favor of a war policy with a view to the conquest of any of the slave States; except such as are needed to give us a good boundary. If Maryland attempts to go off, suppress her in order to save the Potomac and the District of Columbia. Cut a piece off of western Virginia and keep Missouri and all the Territories.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)
“The human mind is so complex and things are so tangled up with each other that, to explain a blade of straw, one would have to take to pieces an entire universe.... A definition is a sack of flour compressed into a thimble.”
—Rémy De Gourmont (1858–1915)